Even that would be slightly malinformative because of opening theory. If you warped a very strong player from the past to the present, he'd do very poorly at fi

Even that would be slightly malinformative because of opening theory. If you warped a very strong player from the past to the present, he'd do very poorly at first simply because of advances in opening theory. But give him a bit to catchup and he'd likely have his rating zoom on up. So modern players would do better against the static computer because of the same advantage, but that doesn't mean they're necessarily stronger in the sense that we hope to measure. The question people always want to know are things like how would a Morphy, Capablanca, or Alekhine do in modern times with access to modern theory and the like - not how well would they do against Carlsen if they went in with nothing but the knowledge of their era.