Great Players Without Official Ratings

That was before FIDE was using a rating system?

One year before the Elo system was adopted, but both the GM and IM titles had been formally used by FIDE since 1950 (27 GMs and 94 IMs created in that year, along with 17 WIMs).

Planinc was an amateur.

Out of all the players competing in the Vidmar Memorial, Planinc was the only one who couldn't take even a day to prepare for the tournament... he was working at his job in a bicycle factory right up until the day the tournament started.

Planinc was not an amateur. He was a grandmaster.

Not at the time of the Vidmar Memorial. He had no title at all in 1969.

He was awarded the GM title in 1972 (skipping over IM).

You are welcome to correct me whenever I'm wrong and you are right.

When you are wrong and I'm right... not so much.

I guess Lyudmil Tsekov could be one of those guys

Horst Robert Rittner was world correspondence chess champion from 1968-71, in a time when computers had scarcely mastered the en passant rule, and was editor of Schach (the German chess magazine) but he was a merely "passable" player over the board.

I sympathise.

I am currently unrated but I am crushing many rated 1400s and 1500s and even 1600s Fide rated players. Don't underestimate me