Anand can never possibly go down as the greatest player of all time if he can't go down as the greatest even only of 2014.
does anand go down as the greatest player of all time
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Nov 29, 2014
0
#23
Tin-Cup wrote:
pfren wrote:
tigerprowl5 wrote:
His career is not at an end. Korchnoi is still alive and Anand could live longer.
Kortchnoi cannot be "the greatest player of all time": He is not an Indian. He doesn't even look like an Indian. Only Indians have the right to be the greatest of all time.
+1
why the butt hurt?
He will be my top 10 of all time
Nov 29, 2014
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#25
Replace Steinitz with Morphy and Smyslov with Petrosian or Kramnik and your list is good.
Nov 29, 2014
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#26
You can't compare draw rates between players who played mostly in large single round-robin events like they held in the in 1960s with the players today who seem only ever to play against others in the top 20. Today's elite players don't play many games against players who are outside the top 50 the way Fischer, Spassky, Tal, and the greats of the past did. Even Karpov didn't play such a large portion of his games against others in the top 10.
Compare the draw rates of the players against the top ten at their times. Fischer will still come off well, but Kasparov and Carslen will dominate.
Anand certainly in top 30 all time.
Nov 29, 2014
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#28
I'd put Anand in the top 10 best players of all time, but behind Kasparov, Carlsen, and even Kramnik. Remember, Kramnik beat Kasparov convincingly in a match for the world championship at a time when Kasparov was thought to be nearly invincible. Anand's victory of Kramnik is important, but Kramnik had a higher FIDE rating and was in the top ten about as long as Anand.
In terms of their contributions to chess, the old masters certainly deserve to be in the pantheon, but the young gods are stronger.
"I'd put Anand in the top 10 best players of all time, but behind Kasparov, Carlsen, and even Kramnik"
I'd place Anand pretty clearly ahead of Kramnik. They played in numerous World Championships and Candidates in all formats and Anand always finished ahead, has a plus score head to head in both classical and rapid, 6-2 in Chess Oscars, was #1 on many rating lists with a clear margin while Kramnik at best shared first twice. Anand also has much better match stats than Kramnik, won the most classical tournaments Linares and Wijk more often etc.
He'll be remembered as "one of those guys who held the title for a while after Kasparov".
not greatest but one of the top players may be in top 20.
Top 8 definitely.
Nov 29, 2014
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#33
Fabelhaft, in recent years, Anand has outscored Kramnik. Currently he holds a 10-7 edge in classical chess, with 69 draws. For me, the stronger argument in favor of Anand is that in 2011 he eclipsed Kramnik's highest rating ever. Anand currently has the 4th highest live rating ever at 2820.7. Kramnik's #5 at 2817.5.
The two are extremely close. I accept that based on the head-to-head and slightly higher rating Anand has a slightly better claim. But using your own standard, if Kramnik were to start beating Anand in their dotage, you would place Kramnik ahead of Anand.
What should matter is how good they were in their prime and not just a raw head-to-head match up. Otherwise, Tal would be much better than Fischer, and not even the most ardent Tal fan would agree with that.
Take a look at the number of tournament victories Tal had compared to Fischer, and so on. I'm not arguing that Tal was better than Fischer, but that your rubric isn't universal.
For me, the best measures for determining the best players of all time are:
A) Was that person a match-play world champion who successfully defended his title? (Yeah, defending the title is an important achievement. Winning some FIDE tournament that is arbitrarily called a world championship because they don't like Kasparov doesn't count.)
B) What was his highest rating? Since ratings are the most objective measure of playing strength, that is almost as important as winning and holding the title
C) What was his record against the ten best players of his generation?
yeres30 wrote:
Carlsen, Anand and past champions like Botvinnik, Smyslov, Petrosian, Tal and Spassky have below 50% winning percentage compared toKasparov and Fischer.
Kasparov has a winning percentage of 54.88% from 1,349 wins to 923 draws and 186 losses.
Fischer has the highest winning percentage of 57.23% from 546 wins to 284 draws and 124 losses
Carlsen has a below par winning percentage of 42.26% from 639 wins, 610 draws abd 263 losses.
Does that not suggest that with all of the advancements in chess, all of the analysis of openings, theory development and all of the preparation aided by computers producing very young champions that there is less and less room to improve one's performance?
In a few years from now say 20 I will predict that the best chess player in the world will have a 40 to 45% performance at best.
Not only because there is less to learn but as we have seen with Carlsen and Anand winning 3 games against one is all that is needed to be world champion.
I think that the 1975 proposal for the world championship had some merit with winning 10 games.
Maybe 10 is not practical and what about modifying the rules and have the first one to win say 5 games to be proclaimed champion, I am loosing interest with all these draws.
Additionally the $ prizes structure for both the winner and the looser should be based on won games, draws and losses with an additional amount of $$ for the winner naturally.
I want to see wins and not draws. Too little difference in earnings in the last championship. The winner Carlsen pocketed $750,000, and the loser Anand will take home $500,000.
Nov 29, 2014
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#35
Computer analyzing all prior world champions says Capablanca played the most accurate moves most of the time, and therefore best. Works for me.
Nov 29, 2014
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#36
Minor problem with that: When Capa was faced with a modern player who challenged him on every move, his technique abandoned him. Capa's ability to plan was unrivalled for many years, but players such as Alekhin and Botvinnik showed that Capa's style wasn't enough to beat a strong dynamic player. Alekhin's match win wasn't a fluke, neither was Botvinnik's brilliant game at AVRO.
Chess went through a revolution that Capa, for all his brilliance, just wasn't equiped to defeat.
Every player should study Capa's games. Capa was one of the great players. But his weakness when faced with dynamic opponents shows that he wasn't the greatest ever. If there could have been a match between Tal circa 1960 (or 1980!) vs Capa circa 1927, I'd pick Tal to win by 3 games.
Nov 29, 2014
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#37
A) Was that person a match-play world champion who successfully defended his title? (Yeah, defending the title is an important achievement. Winning some FIDE tournament that is arbitrarily called a world championship because they don't like Kasparov doesn't count.)
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@SmyslovFan: I wasn't paying much attention to all things chess when this occured, would you be kind enough to break this down into explanation for me. It sounds like FIDE was party to a questionable manuever on this and I am really curious as to the details. FIDE's methods and practices seem to be called to question on quite a few scenarios.
Nov 29, 2014
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#38
Long story short(ish):
In 1993, Kasparov and the official challenger, Nigel Short, split from FIDE and created the PCA. FIDE organized a consolation match between Karpov and Timman, who had both lost matches to Nigel Short, and declared the winner, Karpov, the champion.
In the next decade, Kasparov played a few matches for the World Championship. Everyone knew that Kasparov was head and shoulders above the rest.
Meanwhile, FIDE made many really bad decisions. They held knock-out world championship tournaments, and round robins, and the resulting "champions" were mostly footnotes.
Remember Kasimdzhanov? Ponomariov? Khalifman? Yeah, sure, Topalov and Anand also won world titles, but during that time it was clear who the real world champion was. Kasparov finally lost his match-play title in 2000 to Kramnik, who re-united the title in match play against Topalov. Kramnik then went on to defend it again against Leko before losing to Anand. Anand defended against Topalov and Gelfand before losing it to Carlsen.
Since FIDE took over in 1948, there's been a clear match-play world champion every year except 1975 when Fischer abdicated. The title then went to the official challenger, Karpov.
Nov 29, 2014
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#39
yeres30 wrote:
Anand has the distinction of losing a game in only six (6) moves.
Yes. 6 moves. (http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1018015)
okay i see. Anyone who blunders can never be considered among the greatest of chess no matter what they achieved in the years which followed. Air tight logic right there.
At least a dozen players are definitely top ten: Kasparov, Karpov, Lasker, Fischer, Steinitz, Alekhine, Botvinnik, Capablanca, Carlsen, Anand, Tal and Smyslov. And then there's Morphy, Petrosian, Kramnik, Spassky...
Loved your comment. Perfectly true by the way.