Author: Alastair Scott
Date: 07:00:13 10/28/02
Go up one level in this thread
On October 27, 2002 at 19:03:55, Arshad Syed wrote: >One can't help but notice the difference in quality between the games played by >masters from a previous era such as Lasker, Tal, Fischer, Capablanca etc. The >games were so unique and singular, you couldn't help but remember some feature >of the game which made it really spectacular. For instance, a Queen sacrifice or >multiple piece sacrifices. By contrast, even the World Championship games of >recent times have nothing distinguishing which etches them in memory. This might >probably because of the closing gap between the top class players. I would hardly say they were better quality ... there has been a big improvement in standards, especially in defensive play and opening knowledge. And, almost invariably, a game is 'more spectacular' because the loser allows it to be so; as you point out, a general levelling up results in fewer 'spectacular' games. The example usually quoted is Morphy; he scored many spectacular wins but he was far ahead of anyone else of his time and, in most cases, the defence was lamentably deficient. That said, there are several games of his, such as the Falkbeer Gambit win against Lichtenhein [sp?] in the New York 1857 tournament, which have never been improved on ... But, to give a couple of other examples, Steinitz played some distinctly ropey openings, even in World Championship matches, which would probably have been torn to shreds nowadays and should really have been exploited even then, and the two Alekhine-Bogoljubov matches (1929 and 1934) had more than their fair share of shaky play ... Alastair
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.