On May 19, 9:27 am, "Chess One" wrote:

Rather famously, and in his own words, Capablanca declared the sort of
modern chess technique with which Alekhine beat him entirely not to his
taste, and said if that [technical study method] was chess, you could keep
it!

Therefore, in terms of any posited engagement Capa : AnyModern IGM, Capa
would be at a substantial disadvantage, since he was not psychologically
able to engage modern chess,

If you define "modern GM" as excluding such players
as Larry Evans, maybe. But don't underestimate the
innate talent of the "lazy, vain, and invincible" Cuban.

"I would be in a lot of trouble." -- a modern GM, speaking
of his theoretically facing players such as GMs Capablanca
or Alekhine, even with his openings knowledge advantage.


and actually directly said he wouldn't be
interested in acquiring 'the habit'.

Where did he say this, and in what context? Was he
just attempting to psychologically justify his loss? Or
was this his deeply-considered opinion on the issue,
period?

This point is important when you consider anecdotal
material which seems to skewer the idea that JC
"never" studied, that he was just a natural-born genius,
who snatched the right moves out of thin air, using
magic or alchemy.


Speaking again of players as if they were real, rather than virtual
entities, other players have also talked about what gets them juiced up -
that is, what fuels their own high performances in chess, and this has to do
with their specific 'chemistry' with their opponent.

And let's not pretend that the addition of a sizable
prize fund has no effect. Or the huge ego "fix".


What people who speak of ELO can forget is that ELO it is not /predictive/
in any specific case, and is an average over most cases, given sufficient
'X' exposure to a broad group of players.

In this particular case, the authors took a rather small
sample of games from some players, such as GM Fischer,
who faced only a single opponent in his world championship
match.


So, not only are individual : individual encounters not predictable by ELO,
even as averaged result except perhaps if the differential is so great as to
be 250 points or more; time has evolved varieties of understanding of the
game which are also not fungible - that cannot be abstractly mixed and
matched.

My earlier suggestion was to utilize a sufficient
sample size so that this sort of problem would be
averted. GM Steinitz is a perfect example, for he
played a number of such matches against a
number of different opponents, and both won and
lost some matches.


Capa was #1 for quite other reasons. He was the best player of his time;
given approximately ?equal opportunity? and resources as other strong players,
he was /psychologically/ capable of beating them all.

I had the general impression that JC did not have to
really work for a living, and that therefore his situation
put him at an advantage to most other people.

During the time in which GM Lasker was mostly
inactive, it seems a bit of a reach to give JC full credit
for being "the best of his time", especially when he
went on to lose the title so quickly after gaining it.

OTOH, we do not know for certain if and when the
Cuban grandmaster first superseded his great
predecessor. Still, you would have to assume that
"his time" did not extend into the realm of GM
Alekhine's reign, though he still was far from old.

What bugs me is the way in which JC's record is
presented, always mentioning the period of years
"without a single loss" while at the same time,
deliberately omitting the fact of his relative inactivity
during the very same time-frame. This smacks of
cheapness and deception -- things which are rarely
required when a stunning record can be recounted
matter-of-fact-ly.

I'm not down on GM Capablanca; it's just that any
man who cannot see the brilliance of GM Alekhine's
play is obviously a patzer. In fact, I might go so far as
to say that such brilliance was *required* in order to
defeat a player such as GM Capablanca.

-- help bot