Is Mikhail Tal the greatest Internet blitz player of all time?

he was definitely tal-ented.

but that is vi-tal to victory

Wlhelm Steinitz is the best Internet blitz player. Plays a mean bullet game too. 

Yes... No one can prove Flat Earth model is wrong.

What a shame...

This is the "famous top GM who make wonderful sacrifices"...

Lost like a patzer for another unknown chess player:

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1139141

Come on... Lost for this guy? In 25 moves????

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=106116

Ivanov 
Number of games in database: 8
Years covered: 1950 to 1972
Overall record: +2 -5 =1 (31.2%)*

True true... Ol' Wilhelm (or TheBeardedCrusher as his chess playing internet nick was know) was the first "modern" internet chess blitz champion.

But you have to give credit to Paul Morphy... who was wayyyyy ahead of his time by becoming the first "Unofficial" world internet blitz champion.

:D

Yeah... Morphy was an absolute genius. His style in blitz in particular was so shocking to his contemporaries that they nicknamed him "Plutonium Paul," since watching him play reminded them of a Plutonium bomb exploding.

that's quite a trick as plutonium was discovered only in 1940, 56 years after Morphy's death   maybe potassium paul, cause he was like a forest fire?

@ Buni: Exactly - like Cmls noted, Morphy was wayyyyy ahead of is time.

@ Kingspasski: Yes, "Wet Willy" Steinitz was a great blitz and bullet player, like most if not all of the other world champions. But I don't see how you could consider him better than Tal, or even better than Carlsen or Nakamura. He played in an era when Internet chess was facing backlash from many top GMs, who didn't consider it a legitimate form of chess. These people generally refused to play on the Internet, so Steinitz didn't face as much competition at the highest levels as he otherwise would have. All of that has to be taken into consideration when evaluating his achievements in Internet chess.

Tal won a blitz championship in Canada in '88 and he was past his prime at that time (age 51, in a field including a younger Gary Kasparov).

As noted, he had wild games even under normal time controls as his sacificial style often drove opponents crazy, especially when players were in time trouble.

"Morphy was an absolute genius"

He was a great lawyer but nothing special at chess.

Don't think the internet became widely available until after Tal had  died.

tal was probably also wayyyyy ahead of his time

Tal was suffering from healt diseases when When he play them

I mean exactly that - someone who plays fast games on online chess servers such as chess.com, (omitted name of competitor), or ENIAC Chess, the predessor of contemporary chess websites.

He was both - a great lawyer and a chess genius. A lot of great chess players also had successful careers in other fields - Carlsen is a fashion model, Spassky was a gynecologist, Euwe was a plumber, Fischer was a commercial airline pilot, and Tal was a magician.

Whats not to make sense? We are discussing at length and at the highest level of critical analysisis sis the great internet blitz players of the past.

You're a highly intelligent chap... just give your well thought out opinion of one of your favorite online blitz players... especially those from previous centuries.

Sayyyy... we havent discussed the online chess exploits of Ruy Lopez (TheSpanishArmada) or even Philidor (TheFrenchConnection) who was wayyy wayyyy before his time.

Tal lived and breathed The Spirit Of Chess, and tons of fags and booze.

Foreign stick in the mud, no sense of humor, no fun, nose in the air, "my sarcasm is better than your sarcasm" dude....... sighhhhhh.

Tal died in 1992. Internet blitz wasn't a thing back then. The standard internet time control at the time was 2 +12 seconds increment because the lag was so bad it took about 12 seconds for a move to be transmitted!