SillyPants wrote:
Who do you think is the most over-rated chess player of all time?

SillyPants the troll.

Who do you think is the most over-rated chess player of all time? As far as criteria is concerned, I'm talking about how they compared to other players of their times, not absolute playing strength.

If we were to rate the players that are considered to be among the greatest chess players of all time, as measured by the standards of how well they fared against the top players of their day, I am of the opinion that Paul Morphy is undoubtedly the most over-rated of all time.

Let's take a look at his career. He won the U.S. Championship at a time when the level of chess in America was far below that of Europe. Then, he went to Europe and sought out hand-picked lower-tier masters. In early 1858, the eight best chess players in the world we

1. Serafino Dubois
2. Jules de Rivere
3. J. Budzinky
4. Robert Brien
5. Henry Bird
6. Ernst Falkbeer
7. Czaikowsky
8. John Schulten

Who does Paul Morphy want to play against? He harrassed Howard Staunton, Daniel Harrwitz, and Adolf Anderssen into playing matches against him at inopportune times for all of them. None of those three were among the 50 best chessplayers in the world at the time. Anyone who doubts this can verify it on www.chessmetrics.com. Why did Paul Morphy play a match against Harrwitz instead of Czaikowsky or Adolf Anderssen instead of J. Budzinsky? Not only did Paul Morphy inflate his rating by playing patzers, he didn't even build that high of a rating in the perspective of the all-time greats. He merely built his reputation on the flashiness of his play, not results. His flashy play may have looked good against nobodies like Harrwitz and Anderssen, except it would certainly have failed against anyone on the list above.

A player's rating is compiled against his opponents. It is a measure of how he compares to his contemporaries. Paul Morphy's peak rating was 2743. There were players with more success, based on the actual dominance they displayed during their primes regarding actual results, that do not receive anywhere near the notariety that Paul Morphy does. For example, Gideon Stahlberg had a peak rating of 2762. Why is Paul Moprhy rated higher on most people's lists of all-time greats than Gideon Stahlberg?

Even putting aside the argument of players actual skill improving over time, Paul Morphy still doesn't deserve to be considered among the top 100 chessplayers of all time, even if we do look at it in terms of how player's compared to other players of their day.

This is very interesting and much better than the usual content on this
site. Hardly, a troll!! I didn't realize that Morphy's opponents were
of such poor calibre. Of course, chess ratings then were hardly what
they are in more modern times system wise. I also wonder if American
players were that much inferior to those of Europe at the time

"SillyPants" wrote in message
...

Who do you think is the most over-rated chess player of all time?

That is a fascinating idea.
Most of the games we play through nowadays seem brilliant. But perhaps
Morphy's famous games are the equivalent of a Kasparov v Joe Schmo simul in
our own age.
I actually think he had a very strong game. Steinitz thought so too. I
haven't seen much criticism of his play from Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine or
Botvinnik.

Karpov - or Gik - devoted a chapter to his game v Bird. And surely Bronstein
has said something about him?

Taylor Kingston wrote:
SillyPants wrote:
In early 1858, the eight best chess players in the world were

1. Serafino Dubois
2. Jules de Rivere
3. J. Budzinky
4. Robert Brien
5. Henry Bird
6. Ernst Falkbeer
7. Czaikowsky
8. John Schulten

The idea that John Schulten, of all people, was superior in 1858 to
Anderssen, Paulsen, Harrwitz, Barnes, and Loewenthal, to name only
some, seems patently absurd.

In a series of offhand games in late 1857,
Morphy beat Schulten 23-1, probably the worst drubbing anyone ever
suffered at Morphy's hands over more than a few games.

Good point. Here is one of those games . Morphy redeces Schulten to
"duffer's status" with this game.
Rob
Budzinsky at #3 seems even more suspect. Circa 1858-59, Morphy beat
him 7-0 at even strength and +5 -1 =1 at pawn and move. And if he
really was #3, this would seem to ratify Morphy as #1 very strongly. He
also beat de Riviere +6 -1 =1 around that time.

Who does Paul Morphy want to play against? He harrassed Howard
Staunton, Daniel Harrwitz, and Adolf Anderssen into playing matches
against him at inopportune times for all of them.

Two points: (1) Staunton did not play a match with Morphy, and (2) in
no sense were Harrwitz or Anderssen "harassed."

None of those three
were among the 50 best chessplayers in the world at the time. Anyone
who doubts this can verify it on www.chessmetrics.com.

I would suggest you have an imperfect understanding of the
Chessmetrics data.

I found Silly Pants's post rather interesting, although his "eight best"
appear not to be the most obvious choices!

I have a feeling that Morphy had things a bit cushy in 1858 in the sense
that there were no really great players at that moment, himself excepted.
Players are usually at their peak around the age of 30. Seen this way, his
victories over the 48-year-old Lowenthal and the 40-year-old Anderssen are
not especially convincing, and of the two Lowenthal seems to have retained
his form better. Perhaps Morphy's best performance was against the
35-year-old Harrwitz, and he might have won more convincingly but for a slow
start, for which there seem to have been genuine physical reasons.

However, I believe these three were among the strongest players of the day -
who was any better? - and, therefore, by his collective achievement of
defeating all three in turn Morphy showed that he was the strongest player
alive at that moment.

Best wishes,

John Townsend
Howard Staunton research project:
http://www.johntownsend.demon.co.uk/page7.html

wrote:
The fact that the list of top players you give is (with the possible
exception of Dubois) clearly a ridiculous list of top players in 1858
indicates that you are not understanding the chessmetrics site.

Second that.

i believe the list you are looking at is only the list of players for
which the site rates games in the previous year. The fact that
Anderssen had no rated games does not make him suddenly weaker.

If I look at a ratings program I once used, my top list after 1857 (if
I do not take future results into account) looks like Harrwitz,
Dubois,Anderssen as the top players active in the past few years, with
Lasa,Petroff,Staunton on the list if you include people active since
1850. This list is highly debatable, but it is clearly closer to a list
of top players than the list you cite. If you look at results of the
time which led to the chessmetrics ratings, you will see how silly it
is to call these the top players at the time.

Morphy beat all the top players he could lay his hands on. Lasa was
unavailable. He was invited to Russia, but that is a long trip to ask
him to make; Petroff would have made an interesting opponent. I do not
understand why people did not consider Dubois as a potential opponent.

An interesting question. He had some reputation by that time. The
OCTC says he won about 2/3 of an informal series with Wyvill in Rome in
1845, and did about as well against Riviere in Paris circa 1855. Yet
Lawson's "Pride and Sorrow" has only one mention of Dubois, and that is
not in connection with Morphy, but in an 1891 article by Steinitz about
the Deacon hoax.
Dubois would probably have made a halfway-decent opponent for Morphy
circa 1858-59; he finished 5th at London 1862, behind Anderssen,
Paulsen, Owen and MacDonnell, just ahead of Steinitz, beating Paulsen
in their individual game. Right after that he lost a match to Steinitz
+3 -5 =1. However, the OC indicates he was probably not as strong he
might seem, "for when he met Wyvill, Riviere, and Steinitz none was yet
at his full strength."
If Dubois was considered by Morphy and/or Edge as a possible
opponent, travel complications might have interfered. It seems Dubois
did not like to leave Italy much, and Morphy may not have had time to
go there. But that is just a guess.

Other people were mentioned, but Morphy beat the leading contenders he
played so badly that he has the first claim to be the top player in the
world that is hard to argue with. If you are looking for over-rated
players more objectively from this time period, you might try Saint
Amant.

Jerry Spinrad

"The fact that the list of top players you give is (with the possible
exception of Dubois) clearly a ridiculous list of top players in 1858
indicates that you are not understanding the chessmetrics site."

Take a look at the the rating list for January 1858 on www.chessmetrics.com.

1. Serafino Dubois - 2629
2. Jules de Riviere - 2546
3. J. Budzinski - 2530
4. Robert Brien - 2463
5. Henry Bird - 2462
6. Ernst Falkbeer - 2444
7. Czaikowsky - 2443
8. John Schulten 2421

SillyPants wrote:
"The fact that the list of top players you give is (with the possible
exception of Dubois) clearly a ridiculous list of top players in 1858
indicates that you are not understanding the chessmetrics site."

Take a look at the the rating list for January 1858 on
www.chessmetrics.com.

1. Serafino Dubois - 2629
2. Jules de Riviere - 2546
3. J. Budzinski - 2530
4. Robert Brien - 2463
5. Henry Bird - 2462
6. Ernst Falkbeer - 2444
7. Czaikowsky - 2443
8. John Schulten 2421

Since you have such high regard for the chessmetrics.com ratings
lists, why not have a look at December 1858? In brackets, I've put
the number of games Morphy played against the opponent in 1858 and the
result, according to chessgames.com.

1. Morphy 2688
2. Loewenthal 2597 (16, +9-5=2)
3. Anderssen 2570 (17, +12-3=2)
4. Janssens 2542
5. Falkbeer 2520
6. Campbell 2515
7. Harrwitz 2504 ( 9, +5-3=1)
9. de Riviere 2502 ( 4, +4-0=0, plus a win against a de Riviere
10. Barnes 2489 ( 9, +7-2=0) \ and Journoud, consulting)

So, Morphy slaughtered five of the other top-ten players +37-13=5 in
1858. This hardly supports your claims that Morphy avoided strong
players when in Europe or that he performed badly against those he did
play. (There may well be other games that Morphy played in 1858 that
aren't in this database.)

One thing you have to be very careful about with chessmetrics.com is
that the ratings there include a factor for activity. This, to me,
seems to be very dubious because the effect of inactivity on a
player's strength depends entirely on what they do during that time.
According to chessmetrics.com, spending a year away from tournaments
training hard and beating Kasparov +100-0=0 in a match that isn't in
the database has exactly the same effect on a player's strength as
spending a year away from tournaments drinking moonshine through a
funnel.

This seems to me to be a fundamental problem with the whole
chessmetrics.com approach. Sonas is trying to use performance to
measure strength but strength can depend on things other than
performance. For example, if I were to bribe a bunch of GMs to lose
against me, my performance would be much higher than my strength;
conversely, if I were to take time off and bribe a bunch of GMs to
teach me lots about chess, my strength would be much higher than my
performance.


Dave.

--
David Richerby Voodoo Atlas (TM): it's like a map of
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ the world that has mystical powers!

To see that this is silly, you must look at the results. For Schulten,
who you claim is the number 8 player in the world, recent results would
seem to be

1856: Riviere-Schulten 7-1
1857: Morphy-Schulten 23-1

Schulten also played in a monster tournament in Paris in 1856, and was
said to have played successfully with Perrin and Stanley in 1857

He is not remotely comparable to Loewenthal, Harrwitz, or Anderssen,
Boden, Paulsen, or many other players beaten by Morphy.

There are numerous quotes from the time talking about top players, and
outside of Dubois (and a quote talking about how Riviere may now be the
top French player, which is not at all certain at this time), the
players discussed look nothing like the ones you name. If you look at
Sonas' charts for longer periods, Anderssen is above these players for
the entire time period. This is like looking at a monthly rating list
and concluding that anyone not on it is not among the top players in
the group.

Jerry Spinrad