Who is the Greatest Player Ever?

...interesting comment in this post...i think GM Khorchnoi was in Fischer era and i think he is still playing competitive chess. It would be interesting if we could read his saying here.

Korchnoi recently retired due to ill health.

I am amazed he's still alive. TBH

Paul Morphy

Michael Jordan

You can't compare players from different eras, it's silly.

If we talk of relative strength to their contemporaries, unquestionably Morphy. Nobody could even come close to beat him in a match, he was a million miles above everybody else. If we talk about domination over long period of time, Kasparov. 

he is 81.not so old that looks surprising.

Yea

But he looked terrible, even at 51 lol

did you know his nickname is viktor the terrible?

but i think Tal looked terrible at the age of 55.look at the video on his blitz with kasparov in 1992.looks as if he is 75.tal died shortly after that match.

to be honest i found that he looked even worth when he was younger... i dont know how old was he when defected to the west, oh god the age was nice to him. In my personal opinion he looks better now then when he was young...

but Tal had a really a cruel twist of fate how he looked when he was old compared to when young.

he drank and smoke a lot.he chose such an end for himself.

as kasparov said about him in his book(my great predecessors vol2):his lifestyle was far from ideal and was hardly an example to be imitated but his style of play was altogether inimitable since it is impossible to copy the play of a genius.

I disagree with this. Surely we're on the brink of being able to clone people? Which means that the first application of this technology should be to clone Morphy, Fischer, Tal, Capa, Lasker and Steinitz and, with their permission: Kasparov, Karpov and Carlsen. Then they'll all be the same age. Each could be coached from a very early age, all have the use of computers, and all be exposed to the same opening theory. In fact, kasparov, carlsen and karpov could be coached by the older versions of themselves.

I demand that this happens, so we can settle this.

how many fingers am i holding up ?

It's one, right?

i'm putting that down to a lucky guess.

IBM.

Clones would not be reliable. Growing up in a different era, they may not even have an interest in chess. Capa might be too addicted to porn, for example.

No, I think better would be to have it done by AI. Feed all a players known games in a computer, then have it grow a genetic algorithm through repeated iterations until it can duplicate all the players moves in every game. Then use this algorithm to play against other champions.

This would be far more reliable, and even doable within 10 years.

Mikhail Tal won match games when he was sick and continued longer than Fischer.

Definetly Bobby FIscher, he sticked to the same openings and still was unbeatable. Yeah it must be Fischer, who else can be so predictable but still unstoppable. It must be Fischer.

I think the question of "Who is the greatest player of all time" would be better interpreted as "Who has more fans: Garry Kasparov or Bobby Fischer?"  That's what the discussion always boils down to.

Does Chess.com have a survey asking this question?  I'd be curious to see who would come out on top.  Rather than read through hundreds of posts of predictable Garry/Bobby bashing/praising, we'd get actual numbers in support of each camp.  I think in most polls I've seen, Bobby has come out on top, although I'd vote for Garry, myself.