whos the most famous chess player

 And yet he never won 20 straight games against all GMs and he never won a candidates match with 100% and he never won a major tournament with 100% and Fischer did ALL these things ! 

either erik or chess_kebabs

Well, as countless others have alreay said this depends on a number of things, mostly the age and country of the people asked.

I started playing chess just a year ago or so, before that I had a few chessplayers names in my head, Karpov, Short (funny name I thought), Ulf Andersson (only because he is swedish) and of course the only one I really knew something about, Kasparov. I had never heard of Fisher or the Reykavik game since I wasn't even born when it happened. First time I heard about Fisher was when watching the movie "searching for bobby fisher", ever since I've been fasinated by him, but noone I have spoken to about him has ever heard of him!

Thus my conclusion, if you ask 100 people, ages 15-45 in Sweden, at most 2 or 3 knows who Bobby Fisher is (and those are people playing chess), I would think that if asked to name a chessplayer maybee 50/100 would say Kasparov, and the other 50 wouldn't be able to name even one.

I go with "Bogey". (Did Julius Caesar really play chess?).

Xaake, my conclusion is the exact opposite. Everyone above 10-15 during 72 knows off Fischer, heck, half of them even seems to know Spassky.

Even quite a few around my own age seems to know of Fischer, although most of them know him as the crazy chess player on Iceland, and they haven´t got his name down.

p p p poker face