If you rounded up all the 2400s between 20 and 30 and they were to do nothing but study chess all day with the help of the best computers, what percentage of them could two years later, get into a time machine and be favored to beat Bobby Fischer at his best?

6

guessing close to zero. 2400s are already studying at near capacity i think, and they would need to improve 300 rating points minimum.

Zero. If you're in your 20s now and you're IM level, then you've already spent years doing nothing but study chess all day with the help of the best computers. We now have evidence, by assumption, that these players have only managed to produce a modern IM-level rating from this sort of work.

But we have evidence that Fischer was as strong as top GMs today. Fischer's top rating was 2785 in July 1972, putting him 21st all time. That might sound low, but rating inflation is a killer here. Of the people above him, most did so in the 2010s, with some in the 2000s and 2020s. Garry Kasparov who hit 2851 in July 1999.

Literally no peak rating higher than Bobby Fischer's was achieved in the 27 year span between Fischer and Kasparov. Do we think every 2800 rating from the 2010s inflationary period was better than Bobby Fischer, the guy who single handedly challenged the entire Soviet chess oligarchy? Surely not.

We're basically asking whether a player Levy Rozman could be *favored* to beat peak Bobby Fischer if he went on a crash course of professional chess study. Surely not.

I think you have to go back much further for that to happen. Alekhine. Lasker.

You can not really expect to get a good answer to this question from a bunch of chess noobs on a poker forum right? I mean, imo it has to be close to 0 or 0, but why would you consider an answer from a 1700 FIDE player as relevant? The target group who would be remotely qualified to answer this sort of accurately has to be GM's+, possibly ideally older GM's who have been around chess in 70s/80s and have a good grasp on absolute strength and evolvement of ELO ratings throughout the decades, since ELO is not a static value but rather a relative measurement of strength vs the pool (which you of course know). Comparing in-game accuracies of Fischer vs the 2400's (or any other rating for that matter) is also not going to give you a good answer as well.


There is also a huge difference in potential chess improvement possibilities between the 20y.o. 2400's and 30y.o. 2400's.

It is an interesting question though, i will ask some GM's just out of curiosity.

A good many 2300-2400 players are people who had chess talent but just stopped playing relatively young. You have to imagine that some of them if they committed to playing chess full-time could reach a decent level. Modern computers make knowledge more accessible and training methods more optimized.

However being a favourite against Fischer at his best probably means at least 2700 strength. That's a tall order. If Novak Djokovic at 16 gave up tennis and switched to baseball for 10 years, then went back to tennis, would he have reached the top 100 in the world? It's one of these questions that no one can answer.

I cited ratings for Fischer specifically to underline how much of a freakishly above the curve talent he was. Basically he was a really bad example for this hypothetical.

50 years of opening theory is worth something, but not that much. Look at guys like Jobava, who don't play theory, but are still close to 2700 strength. Fischer's chess skill is definitely superior to Jobava's, so I don't see any reason to think Fischer wouldn't be at least 2700 against today's competition.

My question should have only concerned 2400s of today who haven't been using computers to this point. I realize such people probably don't exist but what I was actually interested in was whether the computers can add 300 points to an already excellent player.

i admittedly know nothing of chess, but i'd assume that has been progressing in the same manner most athletic and mental competitions have been over the years

am really quite surprised by the answers because my assumption would have been "all of them"

would never assume that a 2700 of another era would need at least a 2700 of a modern era to be a fair match

much like how if you took some of the top athletes of the 1960s and put them into a time machine taking them to today, they'd really struggle to even make a minor league roster

likewise, taking the poker crushers from the 60s and none of them would be able to beat nl2 without extensive training

2400 FIDE is such a high level of investment I don't think anyone would get in that neighborhood without many hours of Stockfish and Chessbase. 2400 FIDE is a few norms from International Master.

Now, if you took an IM from Fischer's era, and gave him a year with 2024 Chessbase and Stockfish, he might come in and start doing so well in the opening that it would negate Fischer's advantage. The way guys like Carlsen overcome the prep of worse players is to play opening novelties that take their opponents out of prep. Fischer would have to figure out how to do that, to keep a hefty advantage over a worse player with modern prep.

And the thing is, Fischer *might* figure out how to do that if he were playing a long series against a player who was crushing in the opening, but was mediocre in the middle and end game. After all, he invented Fischer Random because he thought prep was already ruining chess in the 70s.

I think your next to last line is an exaggeration. Especially in baseball, even if you go much further back. Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb and Walter Johnson could all probably start for a major league team. Many from the 60's could. And most, I believe, could easily make a minor league team. You are probably closer when discussing football and basketball but I think Wilt and Jim Brown would be exceptions.

In any case the syndrome doesn't hold up well for chess because of the fact that it doesn't hold up AT ALL in another similar endeavor. Math ability. Especially as measured by the SAT and GRE. They had to dumb that test down and allow fewer questions right, to coincide with various scores in the past. Today's top ten percent scorers would do worse on the exact same test than the top ten percent who took the test in 1965. (assuming a time machine, not suggesting we use 75 year olds to verify my claim.)

Sort of like how I have been inventing and advocating for new games or wrinkles in rules, that will force diligent, studious, but maybe not that smart, poker players to think on their feet.

david, the average speed of the a major league fastball has increased by 5 mph since 2002



we can't reliably measure it before then because it wasn't recorded

early estimates are terrible, they'd do things like have a guy ride a motorcycle while the pitcher threw the ball and they'd try to time it etc but it obviously has a lot of room for error and is a pretty imprecise measure anyway

and... that was a one off pitch, not the average going over the course of not just an entire game but a whole season

later stuff, even with radar guns of the 80s and later were not done in a standardized format (how you use the gun will dramatically impact the reading - 3 people pointing a radar gun at the same pitch can get 3 different readings all 30 mph apart from each other) nor done consistently nor even recorded - we just don't have good data on pitch speed and movement until the modern era



guys like those you mentioned were facing semi pro opponents who sold cars in the offseason to get by

babe ruth and ty cobb were regularly getting at bats from gassed starters who'd pitch the entire game because that was considered the norm - now we know better and have the analytics to prove just how quickly starters lose effectiveness

if you look by innings pitched leaders, nobody from the modern era is in the top ten and it's unlikely they ever will - all this despite that they went from 154 games to 162 in 1961 so anyone playing before then should in theory have no chance at those kind of records but there they are because we didn't understand fatigue back then (not to mention had a shallower player pool to the point we didn't trust a fresh reliever vs keeping in our gassed starter)

your example of walter johnson, he threw to contact, he only struck out about 5 guys per 9 innings, something which would easily be the worst in the MLB today - if he stepped out there throwing what were likely mid 80s pitches against guys used to seeing the same stuff but 25% faster, he would get absolutely smoked

likewise your other examples of babe ruth and ty cobb were facing guys who threw to contact, probably threw an upper 80s fastball (pure speculation but there's no way it was faster than now) and were gassed


mind you, most of these guys weren't training in the offseason but selling cars, they also didn't come up through the minor leagues and development academies or college

walter johnson - played in highschool, moved to Idaho afterwoods to work for a telephone company and was noticed by a scout while playing for his company's team - this is the modern equivalent of the Yankees sending scouts to central park softball games to find their next right fielder

babe ruth was a good high school pitcher in baltimore, and on weekends would join up in local league where he did well, the Baltimore orioles, then a minor league team, signed him and would have held onto him if not for the fact they only sold about 150 tickets a game and knew they could make a small fortune selling him to major league team, which they did

ty cobb was a struggling semi pro baseball player making $50 a month and batting .237 - however, he continually wrote letters to a well known sports journalist about how there was this new hot talent named cobb, the journalist eventually published a blurb saying "young fellow named CObb seems to be showing an unusual lot of talent" and that alone get the Tigers attention and they paid a few hundred bucks to purchase his rights from his team - he obviously eventually got there despite that he largely got there by conning a team, but he struggled immensely his first season before finally breaking out as a regular his 2nd year and a star his third

my point is that these guys were not the products of a lifetime of dedication the way the players today are, I'm sure if kyleb were still posting here he'd agree heartily


that is not to say that cobb, johnson, or ruth were to be born today and then had access to modern training and equipment they wouldn't excel in this era as well

but pop those three in their primes in a time machine and pop them out without any changes and they will all fail to make a major league roster

You made good points. But I'm not sure they are strong enough to claim that modern baseball would cause an 80 point batting average drop off.

Arguments in baseball don't apply in chess. Chess is more like a math problem. Capablanca wasn't that much worse at finding mate in 2 than Carlsen is.

If you look at the chess elo system, a 1600 player is someone who scores 75% against a casual coffee-house player, a 1900 player is someone who scores 75% against him, and a 2200 player someone who scores 75% against him. The development of opening theory over the last 50 years has a negligible impact on results below the 2200 level. So a 1600 player today is about the same as a 1600 player in Fischer's day, and so on - so by analogy, the strength of a 2700 player today and 2700 player 50 years ago should be about the same. There are way more 2700 players these days, because computers have made it more accessible. And the best player in the world is around 2850, which represents the overall advancement of chess. But I don't believe there is a huge difference in strength between Fischer at 2700 in the 1970s and a 2700 player today.

Would Fischer with a computer beat everyone today?

Or nearly everyone including Garry, but not Magnus?

Agreed. Poker and Chess have lot in common in how they are threatened by solvers creating pre-prepared plans for players to follow, drying up the game.

I don't know who would win between peak Fischer, peak Kasparov, and peak Carlsen with modern prep.

But I think I'd rather see them, and they'd rather play in, a Freestyle tournament.

What about Bradman? Not to mention Secretariat who would beat most modern day triple crown race winners by 10 to 20 lengths.