Comparing Super GM's

The higher percentage of draws in modern chess makes it difficult to compare the performance of current grandmasters with their counterparts of yesteryear. But what if there was a statistic that could seemingly identify the greatest players of all time, as compared to their contemporaries.

I think there is! Because it's the higher percentage of draws that skew these comparisons, what if we disregarded the draws and simply looked at the percentage of wins of all their non-drawn games, or the number of (Total Wins) divided by the number of (Total Wins + Losses). Using these statistics (as provided by Chessgames,com), we come up with the following results of all players whose (W/W+L) percentage is over 80%. Of the 11 players listed in the table below, 9 were world champions, and of the other two, Keres was held back by the Soviets for political reasons (he was an Estonian, not a Russian); and Ruben Fine, who tied with Keres at the 1938 AVRO Tournament, declined to participate in the 1948 Championship series in order to complete his doctorate in psychology.

Pretty cool idea you have presented here. Not sure of the significance in terms of stats but interesting nonetheless. How does it compare to win percentage provided by chessgames?

Nic, Let's see. Here's the list of players with the top 10 winning percentages (draws included). You won't be surprised to find that nine of the ten players listed below are included in the table above. This doesn't mean that players not included on these lists aren't great players, just that those who perform at this level are some of the best of all time. [Rudolf Charousek, the only player absent from the table above, was a brilliant young player who may very well have become the world champion one day, had he lived. He won a staggering 65% of his games! Only the immortal Morphy had a higher winning percentage. Sadly, he did from tuberculosis at the tender age of 26.]