who is the best chess player of all time?

Just curious, windmill. What makes you think that Morphy and Capa had more talent than, say, Carlsen and Kasparov, or Kramnik and Karpov? Is there any empirical evidence that makes you believe this?

Mikhail Tal is the best.

Because both of them picked up the game at an early age and with little coaching/study became very successful at the game. They seemed to play naturally, like they were born to play chess. Kasparov, Karpov and Kramnik went to a chess school and studied extensively. While they no doubt have talent, possibly to a great degree, how much of their skill was learned and cultivated under the chess school causes the lines between how talented they are to become more easily blurred in my opinion. Carlsen is from the computer age and while he plays amazing chess and is very talented it's quite easy to assume much of his skill was from modern age learning and chess resources along with many games of past great players to learn from. Morphy, for example, had little to none of that. It was just in him to play great chess it seems.

I'm sure others have different opinions and reasoning for them, but that's mine in a nutshell.

lets be honest here in this debate, there are many accounts on chess.com who play better than all these players mentioned in this thread...!

some im sure would win the world championship many times over, if they didnt wish to remain anonymous on their accounts 

LOL ^ dunno how to react to that LOL  LOL.

And if they were allowed to use the engines that they use on chess.com when they're playing in the world championship.

I think it's somewhat obvious when you watch their games. Capa's and (especially) Morphy's games were so natural and so powerful.
I have never seen a top player playing with odds except him (sometimes even blindfolded!).
I think that alone proves tons of talent on his part, given he never studied the game.

Morphy was certainly in the 2700's at age 21. The prime age for a person's chess playing on average is in his or her late 30's. (This does say a lot for Carlsen.)

Morphy had no one to challenge him in his day, and probably got a bit lax at times. 

Morphy and above all Tal have revolutionized the concept. chess had become pure mathematics, it seemed that he had come to the end. The game was niche and perhaps today would have fallen into disuse and there was not even this site. Tal has brought a breath of fresh air, they did excite the younger generation and bring to a wider public chess.
They were able to take a vision a completely different and new,
and becoming world champion with that way of playing, Tal has shown that it was possible. They are the only ones who could really win a computer today.
Because they have one thing that the machines may not have the human estrus.

All the others chess players are like hyper-realist painters, who strive to achieve perfection with the brush, beautiful work but... there are cameras
and for pure mathematics there are computers.
Tal do what only humans are capable of doing in this world

While I agree that Tal brought a fresh look upon chess, I can't understand how could he beat a computer, which calculates perfectly tactics and would not have fallen for any of Tal's ones. Human estrus can only beat another human's one. While it is beautiful, your logic is flawed since there are many chess players who are not just machines.

Of all times ? Carlsen, without any doubt. Morphy, Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Botvinnik, Tahl, Fischer, Karpov, Kasparov and others were fantastic players. Fantastic. But today they wouldn't exist against Carlsen, if they played like they did it when they were alive (Karpov and Kasparov are still alive, I know).

The technical level has too much increased.

Again, computers don't really play chess. They don't feel pressure and have never played for the world championship. Let's stick to humans.

Morphy revolutionized chess. He was absolutely brilliant and was, for many years, the best player on the planet. But chess, like all sports, progresses. Steinitz improved over time and eventually eclipsed Morphy.

No player before Capa achieved +2700 performances. Morphy's best was measured at ~2350. That's an incredible achievement considering the state of chess at the time. Steinitz was slightly but measurably better than Morphy's best.

I'm sure we've all seen players who seem to win every game brilliantly, but whose ratings are lower than their less flashy competition. Without ratings, it's easy to think the brilliant player must be better. We now know a different truth.

Yes Morphy hasn't played the best chess, my opinion he was one of the most if not the most talented to play the game though.

Magnus Carlsen

This is a non sensical question, as there is no correct answer. Where is the beginning of a circle ? Once you are way up there - you are way up there, full stop.

Actually, Nobby, the answer to the best chess player of all time can be answered objectively. Kenneth Regan has shown that ratings accurately reflect objective skill, and that there is no rating inflation. In terms of pure quality of play, without regard to contributions to the game or anything else, here's the list of the top 16 players of all time, in order:

Objectively?  Really?

Why do you hate dictionaries?

BigPoison has found a grammatical mistake in one of my posts for the first time in over a year.

Congratulations to BigPoison!

I'm flattered that of all the people on this site who make grammatical errors, BP loves me the most! Why else would he so gleefully pounce on my gramatical errors.

My mistake was a grammatical one where I deleted part of a sentence before I posted my comment. I used the correct word. 

The elo system is an objective (yes, objective) measure of playing strength. To find the best player ever, just take a look at who has the highest FIDE rating of all time. That list is the one I posted:

LOL