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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.

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?