Author: Jim Monaghan
Date: 08:41:03 06/16/01
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>You might be able to compare time periods by examining results attained by >people that played over long periods of time, but people change and styles >change and what it takes to play the game at the professional level changes. > >I'm sure that someone has researched this thoroughly though, so if I expressed a >real opinion about I would probably be vulnerable to anyone with an education. > >bruce Nathan Divinsky, a BC mathematics professor did precisely this in a couple of books. He used a whole bunch of weird mathematics to determine relative strengths of the top players over time. He was careful however to not call his final comparitive numbers elo ratings. I have his book "Warriors of the Mind" ... an interesting read. Here is a short exerpt from an interveiw with him: SJ: Some questions on Warriors of the Mind: Is it realistic to mathematically rank the top players in history? ND: You're never gonna have precise answers. Even with players that meet over the board. When Lasker played Fine, Reshevsky and Flohr in the thirties, he was 70 and they were 25. What we would like it to mean is Lasker at his best playing Reshevsky at his best. That never happens. SJ: But you account for it using mathematics? ND: As best you can. You use a lot of differential equations and what is called the maximum likelihood function. We have a professor who wrote several research papers in connection with Warriors of the Mind...this is hot stuff. But to come out and say that Kasparov is better than Fischer ... you don't have accuracy, but it's a lot of fun and you have a reasonable guide. It's like going to a doctor ... often they don't know what they're doing, but if you're lucky they won't harm you and in some rare cases they'll help. I have better numbers and more accurate results in my newest book that came out last month ... Life maps of the great chess masters...oh fascinating. Kasparov is sensational. (pause) Oh, I 've been lucky, I've had the opportunities to analyze with Tal, Petrosian, Spassky and Fischer. Petrosian wouldn't analyze variations. He would have one set of pieces set up and then he would say well, thirty moves later, we'll probably come to this ... he would jump thirty moves. He would already see where and why and how and what to aim for. Tal was, I think, the most brilliant. And he enjoyed it the most. When he won the world blitz title in St. John and he was in his mid-fifties, I took him around the room, he was drunk as the lord and I was yelling, "Our generation beat the hell out of you young (pause) bums. I like the part about doctors ... Cheers, Jim
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