If the strongest chess player who ever lived told you how he studied to become a strong player, would you listen? „Of course!” you say. „I’d hang on every word!” Well, I don’t believe you. I claim that, if you’re like most chess players, you would completely ignore the priceless lesson, preferring instead to argue over the merits of his opinions. Don’t believe me? I can prove it.

The Winter issue of Chess Life reprinted Bobby Fischer’s The Ten Greatest Masters in History, which originally appeared in 1964 when Fischer had just turned 20. Fischer’s list: Morphy, Staunton, Steinitz, Tarrasch, Tchigorin, Alekhine, Capablanca, Spassky, Tal, and Reshevsky. This article always generates heated debate. How could Fischer omit obvious choices like Lasker and Botvinnik? Should an article that characterizes Lasker as a „coffee-house player” even be taken seriously? The debate is already well under way on the online chess forums, and many Chess Life readers will no doubt write letters to the editor to „correct” the list.

All this debate is irrelevant for the improving chess player because it ignores the chess lesson Fischer provides in the article. Admittedly, the article has no big sign saying „FISCHER CHESS LESSON HERE!”, but it’s still pretty easy for an inquisitive chess player to spot. Let’s start mystery-style, by compiling some clues.

Clue #1: Fischer based his list on the games these chess players played. This is an ambitious and refreshingly scientific approach. His conclusions, right or wrong, are based on data, not on reputation or what „everybody knows”. (Note that it is probably this approach that caused him to regard Lasker as a coffee-house player. Lasker’s greatest strength was in playing the man, not just the board. If you just look at his moves, you may see a lot of moves that appear to be second or third best, and not appreciate that those same moves may be the most effective ones against that particular opponent.)

Clue #2: Fischer says he has played over several hundred Morphy games.

Clue #3: Fischer says it sometimes takes him 20 minutes to find the right reply to one of Morphy’s moves.

Clue #4: Fischer describes the strengths, weaknesses, and style of each player on the list.

Clue #5: Fischer didn’t play over just the brilliant annotated wins. Some of the players on his list left us with few, if any, annotated collections of their games.

Clue #6: You can’t make a ten-best list by looking at just ten masters. Fischer had to have studied two to three times that many, possibly to a slightly lesser degree than he studied his favorites.

We can reasonably deduce several things from these clues. For one thing, Fischer played over a lot of these players’ games. You can’t figure out a player’s strengths, weaknesses, and style just by playing over a handful of games. Fischer played over several hundred Morphy games, and his expressed insights about the other players on his list appear similarly deep.

Next, Fischer’s comments about Morphy’s games show that he studied at least a portion of these players’ games very seriously. The absence of annotations in most of these games means he really had to think. There were no answers except what he came up with.

Not only did Fischer devote a fair amount of time to study the games, he did it by, in effect, playing *against* these players. Trying to find the best replies to the moves of these great players is the closest you can come to playing them over the board.

Studying games of past masters had to have been a major part of Fischer’s study early in his career. Do the math. By the time Fischer wrote his ten-best article at age 20, he had seriously studied far more than 1000 games of past masters. He didn’t do that to compile a ten-best list. He did it because he thought that kind of study was one of the best ways to improve.

Most chess coaches and strong players agree that the best way to improve, other than studying your own games, is to study the classics. Still, I frequently hear chess players say that studying the classics is a waste of time because the openings are outdated. Fischer obviously wasn’t concerned about that. Two of his repertoire mainstays, the King’s Indian and Sicilian Najdorf, are virtually non-existent in the games of 19th century masters. For those still not convinced that studying the classics is worthwhile, I won’t argue with you further; The prey have their role in chess tournaments just as the predators do 🙂

For those of you interested in becoming chess predators, though, I have some suggestions on how to proceed with your study of chess classics.

Unlike Fischer, most of us need some help to figure out what’s going on in games played by Morphy, Capablanca, Alekhine, and the other greats. By far the best help is in annotations by the players themselves. They know the games better than anyone else, they care more about the games than anyone else, and they can tell you what they were thinking when they played the moves. Games annotated by someone else are rarely as useful. At worst, such annotators may be little more than uncritical cheerleaders, heaping „!” on the winner and „?” on the loser, almost without regard to the objective merit of the moves.

One drawback of annotated collections is that they tend to be highly filtered. „Best of” collections are typically slanted towards games where the winner appeared to play flawlessly and/or brilliantly. This isn’t a realistic or particularly useful sample. Check out the non-famous games too to see how past masters really played.

I recommend studying one player at a time, rather than trying a broad simultaneous sampling of all the greats. Studying many games by one player helps you recognize the patterns of his play, and that’s key to improving your own play.

In my study of the chess classics I’ve produced several favorites lists. They’re all are great players but to be on these lists they also have to be great teachers, either by word or by example.

Players who annotate their own games instructively: Alekhine, Botvinnik, Nimzovich, Fischer. (Tal is excellent also, but for most of us mortals I think his playing style may be too alien to be emulated!)

Players who annotate the games of others instructively (a very rare breed!): Alekhine, Botvinnik, Bronstein, Lasker.

Players whose games are instructive even without annotations: Morphy, Rubinstein, Capablanca. (Capablanca annotated some of his games but not deeply.)

Don’t know where to start? There may be an optimal starting point from a coaching perspective but from a practical perspective I think it’s best to start with the player you’re most interested in. Try studying the games Fischer-style, by trying to find replies to the moves they play.

Fischer was not born a chess immortal. Most of his early games, pre-1957, look pretty mortal in fact. Fischer became a strong player largely by intensive study. His article on the ten greatest players in history tells us how much of that study was done. Are you going to use the lesson to improve, or are you going to argue about who should be on the list?

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This article appeared in the March 2004 issue of Northwest Chess.