best players?

I doubt that there is an answer to who was the all time best.  But for me a real contender would have to be Lasker.  World champion for 27 years, he also had amazing longevity from Wiki....

"By Chessmetrics' reckoning, Lasker was the number 1 player in 292 different months - a total of over 24 years. His first No. 1 rank was in June 1890, and his last in December 1926 - a span of 36½ years.^[118] Chessmetrics also considers him the strongest 67-year-old in history: in December 1935, at age 67 years and 0 months, his rating was 2691 (number 7 in the world), well above second-place Viktor Korchnoi's rating at that age (2660, number 39 in the world, in March 1998).^[119]"

Fischer is brought up far too many times when talk of chess occurs. It makes me want to throw up.

No player can ever hope to pass Morphy.

 Pub player

why do people hop on morphies d**k so much?

I dont know why he was so special.. who did he play that was so good?

Well he played all of the best players of his time. Those players weren't technically as good as players today, but they were just as talented.

In terms of peer dominance Morphy was the best. Also his games are easily understood, spectacular, and accessible which tends to draw people to him.

It's his dominance that we focus on. He crushed everyone he met. Essentially everyone in the world who was a top player at the time excepting such players as Von der Lasa and Staunton, and it was Staunton who couldn't find himself opposite Morphy for a series of match games.

Morphy played Anderssen and Harrwitz, two of the strongest of the period, and Lowenthal (top sixer I guess), and a good assortment of the other best the English could muster.

Steinitz was also very very dominant in his time, as was Fischer.

Kasparov was not as dominant because Karpov was on the same chess scene. Capa had Lasker and then Alekhine to mute his dominance.

It sometimes works out in that way. When Fischer was at the top of his game the next youngest great player was Spassky, who was several years his senior. All the other great masters at that time were past their prime, and so were even less able to meet Fischer successfully over the board.(I guess an exception would be Korchnoi who seemed to gain strength in his 40s when he met Karpov in their three matches.)

The chessmetric numbers are good for that I think, measuring relative dominance of a player in his era, and getting a good idea of how successful they were in their era.

A lot of people don't realize how close Karpov and Kasparov were. Barring the more recent games Kasparovs score was never more than +10 against Karpov, and they played hundreds of games.

I thought their total score was only like 2 extra wins for Kasparov...

Yeh that's what I mean. I just left a margin of error with +10, at some point.

Andersson isnt even good.. i like his 2 immortal games but thats all he has.., and i never heard of horwitz or w/e, those people were weak..

Morphy played WEAK people, thats why he was so dominant.., if there were decent people like staunton playing him, it would be a differrent story

He would have massacred Staunton. Which is why Staunton never played him.

I´m pretty sure it was more than +2 to Kasparov vs Karpov, but since I'm lousy at finding statistics I'll guess you'll just have to take my words for it.

=/

Accordign to chessmetrics, Staunton is one of the stronger players, while morphy is not. (Due to playing more accurate moveS)

and even though Karpv-Kasparov were tight, in the ends its how these players did against other players as well.

According to Chessmetrics Staunton is one of the top ten players of all time... How can that be?

Also re Morphy: He captures the imagination all the more when one becomes acquainted with his story.

1) A very young player for the time when he sets forth to play the best in Europe, i.e. the best in the world. 21 then would be perhaps like 16 or 17 now in terms of "chess youth".

2) He essentially never played anyone worthy, since he lived in the backwoods of chess that the US was at the time. At age 12 he played Lowenthal 2 games (as I recall) and then when just before he went to Europe he played in the 1st American Chess Congress beating Paulsen, who would be considered a solid master by European standards but not a top one (later he would be a top master). He in effect never had the experience of playing the best opponents while in Europe they were playing each other. No wonder they dismissed young Morphy as an improbable challenger to them.

3) Morphy played quickly, seemingly without effort.

4) In light of all the foregoing, Morphy still bounced everyone he met convincingly, despite being a notoriously poor traveler (usually played poorly after travelling).

It's a great story.

Now I just wonder if we'd be debating who was best if Capablanca with his talent had Fischer's or Alekhine's chessmania-work ethic?

Also Morphy went craaaaazy, which always entices people. Unless they go(?) angry crazy like Fischer.

 People aren't reading the right graphs!

Staunton is great for his own reasons but  he's not in the top 100 for 3-year peak performances.

Right. Staunton was quite out of best play but I'd bet everything I own that he could see how good Morphy was, and how he was rusty himself.

 Anderssen was very good. You just have to learn more about those old players to appreciate them.

Yes their play doesn't hold up to modern standards but it's these old guys on whose shoulders the modern players stand.

They, guys like Morphy and to a greater degree Steinitz, invented the stuff modern players rely on every day.

How about the hypermodernists? Nimzovich and Reti may not have been objectively making the strongest moves by modern standards but their greatness isn't diminished because of this.