Best Blitz player of all time

 ... maybe in cricket.

^
I take their 90s match as just exhibition.  IIRC Spassky had been fairly inactive in tournament chess (Fischer of course non-existent).  So those results are interesting, but have nothing to do with the legacy of each player IMO.

Kasparov is pretty snarky, but for what it's wroth he said they were playing at something like 2500 level (again, if I recall correctly).

This is why it's difficult for me to rate Fischer higher than Kasparov.  Kasparov's "body of work" so to speak, is more impressive.  Fischer had a brilliant moment in the spotlight but then immediately left.

But we're talking about best in blitz, so it's even more subjective heh.

I was unaware of the player Batgirl mentioned, Genrikh Chepukaitis.  It's amazing that an IM strength player could finish blitz tournaments ahead of people like Tal and Korchnoi.

In Smart Chip from St. Petersburg, Genna Sosonko presented Chepukaitis in a rather long article.  Here are a couple excerpts:

"Chepukaitis talked more than once about his head-to-heads with Mikhail Tal. The very first one took place in Lennngrad, in a hotel;  the elderly man that Chip met there, and whom he first mistook for Misha's uncle, turned out to be Rashid Nezhmetdinov. Chepukaitis beat the master of combinations with a score of 5-2, after which Tal entered the room and got involved.  He also played seven games and according to Chip lost almost all of them, although the following day he won  rematch."

"The most common one [type of odds] that Chepukaitis gave was one minute against five. On more than one occasion I have witnessed him playing with these odds against candidate masters. . ."

I don't know how easy it is to look down on the current #6 player in the world  (?)

I mean, I agree... I don't imagine that elite players give blitz (or bullet) champs much respect.  But again Naka's "real" rating is very impressive as well.

Again this is NOT about OTB play. personal scores in OTB play are irrelevent.  My question is about blitz. There are players that are much stronger at blitz than OTB play for various reasons. There are "amateurs" that are outstanding at blitz as mentioned by an earlier post. One of these was GM Ruben Fine and GM Dake who were both outstanding rapid players (10 sec a move) which was a more common time control back in their day. {and an interesting one to try out}

It should also be mentioned that Naka also had the top position in 3 min 5 min and 15 min and I believe standard as well. ONLINE blitz is different than face to face though. I do agree though Naka played 1 min better than most GM's play 3 min. Naka doesnt have the same dominance in face to face blitz though (losing a casual blitz match to Carlsen as an example)

It was you who brought up Kasparov's career score against Karpov :-) I think you mean classical and not OTB by the way, but in general it seems as if the best players usually are the best blitz players. Today most would agree that Carlsen, Aronian, Anand, Kramnik, Radjabov and Nakamura are the six strongest blitz players and they are also top six on the latest rating list. Fischer was the best blitz player of his day and so was Kasparov.

Comparing over time is as usual difficult. My guess is that today's players in general are stronger blitz players than those of previous generations. Blitz was less common in the past, for example Botvinnik famously stated to have played only one blitz game in his entire life, and he was World Champion less than 50 years ago. I think this also is the reason that there existed a few blitz specialist that did well against the top players in the past, while you won't find any such players today when all the best players have played thousands of blitz games.

Capablanca

morphy

that's like saying Arkimedes for the smartest person of all times, morphy was good but just about every player after him have built on his games making alot of people better than him.

that's like saying Arkimedes for the smartest person of all times, Capablanca was good but just about every player after him have built on his games making alot of people better than him.

By this logic the question is moot. Taken to its conclusion, the best of all time will always be the current champion.

If the question is who played the objectively strongest moves, and in principle, yes. Even if this may not be the case regarding for example Kasparov, who scored 9-0 against Gelfand and 15-3 against Anand, and passed 2850 already before year 2000. Some would also say that it is by no means certain that whoever wins the title in May by default must be a better chess player than Carlsen or Aronian. But if it's a question of "objectively best" it's hard to deny that Radjabov plays better chess than Steinitz did (but that Steinitz was a greater player for his time).

In blitz it's hard to measure. Few blitz tournaments were played in the past. As far as I know Fischer played two, one of them against very weak opposition in Manhattan 1971 and before that the very impressive Herceg Novi 1970, where he surely would have won just as easily if the World Champion had been present. But it's still not much to base a "greatest blitz player ever" title on.

Tal wrote after Herceg Novi: "Fischer had until recently played fast chess none too strongly" and there has been much talk about blitz sessions in the early 1960s against Tal and Korchnoi without Fischer having much of a chance, as well as against Stein, scoring at best equal results. But by the time Fischer had become the best player in the world he had also become the best blitz player, even if this conclusion mainly will have to be based on one event, and it's hard to compare with results of other players.

Any question about who's the best player of all time is ridiculous. (in any competition, not just chess)

One guy/gal might have the best record or whatever, with a record of say 15 final wins.

But 40 years later there might be 3 people who were better than the first, but because they had to compete with eachother they may only get 5 wins each.

Of couse, you can argue that the first guy is still best because he was so much better than anyone else he could compete with. True. I fully respect and understand that opinion.

But that was not what the question was.

The question was "who was the best xxxx player of all time" NOT "who was the best xxxx player, assuming equality of opponents" or "which player has the best record"

grischuk just won the blitz championship or the 2nd year right? his comments about kramnik are interesting. there were some players of old that were amazing at blitz but they used to play 10 second a move games instead (fischer played this I think when he started) its tricky!

look at icc and there is that one FM thats just a monster at blitz but online is a different beast too.

 but i think thats what I said right?

they used to play 10 second a move games instead

i forgot the name, thanks for clearing that up

I wrote an Article the other week called "A History of Blitz" which may be of interest.

What happened to Petrosian, Smyslov, Tal, Bronstein?

But of todays generation, I think Nakamura

I really need to know where I can find all the 1988 Saint John's game transcriptions, thanks.

Trying to find it so hard on the net, no results