Best player never to win the chess World Championship

Short got to number 3 in world, behind only Kasparov and Karpov. It is looking like hewill overtake Adams again as british no 1 as he will, i hope, go over 2700 again!

Chessmetrics uses its own ratings formula. That makes sense for play before the ELO rating system was implemented. To allow historical comparisons of dominance, the same formula is used even after we have ELO ratings by FIDE. I am not sure how exactly a discrepancy in ranking happened, but it should go without saying that the ranking based on the FIDE rating is the official one.

Interesting. My personal choice, Korchnoi, is the most recent player to make the chessmetrics #1 list. The world championship situation has been so confused since Kasparov, that I'm not sure the question is unambiguous any more.

I'm wondering why some players perform well at tournaments but not so well in matches? How does the different format make a difference? Anyone have any views?

The risk-taking Aggressives can do very well if the dice come up in their favor. Larsen is an example, and his tournament record is very impressive with many firsts.  Petrosian is an example of a player whose style was great for matches.

But why can taking risks and playing aggressively also not win you many games in matches?

For years i was a strong supporter of Korhnoi.  But after doing a lot of reading and research i would have to say it would be Keres or Reshevsky.   

Risk takers tend to win more but also lose more, they have fewer draws than the great match players who tend to play safety first, to draw with black and win with white. If you lose a couple of games in a match its much more difficult to recover as you are facing the same opponent in every game. In a tournament you might get paired with significantly weaker players after losing a couple, but not in a match. Also, in a match if you go down even one game your opponent has "draw odds", he can play for a draw in all the remaining games and win the match so you are put in a situation in which you MUST win while your opponent is ok with a draw or a win ofcourse. This usually means more risk taking for the player that trails.....

Thanks Reb, that makes more sense now.

 Marshall stated in his book that he always enjoyed the differing sites and sounds, and oppnents of various tournaments, and that wearing down the same opponent day after day never appealed to him.  That can be taken as someone that was dominated by Lasker or he was just being honest.

I always wondered whether Marshall was really in the same league as the likes of Lasker, Alekhine, Capablanca...

Marshall was a very good player but not *legendary* good. He had his share of successes. His finish at NY 1924, 4th, ahead of players such as Reti, Maroczy, Bogolyubov, and Tartakover was an excellent show at that later stage of his chess career. He was 47. I think this reflected well on his talent and flexibility too as he had to meet players who were hypermodernists.

Nigel Short!

Even though Marshall was one of the five original grandmasters, I don't consider him to be in the same league as the greats from his era.

 I believe Marshall was never in the same league with the world champions and many of them werent in the same league with Lasker, Alekhine and Capablanca !

From the Lasker v Capablanca match, it always looked to me like Lasker wasn't in the same league as Capablanca.

It was age and heat that conspired to make Lasker look so bad. Actually Capa was a huge fan of his chess, praising him very highly after losing to him in one of those Moscow touraments from the 30s, declaring how he beat him fairly and fully.

I'd say Bronstein, after all, finishing a WC match with a tie, is as close to being WC as you can get without winning :D

*bump*

what !? Magnus hadn't even got into the WCC yet. And he will soon.