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Kasparov on Fischer in TIME
31 January 2008 10:22 AM | Last modified: 12:31
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“At Fischer’s peak, even his adversaries had to admire his game. At the hallowed Moscow Central Chess Club, top Soviet players gathered to analyze Fischer’s crushing 1971 match defeat of one of their colleagues, Mark Taimanov. Someone suggested that Taimanov could have gained the upper hand with a queen move, to which David Bronstein, a world-championship challenger in 1951, replied, “Ah, but we don’t know what Fischer would have done.”"
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It is true that Kasparov officially surpassed Fischer’s incredulous rating of 2785, but one should remember that the sheer figure of rating has been inflated since it was introduced in the late Sixties.
A couple of years ago I happened upon a chess site concerning rating around 1970. One reader incredously asked the obvious question why Larsen and Tal only had 2620, which by today’s standards would not even have sufficed for rock bottom in the top-hundred. This for instance would have meant that Carlsen, with all due respect, would have chewed up these two guys at the height of their careers when he was only 15. I think not!
According to chessmetrics.com, which incalculates rating inflation, Larsen and Tal were close to 2800 back then. This puts them in the same league as today’s absolute top players where they obviously belong. According to the same site Fischer topped at 2880 after thoroughly beating Taimanov and the three most brilliant players at the time.
Having seen Fischer’s amazing win against Byrne in 1956, Botvinnik exclaimed, “We shall have to keep an eye on this boy!” I am happy to know that he saw what he envisioned.
I think that for all practical reasons, if you want to compare elo rating over time, you have to devide the history in two, before and after computers. then you´d have to decide upon some year that the computers really made a breakthrough in chess (that is, not playing against chess players, but as a tool). I guess you can calculate on rating inflation and it is pretty interesting (if arbitrary), and kasparov was before computers too, but it pretty much stops there.
Sure, it is an incorrect approach to compare strength of players, separated by ages, with the ELO rating, especially taking into account that some of them (real gamers) didn’t care about the rating, but others were selecting tournaments to participate rather carefully. Well, now Rybka is ruling
, she is well above the world champion, unfortunately… may be it’s a good topic for a Ph.D. thesis in some area to develop a human-independent way, based on deviations from perfect lines, to estimate a real quality of any game. Than a new (parallel) “machine” rating can be introduced on a base of selected games of passed away and living legends 
Fischer never played a game with Karpov or Kasparov.
They have not the same condictions, as age and more.
It is very correct that there is a Champion for his generation, a Champion at each time.
Nowadays Fischer should have a better points ELO rating. But, this is not possible, he should face Karpov, Kasparov, Anand, Kramnik…
And if Capablanca could play today??? Uuuff… Should be great!!!
V.