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Who is the best? Chess
Who is
the strongest player in the history of the game? Pundits have
different opinions on this question. Robert Fischer and Garry
Kasparov are certainly very good candidates who will perhaps
get more votes than other great players. JR Capablanca and
Alexander Alekhine are also strong contenders.
Now,
the question is what should be the criterion for judging a
player's strength? After all, many of these great masters
never played against each other. So how do we settle the matter?
The depth of their positional play and great tactical prowess
are things known to all. There is, however, one criterion
that can serve our purpose. Yes, supremacy or domination over
contemporary players is a very reliable indicator of a player's
real strength.
A master
has to face players of his times only. And we have to work
out how effortlessly he defeated his rivals. That is perhaps
the reason why British grandmaster Nigel Short once said that
he considered Paul Morphy the best ever chess master. Sounds
a bit surprising, doesn't it? Morphy played at a time when
chess was still passing through the Romantic Age. Even the
principles of Wilhem Steinitz were unknown to the mid-nineteenth
century masters, let alone the modern universal style of play.
So his games cannot be compared with the modern day masterpieces
in terms of positional subtlety. And of course he was playing
against much weaker opponents. That said, don't overlook the
way he demolished them all . Morphy was almost invincible
! Even the great Fischer or Kasparov never quite enjoyed the
same kind of supremacy over their opponents.
The comparison
with contemporaries has its point. Here the strength of a
player can be judged accurately as the playing ground is always
even. For example, Morphy didn't have many good books to read
and that was true about his adversaries as well !
It would
have been interesting to see how a player of the distant past
would fare if he were pitted against a modern master. Here
is a game in which a challenger plays against a young player
of the next generation . He outplays the young man with great
ease.
Bogoljubow,
E - Stahlberg,G [D15]
Gothenburg, 1930
1.d4
d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 Bf5 5.cxd5 Nxd5 6.Qb3 Nxc3 7.bxc3
Qb6 8.Nd2 Bg6 9.e4 Nd7 10.f4 f6 11.f5 Bf7 12.Bc4 Qxb3 13.axb3
Nb6 14.Be6 g6 15.Nc4 Nxc4 16.bxc4 Bg7 17.00 00 18.Bf4 Bxe6
19.fxe6 f5 20.e5 Rfd8 21.Rfb1 b6 22.Ra6 Rdb8 23.Kf2 h6 24.h4
Kh7 25.Ke3 Rb7 26.Kd3 Rab8 27.Kc2 Rc8 28.c5 Rcb8 29.cxb6 axb6
30.Rba1 c5 31.Ra8 cxd4 32.cxd4 Rxa8 33.Rxa8 Rc7+ 34.Kd3 10
Position after 28.c5
-PATZER
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