Best Chess Players Ever (Whose Last Names Start With Each Letter Of The Alphabet)

How many of these would you agree with?

Alekhine

Botvinnik

Capablanca

Ding

Euwe

Fisher

Geller

Harikrishna

Ivanchuk

Jobava

Kasparov

Lasker

Morphy

Nimzowitsch

Onischuk

Petrosian

Quinteros

Rubenstein

Steinitz

Tal

Urusov

Vashier-Lagrave

Wei

Xu

Yusupov

Zuckertort

I c you have a new player at Number 6. :)

What's your argument for Anand?  His rating is a product of rating inflation.  Alekhine was World Champion for 17 years!

You have a stronger argument with Spassky.  While Steinitz was unbeaten in match play from 1862 to 1894, chess theory was in its infancy back then.

The same debate could be had for Capablanca versus Carlsen.

Rather Janowski than Jobava...

I'd also pick Olafsson over Onischuk. The Icelander was one of only eight players to qualify for the Candidates 1959, where he won against great players like Fischer, Keres and Gligoric, not to mention that he won twice against Petrosian! OK, he didn't do too well in the end but at least didn't finish last. Onischuk was never really Candidates level.

Wow...some letters get to choose between Carlsen and Capablanca or Kasparov, Karpov, Korchnoi, Keres -- other letters get people I've never heard of!

And those are all "C" or "K" sounds too -- seems like a pattern.

S is another strong letter, with Steinitz, Smyslov, Spassky, So, Shirov, Schlechter, Stein, Salov, Svidler, Short, Spielmann etc etc. Not easy to find many top H players though.

i would argue for aronian, quang, and jakovenko

I would have given X for xiong. Why is carlsen not preferred over capablanca? 

Nice list. Johann Hjatarson maybe.

Create a new one, someone!

Hey! that rhymed.

He has considered only Age old players , instead of Alekhine, You can choose Anand or Aronian as Caps rating suggests Anand no.5 and Aronian also in top 10 of all time , N , u can go for Nakamura and C for Carlsen

This is all a question of personal preference of course but you can't place Naka above Nimzowitch IMO. Nimzo Indian, Nimzowitch defence, My system, the immortal zugzwang game, hypermodernism itself. The guy left a huge footprint on chess. 

C is for Carlsen

R is for Reshevsky

please

This far maybe Max Weiss could be picked instead of Wei Yi, after some great results in the 1880s he was up there with Chigorin and Tarrasch as possible World Champions, before quitting chess early.

In comparing 19th century to modern players the older are in absolute terms almost always worse.  But Steinitz is justified over someone like Spassky if  we think about relative importance.  But by that standard, Max Weiss who shared first with Chigorin (or Tchigorin) and was offered the chance to play Steinitz for the championship should be given the nod over Wei Yi who isn't anywhere near Candidates finalist level.

I would swap Capablanca with Carlsen, also you spelt 'Fischer' wrong XD, but the list looks pretty solid how long did it take you to make it? @erich68

Also I might swap Harikrishna with Hikaru but it depends on how you ranked the list, if it's about peak rating then obviously Hikaru was 2800+ in 2015 whilst Harikrishna's peak rating is around 2770...