If All the Best Chess Champs of the Past Played in a Tourney-The Winner Would Be...

People like to ask that question, as if World Champions had innate chess knowledge hard-wired like microcode in their brain central processing unit before birth and were taking an I.Q. test that required no training. Magnus Carlsen, the reigning champion of the present, would win. Paul Morphy- the best player in the world circa 1857, never saw modern openings. Players master the game of their time and invent new methods of winning, They are of their day. Gioachino Greco, Lasker, Capablanca, Karpov or Kasparov were the best in the world at their peak. Chess techniques improve over time. The peaks compile higher and deeper. Carlsen knows the old stuff and the new, the old players know just the old. Carlsen has greater vision from the summit today than players of decades or centuries ago.

Consider the example of Isaac Newton in physics. On a contemporary post-doc physics exam how would he compare to Edward Witten? Though Newton invented Calculus and the classical mechanics of gravity, he would not do well lacking relativity theory and quantum mechanics. Witten might beat Einstein on a modern cosmology exam simply because of the temporal order. Pythagoras, Euclid, Karl Friedreich Gauss and David Hilbert would not finish ahead of contemporary Fields Medalists on a math exam.

So if one were to clone the great players from D.N.A. buried underground and trained them all with chess sets and equal instructions plus videos and books who would win? There is really no way to know. Maybe Bobby Fischer would find some way to jailbreak.