Who is the greatest chess player of all time ?? Bobby Fischer ??

Yes, Bobby Fischer (March 9, 1943 to January 17, 2008) was a American chess player and was the 11th World Chess Champion. He was considered to be the greatest chess player of all time. But in our time, I'd have to say Magnus Carlsen.

He is an Norwegian chess grandmaster, and he is the #1 ranked chess player in the world!

ponz111 wrote:

Magnus is the greatest chess player of all time followed by Kasparov.

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I may agree with you one day.

But Magnus is still a little young, right now.

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Fischer having a quick game with Tal in the hospital,Curacao 1962

This tread gets a little boring...

You don't have to follow it.

 The best of the bests chess players are those that studied the games and worked at improving openings or any other parts of the game, middle or end game.

Yes Kasparov is renowned for it he was a very hard worker and Carlsen is not. He quit his training with him as he found it too demanding to spend so much time studying chess. Do note that he is a very good player one of the best these days but every expert admits that his openings lack creativity. He knows enough to get out quickly of the opening and be ready for the middle game his strength. I predict his longevity to about 5 years as the world champion.

He reminds me of Capablanca that could have been the greatest player of all had he not only relied on his natural talent only while other strong players studied his games to beat him.

Other great chess champions that studied the game a lot are Fischer, Lasker, Steinitz, Morphy, Alekhine, and Judit Polgar though never played a world championship, Nona Gaprindashvili holding the title for 16 years from 1962 to 1978 and perhaps Botvinnik.

So in my book it is not the ELO score attained or measured by computers that makes a chess player the best or one of the best of all times it is the dedication and study of the game.

What is most important is that those that studied the game intensively in the past would have a party today with computers as Kasparov did.

They would be experimenting and trying new variations, because of their knowledge, at lightening speed to find new variations and to even better them.

I for one do not believe for a second that the best of the best analytical mind and working hard  as some previous champions’ mentioned above did would today be overwhelmed by their competitors.

If anything they would have almost the capacity of a computer, not the speed but the deep reasoning that brings a win. They simply might not win games but crush their opponents as Fisher did win 11 out of 11 games.

He played 50 games against opponents in 1964 in Hollywood, won 47 lost one and drew 2 games. Against Taimanov won 6-0

At the 1970 Interzonal he won by 18.5, Larsen, Geller and Hubner had 15 points. And what about his blitz games.

None of the current and past 20 year competitors had such a remarkable score card.

So someone will tell me that his performance would be outdated and out of the competition today.

Never a prime example in another field is Steve Jobs CEO of Apple Computers that passed away. He was remarkable as he earned only $1 per year as the CEO and yes held shares worth a billion plus $. He left and come back to help the company again.
The best of the best do not need any rating just performance.

http://2700chess.com/

Look Karpov's higher on the highest ever list xD

http://chessmetrics.com/cm/CM2/Summary.asp?Params=1840AAS4SSS3S000000000000111000000000000010100#HighestRatedAnchor

Check that site out, Fischer is the highest. And no, the site is not BS.

Chessmetrics is not a good measure. Jeff Sonas, a statistician, started with a false assumption: all world champions are at least 2700 strength. Therefore, Paul Morphy is on a par with the very best players today, QED. 

That flaw carries through the entire site. 

The Live chess ratings uses ratings that are calculated based on actual competition and has no such false assumption. 

The counterargument is that there has been rating inflation not related to chess skill. that argument has never been proven, and in fact has been disproven by several statisticians, most notably Kenneth Regan. 

It's possible to argue that Fischer was "greater" than Karpov, but Karpov's highest live rating is higher than Fischer's. 

Dont be a rating monkey/worshipper .  Ratings are not absolute . 

Reb, for once, deal with the point that was made. 

Do you really believe that Paul Morphy was +2700 strength? If you don't, then you agree with me that Sonas' statistics are wrong. 

(Btw, it's entertaining to see some of the other players he rates as +2700 from the 19th century!)

This was adjusted at some point last year and Karpov was below Fischer before that.  So from 1972 until 2014, it was Fischer.  It apparently took Karpov and the Russian chess federation years to produce enough data to prove that at one particular moment of time, twenty years down the road when all ratings had risen, that his rating went over Fischer's high water mark by a single point.  I have the zipped up spreadsheet of the "proof" they posted at the time they made this adjustment somewhere.

Fischer's 1972 rating is still much more impressive.

"It apparently took Karpov and the Russian chess federation years to produce enough data to prove that at one particular moment of time, twenty years down the road when all ratings had risen, that his rating went over Fischer's high water mark by a single point"

You think Karpov and the Russian chess federation spent years on something like that?

Chessmetrics was not meant to compare players from different eras, though it does that. In light of that, the comparisons provided by it should be taken with a pinch of salt.

"The Live chess ratings uses ratings that are calculated based on actual competition"

As are Chessmetrics ratings.

Actually, that's precisely what Jeff Sonas had in mind when he created chessmetrics.

Bobby Fischer would dominate

I think as time goes by, more and more chess theory is learned and discovered and thus the present grandmasters have more skills than the previous grandmasters.

However some grandmasters from decades past could catch up if they were transported in time to today. [and some could not] 

The point is that Morphy was the standout player in his era, much like Fischer was in the late 1960's/early 70's & Kasparov was in the 1990's.

It's pointless saying that such & such a player from one era is better than another player from an entirely different one.  

If Morphy had access to years of opening theory & computer analysis I would imagine he would be just as good as the top GMs today. 

However, if you zapped an as-1850's Morphy forward to play one of the top GMs now he would no doubt get slaughtered, simply because the modern players have an enourmous advantage in knowledge and (especially defensive) technique.

Steve, Jeff Sonas' point was to try to compare players of different generations. He didn't argue that Morphy was the best of his generation, he argued that Morphy's performance was +2700 strength. Sonas doesn't even consider Morphy to be one of the top five players of the 19th Century!

Kenneth Regan proved that Morphy's play was about 2350 FIDE strength. You're right, Morphy would get blown away by today's GMs.

But Jeff Sonas would not only disagree with that statement, he would argue that there were several great players from the 19th Century who would be competitive today!

According to Sonas, Ignatz Kolisch, Gustav Neumann, Zukertort, and even Louis Paulsen were better than Morphy! Sonas ranks Morphy as 66th best ever, with a 2737 rating while Fischer and Kasparov aren't even 150 rating points ahead of him (2881 and 2879 respectively). Some of the eye-popping names that Sonas has in the top 25 of all time include Tarrasch (10th all-time), Geza Maroczy (11th), Pillsbury (12th), and Zukertort (22nd), all ahead of Spassky (27th) and Topalov (28th).

Here's a link to the complete list of Sonas' all-time best players (based on their best single year):

http://www.chessmetrics.com/cm/CM2/PeakList.asp?Params=1840CCSSSSS1S000000000000111000000000000010100

Chessmetrics ratings (as Elo ratings) have nothing to do with playing strength in the way that they are supposed to claim that for example Tarrasch played better than Topalov, Chessmetrics rather claim that Tarrasch had a stronger position compared to the other players of his time (in the 1890s) than Topalov had pre-2005 (when the site stopped being updated). But this has nothing to do with objective playing strength.