50 Ways to Name your Masters

I suspect the difference is in the score. At AVRO Fine won 8.5/14

                                 Keres and Fine, AVRO 1938

This list is supposed to comprise the 50 most important chess masters. While for the most part, this would include the strongest, it also leaves room for teachers, innovators, analysts, historically relevant players, etc.

I think Tarrasch, Nimzowitsch, Bronstein, Zukertort, Schlechter and Keres all should be included as well as Tchigorin. I'm curious about certain people like von der Lasa and Reti.  I don't see how Staunton could ever be left out, or Anderssen for that matter. Sultan Khan was unique and a British Champion, but other than that really had little affect.

No argument here. I'm not a statician. But if it's true that NY 1948 gave Fine his best performance, I was trying to suggest a reason why that might be so, which is perhaps winning 94% in one tournament is considered better than winning 61% in a tournament averaging maybe slightly more than 100 pts. stronger. If nothing else, we can conclude that Fine was as equally capable in 1948 as he was in 1938.

It can get hairy. We saw earlier how Marshall, winning the title of "grandmaster" for being in the top 5 at St. Pertersburg 1914, only one a single game in that tournament (and only drew 2), yet came in 5th and garnered a lot of publicity and stuff of legend by winning the "title."

 That brings us to 32 you've accepted, batgirl, plus in post #80 you accepted Rubenstein, which brings us to 33. Only 17 to go! In view of that, I'll have to drop my advocacy of Marshall, Pillsbury, and Reshevsky. Still I want Fine, who came closest to championship of the American contenders. (But note that Wall ranks Reshevsky higher than Fine.) I want Korchnoi, who played a notable and hard-fought match for the WC under adverse conditions and who was, I think, the leading Soviet not already on the list. Wall's list, by the way, I think is overloaded with current and recent players. I think we can afford to wait awhile to assess Nakamura's place in chess history, for example. Wall also includes R. Byrne in his 100, who definitely drops off the list if Americans like Reshevsky do.

Also, Batgirl, I agree with the idea that Vera Menchik and Judit Polgar belong in the 50. Polgar is high on the Wall list, but Menchik does not appear there at all. Menchik's historical importance should put her in, though. 

One thing that must be considered is whether to include figures such as Greco whose manuscripts fromed the basis of what might be considered the "chess bible" for over a century and von der Lasa who continued the work of Bilguer, publishing the first edition of Handbuch des Schachspiels, probably the original scientific treatise on chess, as well as contributing immensely to the collection and preservation of historical documents including assisting Murray with his own massive work, The History of Chess. (Lasa was also one of the strongest players in his day, deferred to by both Staunton and Anderssen)

They were definitely important figures in chess, but, since their contributions are on the periphery of chess,  should they be included in a list of the 50 most important players of all time?

Who have been the most important chess theorists?

What about Vladimir Kramnik ?

 I share these feelings, but we have a problem of setting criteria. Anderssen won his recognition as WC in the mid-nineteenth century also through a knock-out tournament. And before FIDE, what about champions who didn't have to go through any system of eliminations, just got to challenge on the basis of reputation and ability to raise cash? How come Bogulyubov got to play Alekhine three  matches while  worthy candidates were ignored? So if we are going to automatically list World Champions in the 50 most important, we have to take them all, or else we have to start arguing about cases like Euwe as well as Khalifman, etc. One problem is that FIDE is accumulating ex-champions at an alarming rate, which will soon reduce the title to meaninglessness as a criterion for "most important grandmasters."

I think we should keep everybody on our provisional list until we get to 50. Then, as a previous respondent has suggested, we can propose replacement names. We'll only knock off Khalifman, Khasim, et al, if someone can propose someone more worthy. 

 Bronstein and Korchnoi have already been included on our provisional list. Review this page for other names included. Do you have anyone new to propose to  come  before Khalifman, etc?

Kramnik was a definite oversight. Thanks fleiman.

"For me the validity of a world champ who won the title through one of the fide knockout tournies is certainly questionable."

I agree. But for the reasons Ricardo_Morro enumerated I think they need to be included on the candidate list.  The list doesn't necessarily represent the 50 strongest players, but rather the 50 most important players. While it's arguable who might be considered the strongest, it's probably even more arguable exactly what even defines important. So, it's more a matter of keeping options open. Then again, I don't have the last word in this. It also seems we're mainly dealing with "modern" chess, "modern" defined as chess from Philidor onward.

For review, here are our names so far: Philidor, Deschapelles, de la Bourdonnais, Staunton, Anderssen, Morphy, Steinitz, Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Euwe, Botvinnik, Smyslov, Tal, Petrosian, Spassky, Fischer, Karpov, Kasparov, Khalifman, Anand, Ponomariov, Kasimdzhanov, Topalov, Kramnik, Tarrasch, Nimzovitch, Bronstein, Zukertort, Keres, Schlecter, Tchigorin, Rubinstein, Fine, Menchik, Polgar, Korchnoi.

That's 37 (not 38 like I thought; Batgirl listed Alekhine twice on a champion list we were working with).

To advance the discussion, I'll propose filling out the 50 with the highest 13 names from Bill Wall's list of 100 that have not already been included. Then we can use a knockout method to revise the list. Here are the 13:

Leko, Ivanchuk, Svidler, Ljubojevic, Adams, Morozevich, Shirov, Kamsky, Bareev, Bacrot, Gelfand, Blackburne, Timman.

Personally I'd rather see Reti and van der Lasa ahead of a couple of names on this list. Remember, Wall's list is his personal opinion of "strongest" (at their peak), not of the most important careers. Of course these names include a lot of careers that are ongoing. Blackburne, however, I can definitely see enshrining with the 37 already chosen because of his historical importance to British chess. National importance, as well as international importance, is a criterion we might consider, which might lead us to think about players such as Larsen, Portisch, Gligoric, Miles, Short, Najdorf, Vidmar, etc. 

"National importance, as well as international importance, is a criterion we might consider"

I was thinking the same thing. We might even consider Carlos Torre Repetto (Mexico) and Fedor Bohatirchuk (Ukraine/Canada).

One funny contender not mentioned, but one who popularized the game and dominated chess wherever he went from the late 1700s through the first quarter of the 1800s ... was the Turk!

I'd like to see David Janowski on the list.

I was reviewing Blackburne earlier, for my own benefit. I'd like to see his name there for no other reason than the fact that few players ever brought chess to the people in a way comparable to Blackburne. He was a player for the masses.

"Personally I'd rather see Reti and van der Lasa ahead of a couple of names on this list."

Me too.