The Best Player Who Never Became WC?

That was kinda Dark, unstable and tumultuous Age of chess🤓

Steinitz is underestimated, he won every match he played for 32 years, scored 7-0 without a single draw in a match against Blackburne at a time when the latter was World #2 according to Chessmetrics, won 25 games in a row against top opposition, etc. Not to forget that he won four title matches and played the strongest opponents, unlike for example Lasker and Alekhine. 

Hey folks/Volk/polk, how do you like my new looks?

But don’t be deceived, I’m not laughing, or smiling, that was when I started practicing roarrrring in my early days😁

I would like to add and vote for Dr. Siegbert Tarrash. He surely was the strongest player in the world at some point. He just never got to play a match until he was too old

Good to hear from you again!

Absolutely, one vote for Dr Tarrasch from Wrocław, from you, was taken into account.

By the way, there is a Hill called Taraš in Montenegro (pronounced the same as Tarrasch) near the place I used to live. So I would see it every day stand mightily by the Zeta River!

Take care, my friend! Glad to see you back

No one has had objection, so far, to my using Wrozław, in place of Breslau, as the hometown of the famous physician and doctor of chess, Dr Siegbert Tarrasch?

That’s good

Also home to one or two other pretty decent players, at various times, if anyone wants to throw some names at that question!!😁👍

• simaginfan wrote:
  RoaringPawn wrote:

  No one has had objection, so far, to my using Wrozław, in place of Breslau, as the hometown of the famous physician and doctor of chess, Dr Siegbert Tarrasch?

  That’s good

  Also home to one or two other pretty decent players, at various times, if anyone wants to throw some names at that question!!😁👍

You just caught me off guard, mate. Got really no name to throw into the bin of answers. Absolutely clueless, an ignoramus grande

Devik, or David Ionovich, that’s who I also thought Kamala would pick.

Devil might’ve been the other Bronstein, Lev Davidovich, aka Trotsky😜

Oops! Another of my famous typos😂. Bed time here. Have fun guys.

Thanks RoaringPawn Is that where you grew up? Sounds like a grand place. 

Breslau was of course Herren Anderssen und Harrwitz' home town.  Tarrasch was in good company.

I've seen mention that Zuckertort hailed from Breslau, but he really came from Lublin (not Dublin, that was O'Zukertort). 

Non-chessically, it might be interesting to know that Alois Alzheimer was a German neurologist from Breslau. He was a colleague of Emil Kraepelin who, in 1906, first identified the symptoms of the condition now known as Alzheimer's Disease. 

Another Breslau/chess connection... You know Hermann von Gottchall who wrote the Anderssen biography... well he was the son of Rudolf von Gottchall, the poet and playwright who was born in Breslau. Rudolf and Adolf (Anderssen) were contemporaries.

I almost forgot the Breslau banker and sometime Anderssen opponent, Louis Eichborn. 

This is a highly interesting suggestion to the list!

Here we are voting for a player who nearly missed WC title. Up to now, Caruana belongs to it. But who knows, maybe he's gonna become a WC one day, There's still time for him.

What do you think? Does he really belong here?

If you say Yes, then we could come to conclusion he has no more chances to reach the Olympus

Yes, my friend, cool place, like everybody's of their youth!

The Hill in the North of this almost-to-become Capital of Montenegro, is Taraš Hill

Thanks so much @batgirl, as always with generous and informative contributions on history! 

Thanks also for mentioning Lublin, named after the personal name Lub(l)a, a derivative of an Old Slavic compound personal name such as Lubomir or Lubogost.

Interestingly, Slavs had had a habit of giving compound names. For example, Lubo-mir above (y'all folks remember GM Ljubo-mir Ljubojevic, and GM Lubo-mir Kavalek -- my name is also a compund Mo(i)-mir).

Now, Lublin and the first part of L(j)ubo-mir comes from, in Slavic languages, LOVE! In Serbian, as a verb LJUBITI, it also means to KISS.

So what a sweet name for Sweet (of sugar) cake, Zukertort's hometown of Lublin!

PS

Wroclaw is also a compound of Brati-Slav (old name was Vratislavia). That's the same name as Bratislava, the Capitol of Slovakia!

A friend of mine always did refer to Zukertort as 'Sweet Cake." 

Exactly Batgirl, as already mentioned in #72, Sweet Cake!

Now think, a Sweet guy (Zukertort) plays a bad guy (Schlechter)?

Life and chess are full of contrasts!