Botvinnik vs. Fischer

@tpr said ^

This table gives peak Fischer 60-40 against peak Botvinnik and 56-44 against peak Karpov.
image.png (https://image.lichess1.org/display?op=noop&path=oi_fjB9T9rP4.png&sig=6e3f75af481c207f1e949cc1adf85d052cda3ca0)

That still doesn’t prove who’s better overall. :|

@tpr said ^

This table gives peak Fischer 60-40 against peak Botvinnik and 56-44 against peak Karpov.

The state transitions may penalize tactical players that have worse eval shifts. But these tactical players may cause their opponents to also have worse eval shifts through their play style. The table has 1941 Euwe and 1928 Capablanca beating 1981 Tal which seems a bit questionable considering the advance in theory. Also 'best year' is defined as "the year where the player had the largest number of victories against all other players and all other years" - which isn't a good metric as it doesn't take into account the strength of the opponents. The definition seems to imply they are taking the raw amount of games won - which is a problem as simply playing more games would lead to more games being won. Smyslov's best year is listed as 1983, and Karpov as 1988 which is questionable as their 'best years'.

I added this info now to my blog which you got the image from.

You can also see when Fischer became stronger than Botvinnik on the chessmetrics site.

http://www.chessmetrics.com/cm/CM2/MonthlyLists.asp?Params=196203SSSSS3S000000000000111000000000000010100
October 1963__2769-Botvinnik__2765-Fischer
November 1963__2768-Botvinnik__2763-Fischer
December 1963__2766-Botvinnik__2759-Fischer
January 1964__2788-Fischer__2767-Botvinnik
February 1964__2790-Fischer__2767-Botvinnik
March 1964__2790-Fischer__2766-Botvinnik
BOTVINNIK ... born Aug-17-1911
https://www.chessgames.com/player/mikhail_botvinnik.html
FISCHER ... born Mar-09-1943
https://www.chessgames.com/player/bobby_fischer.html

So from 1964 Fischer was stronger than Botvinnik.
Fischer could not challenge Botvinnik for a World Championship match,
as Fischer refused to play a Candidates' Tournament, fearing collusion as in the 1962 Curaçao Candidates.
https://chessheroes.blogspot.com/2010/03/russians-have-fixed-world-chess-bobby.html

Only after FIDE changed the Candidates' Tournament to Candidates' Matches in 1971, Fischer played and won: 6-0 against Taimanov, 6-0 against Larsen, 6.5-2.5 against Petrosian and then the World Championship match against Spassky 12.5-8.5.
If FIDE had changed the Candidates' Tournament to Candidates' Matches before, then Fischer could have dethroned Botvinnik earlier.

@tpr said ^

So from 1964 Fischer was stronger than Botvinnik.
Fischer could not challenge Botvinnik for a World Championship match,
as Fischer refused to play a Candidates' Tournament, fearing collusion as in the 1962 Curaçao Candidates.
https://chessheroes.blogspot.com/2010/03/russians-have-fixed-world-chess-bobby.html

Only after FIDE changed the Candidates' Tournament to Candidates' Matches in 1971, Fisch...

That still doesn’t prove that Fischer could automatically beat Botvinnik , even though he achieved great results against other great players at that time.

"That still doesn’t prove that Fischer could automatically beat Botvinnik"

• It does not prove that Fischer could beat me: we did not play either.
  Fischer said he could beat Botvinnik in a 24 game match giving him 0-2 odds.
  That is exactly what Fischer did against Spassky: giving 0-2 odds and win in 21 games only.

@tpr said in #25:

So from 1964 Fischer was stronger than Botvinnik.
Fischer could not challenge Botvinnik for a World Championship match,
as ...

Botvinnik was not world champion in 1964. It was Petrosian.
https://www.chessgames.com/player/tigran_petrosian.html