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

ME

ME

I dont think Fisher can be used in that sentence... The problem is he was without equal basically... So yes his results are great... but against what competition. One guy said fisher only guy to win an event with 100%... Well i can do that too if i am that much stronger than everyone around me. Its very hard to quantify such a questino because of too many factors to even count. Surely one can have a look at the general quality of their play. This seems like the only real way to quantify anything. But okay this is a question that has no answer

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Really depends on what you define by "the greatest". The most consistent result? Probably Capablanca. The longest period of being on top? Botvinnik. The brightest, rapid career? Fischer. The most innovative player? Morphy or Philidor. The strongest player in terms of rating? Kasparov or Carlsen, I guess. I could go on and on, listing various criteria and various chess champions leading in them.

Personally, I consider David Bronstein to be the greatest. He didn't quite become the champion, drawing the match with Botvinnik, but his approach to chess, his teaching style and contribution, his attitude towards chess in general, the raw length of his career, the amount of political pressure he had to face that didn't break him - I can't think of any other chess player with such a rich range of masteries and accomplishments.

If you haven't seen his game against Korchnoi (it is on the Wiki), look it up now! The combination will make you gasp, guaranteed. And definitely read his book on Zurich tournament, good stuff.

ME

Fischer has no money when he was playing chess.  He had a room at the ymca to live in.   that village people song is based upon living in  a ymca.  I read it in.frank brady.biography on fischer

Well things have changed quite alot hasnt it? I think there are a huge amount of people who make a living doing chess... not always by playing but by using it as a coach or streamer or working for a site like chess.com etc.

Also Fischer was a nut case... lol

Carlsen

 http://content.iospress.com/articles/icga-journal/icg0012

As with all these engine analyses with some very strange results (and comments...). To begin with, ranking Kasimdzhanov of 2011 as playing better than Topalov of 2008 is just not logical. Topalov won both Nanjing and the Grand Slam final with a margin of 1.5 point, which is huge in such short and strong events. Thanks to these results he finished the year as #1 on the rating list, at 2791.

Kasimdzhanov was never anywhere close to Topalov's level, and in 2011 he was even at his best more than 100 Elo behind Topalov's 2791. In 2011 Kasimdzhanov played little but lost against quite a few comparatively weak players, like Stojanovic, Ismagambetov and Jumabayev, and didn't score any particularly strong results in any of the events he played. Needless to say, he never played any events even close to the level of those Topalov won in 2008, but finished behind the top ten in the Asian Championships in spite of being top ranked at 2685.

Apart from that I disagree with some of the more subjective statements, like: 

"Some results might seem surprising. For example, it is usually supposed that Botvinnik had been playing at his peak when he was World Champion (from 1948 to 1963)"

I think it is far from surprising that Botvinnik played better chess the years up until 1948 than after. He scored some incredible results in the first half of the 40's, just look at stuff like this, why would he have played worse here than in his title matches played with timid results when 40-50 years old?

 Good points. Engine is not bullet proof or accurate in determining the  greatest player.

Some other eccentric results: Kramnik of 1999 is supposedly better Kasparov at his peak. Still, of the many events he played in 1999 he didn't win a single one. If he really was one of the two best players ever as he played in 1999, shouldn't he have been able to win at least one event? In the events he played together with Kasparov, the latter finished 2-2.5 points ahead, and Kasparov was supposedly having a better year in 2001 than in 1999. So how could he score so much better results than Kramnik even in this his not best year if Kramnik actually played much better than Kasparov even when the latter played better than in 1999? Kasparov won all the events he played in 1999 with a crushing margin, but still supposedly played clearly worse than the Kramnik that didn't win anything and always finished far behind Kasparov during the year. It just doesn't make sense.

Also Khalifman in 2010 as better than Topalov in 2008 makes the eyebrows rise a bit. Khalifman played one event in 2010, without facing any top player, and drawing almost all his games in the opening. His only win came against Marie Sebag. If this is evaluated as playing better than Topalov did when crushing elite fields in Bilbao and Nanjing in 2008 something is wrong with the methodology... 

Yes, the metodology used is flawed. There is common problem with statistics it finds "correlation" where isn't any. See also Godel theorem on agregation (combining results).

From what I heard, today's best engines surpass top humans by far tactically. There's hardly any debate on that. However the same cannot be said about their positional understanding. Maybe that's another reasons for the said anomalies: the game analysis is done by an artificial brain that might well be above 3000 tactically, but only 2600-2700 positionally. 

The shortcoming of CAPS (or any other computer based scoring algorithm) is that those GMs who score the highest are not only those who come up with the best moves most of the time, but also those who make most computer like moves.

When I first read about the 1972 WCC match, it was the commentary about game 13 that impressed me the most: 

"The game swung one way, then another, and was finally adjourned at move 42 with Fischer having an edge in a sharp position but no clear win. The Soviet team's analysis convinced them that the position was drawn. Fischer stayed up until 8 a.m. the following morning analyzing it. He had not found a win either. Amazingly, he managed to set traps for Spassky, who fell into them and lost. Spassky's seconds were stunned, and Spassky himself refused to leave the board for a long time after the game was over, unable to believe the result. He remarked, "It is very strange. How can one lose with the opponent's only rook locked in completely at g8?"

I wonder how often computers are able to produce the same, either against top level humans or against other computers...

I look at some the programming codes of engines, strategic endgames is still one of their weakness.

Nimzowitsch.

He saw something most of that era had never glimpsed before - a hypermodern way of playing chess. If not for him and Reti, even Fischer would probably still be playing e4-e5 or d4-d5 instead of more interesting games like 1.g3 or 1.Nf3.

Houdini 1.5a is obsolete (2011). Maybe they will try again with Stockfish 7 or 8 (from year 2016).

Botvinnik

Fischer was at his best when he won the title, but had a severe personality disorder. His lack of confidence prevented him from defending his title. Kasparov, on the other hand, stayed with it and I consider him the greatest player. Magnus has a gift for chess that seems superhuman, however he does lose from time to time and unlike other World Title prodigies, seems to have a  normal personality. If he has staying power remains to be seen. So I pick Gary, based on how hard and how long he worked to retain the World Title.

To be honest this question is just not a valid one. You cannot compare anything previous like Bobby fischer to anything now. Take Tals crazy sacrifices which worked so great, but if you put alot of his moves in an engine now the engine refutes it quickly. Garry Kasparov talked I think in his book how life imitates chess how he was armed in matches with opening prep and when he now looks back at it with engines he realizes that it was bad chess... but it wasnt back then. You look at Houdinis lines vs an engine like Fritz 5 which was considered the b and all of chess which always gave you the best  oves and you think... well that was terrible. So its not about who was best and if we want to look at who was best then we have to look at who was the most accurate and that question cannot be answered because even the engines of today are most likely wrong anyway too from a what is the absolute best move in every position... Best player??? Magnus Carlsen is the best now and would be better than all before him because he basically has all of their knowledge and the engine era to draw upon... So obviously he is the best ever... or is he just the best so far