Who is he?

Can you guess the three famous chess players from the hints below?

Player 1

He looked out the window at the line of horse-drawn trams on Madison Avenue. Fourth win in a row put him in an elated mood. Could becoming the champion be so easy?

Player 2 

In total darkness, he could only hear the murmur of the thousand-strong crowd in the theater. His opponent left him alone at the board. Was it ten, fifteen minutes ago?

Player 3

From the distance, the Empire State Building looked small and fragile. He turned to face the sun. Tomorrow the string of draws would come to an end, and he would take the lead in the match.

Morphy.

Good try for Player 1, but the championship here is for the WCC title...

Player 3 is Anand (1995)

You got it, Hicetnunc.

Player 2 is Petrosian in his first match game against Fischer ? (where he uncorked some novelty in the Pelikan)

Nope, actually, it was Fischer thinking !

Right again!

Could the story about player 2 also apply to the Anand-Topalov match of 2010?  Was there a power outage then also?

Player 1 must be Steinitz?

Not sure there were over a thousand spectators at the Anand-Topalov match...

Very close.

The other one .. Yeah, Zukertort, I got mixed up where they played those games in 1886...

Correct, Player 1 is Zukertort.

I don't really know much about famous chess players. Should I study them?

If you like history its nice to follow the path of how professional chess evolved. There are some bizarre characters and great stories in there..If you mean study their play you can't go wrong looking at the best games of Lasker, Capablanca, Rubinstein, Alekhine and many others.

especially when I read some where in chess quiz about a world chess champion who brought along his cat to walk over the board and sniff the chess pieces then and ony he could have proceeded to play happily.