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And the amateur went back to 1.e4 e5 2.Qh5, in the spirit of his role model...

On a more serious note, I agree you should be slightly reluctant to trusting the old heroes completely, but still, there is undoubtedly a lot to be learned from the early 1900s (from the 1800s, the games mainly have entertainment value today IMO). Apart from opening theory, I think there are very few principles considered good at the time that are considered bad today. However, because opening theory has developed a lot and the opening determines the middlegame to quite a large extent, you may not get the same kinds of positions as Capablanca & co. I guess it depends quite a lot on your own repertoire too.

A related question is: In this information age, how far back in history should you go when studying the classics? If you start with, say the 1980s K-K matches and move forward, won't you be exposed to all the openings and strategies that are still relevant, while avoiding some of the misunderstandings of the past? I think it was Robert Byrne who once said that he ignored everything that happened before he was born! If I should to follow that, I must leave my precious copies of Zürich 1953, My Sixty Memorable Games, and The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal on the shelf....  

For now I use the games of Morphy and Anderssen to teach development and attacking play, but then I skip forward past WW1. Capablanca, Alekhine, Botvinnik and Smyslov are great to study because their play is logical, and they had many weaker opponents who often make instructive errors. Im also partial to Nimzowitsch' games, though they don't fit his theories as well as he pretends.

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Lasker sounds good. Also Korchnoi now comes to my mind. As amateurs we should probably find our heros within those with the most fighting spirit. From the young generation Nakamura?!

I just play the openings I like and/or score well with, don't spend much time worrying about which top players I'm following really... Except if a line is never played on top level I would be more skeptical and need to see some convincing analysis before taking it up.

Maybe a sneaky approach is to go back in time and model one's repertoire on some former greats? I.e. play the Open Sicilian like Fischer or Karpov, the Grünfeld like Smyslov, or the French like Petrosian. After studying those "Great Predecessor" games one could go on to update with modern theory, of course.

We all like to follow top class players. We try to adopt their openings and then meet oponents who may have done the same. Instead of Kramnik-Aronian we play the same moves as Mr. Smith and Mr. Fish and reproduce opening lines we have seen. But as amateurs we do not have the time for the same deep study of these lines and at some point we are just somewhere in the middle of chaotic modern opening theory. Perhaps we have already analysed this position at home with the machine, but perhaps also our opponent has a nasty surprise with the help of the computer for us. Instead of playing copy cat chess it may be better to choose so called harmless sidelines which should give equality. But at least there is the chance that Mr. Smith is facing Mr. Fish and not Mr. Aronian+Rybka.

Watching the games of Nigel Short (and his comments about memory and thinking on a video) I thought he might be a perfect role model for amateurs - even beating Ex-Fide World Champ Rustam Khasimdzanov with this approach (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.0-0!? - aiming for equality but a play-think-position).

Is Nigel Short a perfect role model? Are there other high rated players? Should we forget about following the top guns?

I am really interested about your opinion...