user7894: I wonder if there is a possibility to calculate/estimate the Elo rating Napoleon would have today by analysing his known games? Is it possible at all to calculate an Elo rating only with some documented games, if so, how many games would you need to give a good estimation? Is there a list of Elo estiminations for historic persons which are known as good Chess Players before Elo rating was used?
I wonder if it is somehow possible to estimate the strength Napoleon would have even it is not an Elo value. If you could theoretically play a game against him today, with all the chess-knowledge and strategies discovered after his death, how good would you need to be to have a chance?

user657: The Ratings of Chessplayers Past And Present by Arpad Elo tackles that question. It can be done, Elo does a little of it (before harping about his methodolgy, though, remember when he wrote that he had only an HP calculator to do all the calculations). Others have done it using different methods.
But the exercise itself is rather pointless. An ELO of 2495 today does not mean the same strength as an ELO of 2495 from decades ago (unless you are seriously going to try and make the point that any of the top 100 or so grandmasters of today could easily beat the Booby Fischer from 1963 that went 11-0 in the US championship, or that Wesley So or Fabiano Caruana today could beat a Fischer at the peak of his abilities).
Ratings are useful for comparisons of contemporaries, but the farther apart in time the players get the more meaningless the comparisons are. A rating is a measurement of strength relative to the whole, and even among players of the same year, a reduction in the player pool will change the numbers (though probably not the relative order).

user4362: There are efforts to calculate the playing strength of pre-Elo players on the basis of their games. See for example this paper by Kenneth Regan.
But if you look at the "intrinsic performance rating" of historic players on page 5, you will find that they vary quite a bit even for the same player at different points in time.  
Personally I find it quite unlikely that the performance of Zukertort or Steinitz varied by over 300 points against different players. 
To estimate the playing strength of a player who left only very few (and selected at that!) games, these methods seem to be nowhere precise enough.  
Edit: I found another paper but this method seems to end up with a rating between 2700 and 2800 no matter what, which doesn't inspire much confidence. 

7894: <p>I wonder if there is a possibility to calculate/estimate the Elo rating Napoleon would have today by analysing his known games? Is it possible at all to calculate an Elo rating only with some documented games, if so, how many games would you need to give a good estimation? Is there a list of Elo estiminations for historic persons which are known as good Chess Players before Elo rating was used?</p>

<p>I wonder if it is somehow possible to estimate the strength Napoleon would have even it is not an Elo value. If you could theoretically play a game against him today, with all the chess-knowledge and strategies discovered after his death, how good would you need to be to have a chance?</p>
 657: <p>The Ratings of Chessplayers Past And Present by Arpad Elo tackles that question. It can be done, Elo does a little of it (before harping about his methodolgy, though, remember when he wrote that he had only an HP calculator to do all the calculations). Others have done it using different methods.</p>

<p>But the exercise itself is rather pointless. An ELO of 2495 today does not mean the same strength as an ELO of 2495 from decades ago (unless you are seriously going to try and make the point that any of the top 100 or so grandmasters of today could easily beat the Booby Fischer from 1963 that went 11-0 in the US championship, or that Wesley So or Fabiano Caruana today could beat a Fischer at the peak of his abilities).</p>

<p>Ratings are useful for comparisons of contemporaries, but the farther apart in time the players get the more meaningless the comparisons are. A rating is a measurement of strength relative to the whole, and even among players of the same year, a reduction in the player pool will change the numbers (though probably not the relative order).</p>
 4362: <p>There are efforts to calculate the playing strength of pre-Elo players on the basis of their games. See for example <a href="http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~regan/papers/pdf/Reg12IPRs.pdf" rel="nofollow">this paper</a> by Kenneth Regan.</p>

<p>But if you look at the "intrinsic performance rating" of historic players on page 5, you will find that they vary quite a bit even for the same player at different points in time.  </p>

<p>Personally I find it quite unlikely that the performance of Zukertort or Steinitz varied by over 300 points against different players. </p>

<p>To estimate the playing strength of a player who left only very few (and selected at that!) games, these methods seem to be nowhere precise enough.  </p>

<p>Edit: I found <a href="http://web.tecnico.ulisboa.pt/diogo.ferreira/papers/ferreira12strength.pdf" rel="nofollow">another paper</a> but this method seems to end up with a rating between 2700 and 2800 no matter what, which doesn't inspire much confidence. </p>
