Best chess player ever

Bobby Fischer

i choose a player that is not so well known[never became world champion,but politics of the time had alot to do with that then also] reuben fine,had a 5 tournament stretch against the best of his era,capa,alekhine etc...without a loss.      Rueben Fine also wrote a great book "my passion for chess" highly recommend it.

batgirl wrote-

Morphy  Overall record: +221 -48 =32 (78.7%)
Fischer  Overall record: +451 -88 =249 (73.0%)
Capa Overall record: +336 -46 =257 (72.7%)
Alekhine  Overall record: +1072 -251 =490 (72.6%)
Lasker   Overall record: +353 -95 =178 (70.6%)
Kasparov  Overall record: +922 -161 =859 (69.6%)
Botvinnik  Overall record: +514 -131 =419 (68.0%)
Steinitz  Overall record: +422 -181 =128 (66.5%)
Karpov   Overall record: +1136 -362 =1460 (63.1%)

Statistics however only deals with quantity, and says nothing about the quality of the opponents. In the older days world champions hand picked opponents, and some of them even avoided playing stronger players.

Also, what does the number in brackets represent? Winning %? If so, the calculations are wrong.

batgirl, the correct calculations are-

                    W       L        D       Total     W%       L%       D%

Morphy         221     48       32        301     73.4     15.9     10.6

Fisher           451     88      249       788     57.2     11.2     31.6

Capa            336     46       257       639     52.6     7.2      40.2

Alekhine       1072   251     490       1813    59.1     13.8     27.0

Lasker          353     95      178        626     56.4     15.2     28.4

Kasparov      922     161     859       1942    47.5      8.3      44.2

Botvinnik     514      131     419      1064     48.3     12.3     39.4

Steinitz       422       181    128       731      57.7     24.8     17.5

Karpov        1136     362    1460      2958    38.4     12.2      49.4

- Morphy has the highest W%-73.4 but he also played the least games.

- Capa and Kaspa has the lowest L% -7.2 and 8.3. With Steinitz loosing a wooping 25% of his games.

- Morphy also has the lowest D%-10.6 and Karpov drawing half his games-49.4. With both Capa and Kaspa close behind with 40.2 and 44.2

I'm sorry, but if you're implying that Morphy and Staunton (the two players from the "older days") handpicked their opponents to avoid stronger players, either you're woefully ignorant of both these players, or deliberately distorting historical knowledge.  Suffice it to say, both Morphy and Steinitz were supremely confident in their own powers and both possessed the highest chess integrity.  Their opponents, like anyone's, were who they were, and in both cases they were the strongest available at that time. To be fair, nearly 1/3 of Morphy's games, which make up the results, were at odds - that is, in the 19th century attempt to equalize opponents.  Even at odds, his winning percentage was phenomenal.  But the point of posting the stats was definitely not to elevate Morphy. It was to show the bare facts (for which, as I noted, there are many reasons not to take them at their face value)  in order to give the readers here something to ponder and speculate on.  However, denigrating the 19th century players with unfounded, and unwarranted, accusations is neither speculating nor pondering.

batgirl, no need to be defensive. I am not implying anything about Morphy nor Staunton...what I am saying is that before 1948 it was the privilege of the World Chess Champion to choose his own challengers (believe it or not), and it was rare for a new champion to allow his vanquished predecessor a rematch. Euwe was one of the few.. he allowed Alekhine a rematch, and lost to him +10 =11 -4 .

In 1948 when Alekhine died FIDE proposed a title tournament inviting the world's most prominent players. This was The 1948 FIDE World Chess Championship Tournament, which saw Botvinnik as the first champion, and established a more formal system of selecting candidates for the World Chess Champion.

For me karpov

Tigran Petrosian

Jesterville, I wrote "Staunton" by mistake. I meant, of course, Steinitz.  But I wanted to apologize for my tone as I wrote it when I was in a bad mood for unrelated reasons.  Nonwithstanding, there had been no talk of world champions and the stats weren't for championship matches but for overall performances. 
btw, the figures (except where I estimated in the end paragraph) came from CG.com, not from my calculations.

It is interesting to ponder their ranking as a reflection of their domination of their opposition. It's interesting to speculate whether this reflects a domination of their generation of players. Historically, it seems an approach gave way as the play of the game evolved and understanding became more complete.

If you want to get really carried away, you could ponder whether the evolution of the game is reflected in the evolution of an individual player. It would seem this evolution can go further and can proceed more rapidly today.

Either that or I had too much time on my hands today.

Jesterville, I wrote "Staunton" by mistake. I meant, of course, Steinitz.  But I wanted to apologize for my tone as I wrote it when I was in a bad mood for unrelated reasons.  Nonwithstanding, there had been no talk of world champions and the stats weren't for championship matches but for overall performances.  
btw, the figures (except where I estimated in the end paragraph) came from CG.com, not from my calculations.

No need to apologize batgirl,

I knew from your tone that there were other issues bugging you...so I ignored it. I usually enjoy reading your input on these forums.

I don't pretend to know the answer to this question, because there is no right and wrong answer, and usually it is one of preference. Statistics can only provide only so much...with so much also missing. I know those were not your computations, I just did not know what the percentages represented.

My main point is that comparing different players over different eras is so difficult...even the rules have changed.

All the Best.

bobby

This doesn't strain the ol' grey matter too much - Bobby Fischer of course !

Kramnik. Can't imagine anyone tougher in a match when he is at his best.

I would put it stronger and, rather than merely difficult, would say almost impossible.  Rules, to a degree, have changed, depending on the comparative eras, but even beyond that and even beyond the accrued theory, the entire attitude towards chess has changed.  Yet the advance in theory just between Fischer's time and today would be enough to make Fischer an anachronism, but one would be hard pressed to find a player today on par with Fischer of 1970. . . or with Morphy in 1860, with Steinitz in 1875 or with Capablanca in 1925, even if none of these great players could compete (or even want to) in today's arena. I think any approach to comparing players across time should be less about who might have been better than about who was more significant to the game.

The best might be Fischer, even though Alekhine is very impressive.

obviously, im not very good at tallying.

You do realize that Fsicher's top rating back then was something like 2758, which right now would easily be over 3000?

 Fischer's top rating was 2785 and he lost rating points when he crushed Spassky in 1972 !!

  Realitymate wrote-

The numbers in brackets are completely correct, I checked with a calculator.  They represent the average score that any of them would get in a given game; take Fischer for example: with 451 wins, 249 draws, and 88 losses his average score across all his games would be calculated this way: (wins + draws/2)/788  or 575.5/788 or 0.73032, rounded to 0.73 or 73%.  So in a ten round tournament, an average score for Fischer would be a very impressive 7.0 to 7.5 out of 10!  Not half bad considering his competition and that this is anaverage tournament for him.

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Realitymate, thanks for trying to explain what the % mean.

It is however strange that Kasparov who looses only 8% of his games has an average score of 6.9 while Steinitz who looses 25% of his matches has an average score of 6.7 ?