Comedy Time: Karpov on Carlsen
Tuesday, October 21, 2014 at 3:23PM Anatoly Karpov's comment that he and Bobby Fischer were stronger than Magnus Carlsen is rather hard to believe and is almost comical, but I'll offer four remarks in his defense.
First, he prefaced it with "I think", offering a bit of a hedge. He wasn't making a categorical pronouncement.
Second, Karpov is assuming that rating inflation is obvious. Given that assumption, his supposition becomes more plausible.
Third, he notes that Carlsen is still developing. Though Karpov, like Carlsen, became the world champion in his early 20s, he didn't reach his peak in his early 20s but sometime later (in fact, his all-time highest rating was accomplished when he was 43 and his highest official rating when he was 45!). So Carlsen has plenty of time to improve even further.
Fourth, Karpov's claims may be based in part on dominance, and both he and Fischer had longer and/or clearer margins of dominance than Carlsen.
In reply, the first rebuttal makes it easier to swallow but doesn't do anything to support the claim on its merits.
Point two has been disputed by Ken Regan, who claims that there hasn't been rating inflation. (There was a brief period where there were maybe 30 points' worth of inflation, but that bump was subsequently eliminated.) In correspondence and conversation I've asked whether his model fails to take the increased depth of theoretical preparation into account, and in reply he has noted that even if we compare the players of today with those of yesteryear taking only moves 17-32 into account, there's still no good evidence of rating inflation.
Point three, like point one, mitigates the shock value of the claim but doesn't support the claim itself.
Point four is both iffy and a change of subject. Fischer's lead over the rest of the world was greater than Carlsen's, but Carlsen's lead was greater than Karpov's when the latter became champion. Karpov was then dominant for years, but as Carlsen only won the title last year the time hasn't elapsed to make the comparison of their reigns. And even if Karpov's reign proves more impressive than Carlsen's, relatively speaking, it doesn't show that he was the stronger player. Emanuel Lasker was great and was world champion for 27 years, but I don't believe that Karpov concludes that Lasker was therefore the strongest player of all time.
Anyway, it's an interesting interview, and there are other entertaining bits to be savored and disputed as well.
Reader Comments (4)
I'm in no position to argue with a Professor such as IM Ken Regan, so I will concede the point that inflation does not exist, even if I am not entirely convinced. But isn't it stating the obvious to say that modern players are stronger given they have all the training advantages of playing in the modern era? Aside from being able to learn from Fischer, Karpov and many others (Kasparov!?) they have fantastic technological tools to improve. So maybe they are better than players of the past and in 20 years the top players will be better than today's players, and so it goes.
How strong would modern players have been if they had to learn chess in Karpov, Fischer, or Lasker's era? It's an unanswerable question, completely subjective, but it is more interesting than stating the obvious.
[DM: I don't know if it's a more interesting question, but it's not the one that Karpov asked. (Or rather, answered.)]
Thanks for the link. His comments about Carlsen's relative strength were interesting if dubious, but what he said about Anand literally nearly made me do a spit-take. From the interview:
"What impresses me about Carlsen is his understanding of the role and significance of the World Champion – the title of World Champion. Anand, for instance, was egotistic and I could probably say the same about Kramnik. They worked on preparing for tournaments, earning money and, naturally, they tried to retain the title, but they never really fulfilled the role of leader of the chess world. I think chess lost a lot because of that, and the popularity of chess fell."
And a bit later:
"Somehow after the heavy defeat Anand suffered at the hands of Carlsen I thought he wouldn’t be able to gather himself, simply because his play was ignominious, inept – he lost two [sic] games and the rest were draws. He couldn’t even win a game."
I don't know if the translation made this out to be harsher than it sounded in Russia, but those comments were shocking. I've never seen any top level player say anything bad about Anand other than a variation of "He's too nice to ever be champion", so to be called egotistic...! Karpov is probably right when he says that there is something special about Carlsen's conduct and demeanor as champion, but I get the feeling that the difference is mostly due to the widespread acknowledgment that Carlsen is (was?) much better than his contemporaries. Anand would have just looked like a jerk had started to walk with a swagger after his squeakers with Topalov and Gelfand.
I also wonder if Karpov made similar comments about Kasparov's loss to Kramnik. In any event, it's one thing to think these things, but it's another to say them out loud, especially when you're a player of Karpov's caliber.
[DM: Karpov has been known to make rather strident remarks from time to time, though generally not with the frequency or bombast of his great successor. However, let me offer a gloss on his remarks about Anand that is consistent with the practically universal esteem people have for Anand as a friendly person (and for that matter, with Kramnik too). I don't think he meant by what was translated as "egotist" someone who goes around gloating and boasting of his greatness, looking down in condescension upon everyone else.
In the context of the surrounding remarks, I think he means something more like this: rather than being an ambassador of the game, traveling everywhere and promoting it as much as possible, Anand (and Kramnik) have been overwhelmingly concerned themselves with their careers. They have done very little to promote the game. Karpov, by contrast, has done a lot in his less charismatic way, while Kasparov probably spent more time cultivating sponsors and the media than many top grandmasters spend working on the game.
I think this interpretation is at least a possible one, and what it says has some plausibility as well. As far as egotism goes in the sense in which you're taking it, Karpov's statement is utterly absurd, but as it doesn't fit too well with the broader context it's probably a dubious translation.]
Leaving aside the question of who was the strongest of the trio Fischer, Karpov, Carlsen, I would urge that if we want an even more difficult (and/or pointless) debate, the trio should be a quartet with the inclusion of Kasparov. I am perhaps naive if I wonder why Karpov did not consider him.
[DM: The answer is clear in the context of the article. Carlsen himself drew a comparison between his play and that of Fischer and Karpov.]
The players of this generation are clearly stronger in an absolute sense (assuming the ratings are real and not inflated). But they (Carlsen included) are not "better" than Fischer nor Karpov. Give Fischer and Karpov modern seconds and modern preparation and modern knowledge, they'd [(DM snip & replacement) beat any player] from any era.
[DM: How do we know this, especially about Karpov who isn't a figure from the distant past?]