Best 10 Player Of All time

1. Paul Morphy

2. Garry Kasparov

3. Capablanca

4. Bobby Fischer

5. Anatoli Karpov

6. Petrosian

7. Mikhail Tal

8. Spassky

9. Alekhine

10. Keres

Can you link back to the site that made that list. I'm very curious to see how he came up with that list since I'm a great admirer of Nezhmetdinov. As you can probably guess.

The simple fact of the matter is that Fischer did more for chess than any other player in history and his actual results as a player will compare favorably to any player in history. He also defeated ( alone ) an entire school/system/nation that conspired against him all his career and no other player in history has managed to do such a thing ! Its true that he was a terrible champion and I was very disappointed that he chose to never play again. He could have done even more for chess than he did and I regret that he chose not to. There are many who now hate Fischer because of his anti-American and anti-semitic comments in his later years and ofcourse their hatred colors their views/opinions of him and their views can be understandably dismissed imo.

Sure wateva. He was a great player. But from what i've read not a nice person. (not that thats relevant). by the way he beleived the Jews were engaged in a plot to extinct elephants! NO JOKE!!!

The site i went to is http://www.angelfire.com/nf/chess/players.html

Thanks

I dont understand why such a big deal is made of Botvinnik being world champion 3 times ? He won it 3 times because he couldnt defend his title and kept losing the title! The only time he managed not to lose the title is when he kept it by drawing the match. He was not nearly as convincing a wc as those who kept the title by actually defeating the challenger imo. Steinitz defeated his challengers several times as did Karpov and Kasparov and Lasker. Karpov played for the title 10 times ! 

1.KASPAROV

     this is fun

2.CAPABLANCA

     what great players!

3.FISCHER

cooool

4.ALEKHINE

ah

5.KARPOV

losing interest now

6.LASKER

(not Fred Lasker, fish'n'chip stall, Manchester)

7.ANAND

mark my words

8.KORCHNOI

when does this end?

9.MORPHY

I'm so bored

10.someone else

does it matter?

Very subjective lists and evaluating players from different times is quite tough. Fischer made his own list in 1964 and got in trouble for excluding Lasker but he did include Reshevsky--here is my take

1) Kasparov-Champ for about 15 years against strong opponents

2) Fischer-His run to 1972 remains unmatched

3) Alekhine-tough when sober. Won some strong events by big margins

4) Capablanca-simple but great. Once at the top never put int he extra effort

5) Karpov-people forget how dominant he was in the early 70's

6) Lasker-Just win baby! Not pretty but was champ for 20+ years and won when he had to

7) Morphy-did not have strong competition but had a deeper understanding of the game than people give him credit for

8) Steinitz-am I biased toward the past? Maybe but he developed a whole new way of thinking and was quite a play until the end when his health was failing

9) Botvinnik-Yes he never won a return match but still was a strong player and probably the one who prepared best for matches. His games are very impressive

10) This is always the wild card--another debate centered around the strongest person to never become World Championship. However I am going with...Spassky. Very under rated Strong in the 60's and  could adapt to all styles of play.

 Botvinnik actually was -3 for all his WC matches. Maybe his duties as an engineer had something to do with this, and in his last match v. Petrosian he was in his 50s so age could have been a factor not chess strength per se. In any case Botvinnik was a legitimate superman in 1948 when he won the WC title for the first time.

He wasn't the best-liked GM among his fellow Soviets. They even tried to keep him off the Olympic team one year, and he was WC at the time (and inactive, thus the premise).

under best yo have smyslov  twice was he THAT GOOD?

CAPABLANKA

KASPAROV

KARPOV

LASKER

ALEKHINE

TALJ

...AND OTHERS

ah, got ya...yea spassky rules! 

This is my top ten!

1.Capablanca!

2.Morphy(I love his games!)

3.Alekhine.

4.Lasker.

5.Tal.

6.Kasparov.

7.Karpov.

8.The Spasskinator! (Spassky)

9.Benjamin.

10.Bogoljubov!

I don't know enough about all of these grandmasters to really judge them.
Honestly, I've only heard of most of these, with Fischer, Karpov, Kasparov, Anand, Kramnik, and Capablanca being the "buzz words" for me.

I'm not much of a scholar when it comes to chess grandmasters, and that's the truth! But then again, has anyone here (excluding the Masters, of course) read up on all of these guys? To me, it seems pretty haughty to rank them, without knowing much about them, except for reading an article or two, or observing some games.
And where does all of this ranking come from? From close analysis of each player? Or just, "how often I've heard/read about each one/ the fame rating of  each one"?

1. Kasparov

2. Capablanca

3. Lasker

4. Morphy

5. Karpov

6. Tal

7. Fischer

8. Botvinnik

9. Korchnoi

10. Alekhine

I don't rate Fischer as highly as most due to his unprofessional manner following his retirement and his inability to defend the title.

Top 10 Chess Players in Order of Best to Worst:

1. My cat

2. The ice cream man

3. The author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

4. Sir Gawain

5. Frodo Baggins

6. The actor that played Frodo Baggins

7. A pack of peanut M&Ms

8. Barack Obama

9. Garry Kasparov

10. Rybka

17 1/2. Me (because that's my lucky number)

 most of it is pure opinion though there is a "scientific" approach called chessmetrics which retroactivly rated players who were before Elo ratings.  alot of it is imagination, like "If Fischer played Morphy and they both had access to the same information, who would win?" so really were just opining, nothing too serious at all!  but i dont know about others who have opined here but ive gone over hundreds of games from morphy through anand, ive read at least 10000 pages of chess liturature, articles, blogs, encyclopedia refrences, and magazines so im not just blowing smoke out my butt, im no expert thats for sure but i know enough to speak on the topic without being ignorant of the material.

define ' best' otherwise all the answers are meaningless!  highest rating of the time? most wins against the strongest players around? longest reign as world champion? most tournament successes? etc?