19th century geniuses, how would they do today?

Originally posted by nimzo5
I wouldn't be too quick to say Morphy was "more talented" than Kasparov. Kasparov, like Fischer and Spassky was a child prodigy. Really though, I am dubious that any of us here can truly tell who of the above listed four are more "talented". They all are so far above our own ken.


On a sidenote, Spassky said at a lecture I sat in on that he had wished he ...[text shortened]... tually playing better chess and the creativity of a match then would have been exceptional.

In the most literal sense of the word Kasparov would be considered a prodigy but I dont really consider him one in my mind. Sure his results were impressive but they werent earth-shattering. Chessmetrics has him ranked at #137 when he was about 15. They dont have anything for Morphy going back that far but we could estimate his playing strength. He beat Scott, (who was a very strong player maybe 2000?), when he was just 8. And by 12 he had beaten Rousseau (who chessmetrics had as #15 in the world in 1850) and Lowenthal( who was listed as inactive then but #3 a few years later). Certainly his performance ratings would rank him as the number 1 player in the world at that time. So, comparing Kasparov at #137 at 15 vs. Morphy who was at the very least a top 5 player when he was 12 there's a pretty big difference between the two.

Another thing is that the great prodigies (Morphy, Fischer, Capablanca) are all largely self-taught. Kasparov, though, was hand picked by the soviets and was being taught chess probably before he was even old enough to know what it was. You have to take what the Russians say with a grain of salt. They had a great incentive to create their own version of Fischer and were notorious for stretching the truth.

If this were just about facts the discussion would be over by now, this is about interpretation of facts and about wild speculation.

We seem to agree on what prime means but we seem to disagree about how people improve. You seem to think that everybody has the capacity to keep learning indefinitely. If you took a random guy and gave him a million years he wouldn't come up with the theory of relativity. Everyone gets to a point where they struggle to make further progress.

As I said maybe Morphy could hold his own in certain types of game, I'm not suggesting otherwise. Yes you were talking about open games, but the originator of this thread was not. Not all of my posts have been directed solely at you. I also made it very clear in what context I was talking about.

We have already both said you can't compare them on like terms. By "levelling the field" you are cutting out the vast majority of the modern game, which also makes any comparison pointless.

In answer to the original question, yes I think direct off a time machine Morphy could beat some 2300s in a tournament. Any questions much harder than that and I think it would be futile to try and answer them.

Harry Nelson Pillsbury. Had he not contracted an illness and passed at a young age, I think he would have been World Champion.

I believe his truly extraordinary photographic memory would allow him to compete at the upper echelons of modern chess in short order.

Pillsbury was a monster for the brief period that he was on his game.