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World Champions Ranked by CAPS

Chess.com has recently developed a tool that evaluates the strength of play for any chess player, or the quality of moves of any chess game. They call it the Computer Aggregated Precision Score (or CAPS).

Essentially, what CAPS does is evaluate a player’s game (or set of games) and assess its moves for its accuracy against what the computers think are the best moves in each given position.

Now, since world champions of different eras have no way to prove their worth against each other, CAPS is a good way to evaluate and compare the quality of their games, and thus will give us a “rough estimate” of how well world champions will fare against each other should they face over the chessboard.

Indeed, Chess.com did just that.

Now, let’s find out how your favorite world champion fared using the CAPS system below:

CAPS World Champions

CAPS World Champions

What do you think? Do you agree with the CAPS system? Put your comments below.

The Greatest World Championship Rivalry

Perhaps in time for the 2016 World Championship, Dr. Timothy Harding narrates the series of events that went down to become the greatest world championship rivarly in the history of chess:

In their epic World Championship rivalry over the course of five matches and six years, Kasparov achieved a superiority of just two wins over Karpov (21 to 19) with 104 games ending in draws.

The series of games included a few “grandmaster draws” and some blunders, but overall the contests were of very high quality. They represented the highest achievements of the human mind in chess at a time when it was unaided by computers.

A long but exciting read. A trip down memory lane. It makes one wonder, how would the current landscape be so different if computers were not involved in molding the grandamsters of today? Do you think we’ll see the same set of people at the top level chess, or only the ones backed by heavy machineries like the Russians?

Viktor Korchnoi dies at the age of 85

Chess.com news:

In a bad year for sports legends, the chess world is not staying behind. Today Viktor Korchnoi died at the age of 85 in a hospital in Wohlen, Switzerland. Korchnoi had been ill for some time and was hospitalized last week after suffering from internal bleeding

Viktor Korchnoi was considered by many as one of the most underrated players in the world of chess. He was mentioned as such by Magnus Carlsen in his interview. 

Who will win if Bobby played Karpov in 1975?

Susan Polgar:

I spoke to Boris Spassky about this same issue and he believes that Bobby would have won in 1975, but that Anatoly would have won the rematch.

However, Garry Kasparov has a different viewpoint. He believes that Anatoly would have won in 1975 and supports this opinion by demonstrating the quality of their games at that time. This is what that makes chess so interesting. From all of the people I spoke to, the opinions split right down the middle with a small edge for Bobby.

I think it would have been very close. However, Bobby would have had a small edge due to his greater experience at that time.

Just one of those ‘what-if’ questions that will obviously solicit differing opinions from different people. Apparently, we can’t hold on to the past anymore. Thus, the more relevant question now is: Who will win this year’s world championship?