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

didn't live to see 1948.

"Lasker ... didn't understand positional chess." - another Fischer quote from around the same time as his Morphy comments.
Extended discussions of Morphy have been written in books by GM Franco, GM Beim, GM Ward, GM Marin, GM Bo Hansen, GM McDonald, Garry Kasparov (with Dmitry Plisetsky), and GM Gormally. Anyone see any of them express the view that we should accept Fischer's conclusion about Morphy? There seems to be general agreement that Morphy was, as GM Fine put it, one of the giants of chess history, but that is a long way from saying that he was better than anyone playing today.
https://www.chess.com/article/view/who-was-the-best-world-chess-champion-in-history

It is perhaps worthwhile to keep in mind that, in 1858, the chess world was so amazingly primitive that players still thought tournaments were a pretty neat idea. There were no chess clocks and there was no generally accepted authority for identifying masters.

"... Morphy became to millions ... the greatest chess master of all time. But if we examine Morphy's record and games critically, we cannot justify such extravaganza. And we are compelled to speak of it as the Morphy myth. ... Even if the myth has been destroyed, Morphy remains one of the giants of chess history. ..." - GM Reuben Fine

I don't see an Anand sentence stating a belief that Morphy was the greatest chess player of all time. Perhaps you agree that there isn't one.

"The alternative "chess organizations" of Kasparov stoppped functioning because lack of sponsorship, so Kasparov was forced to return to FIDE. The easy victory of Kramnik in 2000 over him shows that Kasparov never was a real #1."

Just like Botvinnik was never really the best it was Tal until Mikhail whooped him in the rematch. 

Point is dont take 1 match too seriously, Garry waa bound to lose at some point. I think he would have won a rematch against Kramnik but it never happened.

Kramnik was.not better than Kasparov. Just take a look at Garrys personal scores againat the elite and compare to Kramnik. I rest my case. Oh and the elo thing too that counts oh and Garry beat Shirov, Adams, Bareev, Gelfand and Morozevich by 50-0!! In decisive games.

Dont forget that Kasparov beat Kramnik at Astana 2001 demolishing Kramniks Berlin and winning their last decisive classical game.

"Perhaps winning a major event with 100% , or a candidates match with 100% or even win 10 games in a row against all GMs ?  Fischer won 20 in a row so asking Carlsen to get half as many  seems a reasonable request"

Whats with the games in a row obsession? Fischer won 16 games in a row if only looking at GM games and excluding forfeits.

1963 US champs was not a major event with most of the best players present. Please stop incliding that in conversations.

"Granted that Kasparov was good for a longer period of time and with so much more time you would think he could have done just one of the four things Fischer did ( listed above ) and yet he did not . If being good longer is the decisive criteria then you have to go with Lasker anyway .... "

According to chessmetrics Kasparov had 17  2820+ tournament performances, Fischer had 2.

Fischer took entire years off, 1964 and 1969 maybe to avoid the strongest version of Spassky.

"It is difficult to rank Karpov ahead of Kasparov when the latter won their matches and only finished behind once in a tournament after his teen years. When Kasparov won the three strongest tournaments ahead of Karpov in a year, while the latter won four weaker events without opponents in the top ten, it is still a year when Kasparov did better."

According to chessmetrics Kasparov had 17.  2820+ tournament performances, Karpov had 4.

It gave Kasparov the Gold medal for the most dominant player of all time, followed by Karpov with Silver.

I trust someone who has done extensive statistical.anaylsis of the greats over someone's opinion.

Not to mention that Kasparov beat Karpov 3 times in matches, has everyone forgotten this??

Fishcher, he lived in a time with no computer engines, while lots of world champions nowadays, rely on them to do lots and lots of opening preparation. Fischer didn't have that, and yet he became so much higher than anyone else in his time.

It is Fischer AND Kasparov.  Fischer for most brilliant and dominant at his best, Kasparov for the best, the longest amount of time.  Obviously fischer and kasparov had book learning going back decades or even a century.  So it can't be determined how good the previous greats would have been if time traveling into the future.  And champions past Fischer and Kasparov, are not innovators in the same way, as they rely on computer assistance in training and research.  It's a different era.

whatever I loves me some tuna says I agree with that's the greatest name of all time.

Fischer could've been the greatest of all time if he had kept playing on instead of what really happened.

He proved enough to himself any many chess fans.  I always say, if a tennis player came in, played and won every major for 2 or 3 years, he'd be in the running for GOAT even if he then suddenly retired.  Same with boxing or other individual sports.  Duration is an overall criteria, it doesn't say who was the absolute best, when they were at their best.  So there's two categories, greatest career and greatest stretch run.  Kasparov wins greatest career, Fischer wins greatest peak performance.

People always consider it easier to have a big advantage over the other players if all of them have engines, but I am not too sure about that...

in all honesty he was a really good chess player but i personally find  kasparov and carlsen better

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I would definitely say Bobby Fischer, just my opinion.

 What about Botvinnik or Steinitz? They were fairly ahead of their peers at their peaks.