I think today's brown belts are almost the equivalent of the black belts I fought then. We did not need the conditioning types of training that are used now. Today's competitors do a minimum of sparring before a tourney and do a lot of conditioning. We did a lot of sparring before a tournament and many of us were not able to compete at the event because of sparring injuries. Our tournaments didn't have as much contact as is seen today.
Players are more sophisticated now.
They set up a strategy before the match. We couldn't plan any strategy since we were not as familiar with the other players. Unlike today's players, we didn't know our competitor's weaknesses or his strengths and tourneys were held few and far between so we couldn't learn about them through experience. Players today practically know each other inside out from first hand knowledge on the floor or from discussing the players with each other. Because we didn't have many sparring techniques, we had to use our brains.