Greatest Chess Talent in History

I think Illya Nyzhnyk, a boy of 11 years of age. He already won a tournament at age 10 in Mocow. He has beaten several GM's.

And Anish Giri, who plays in the Bundesliga (Germany) and the Meesterklasse (The Netherlands). He is 14 years old and has a FIDE ranking of 2430.

NEW Standings

1. Capablanca seems by far the overwhelming favorite right now

2. Morphy

3. Reshevsky

3. Tal is climbing the polls

5. Alekhine

6. Kasparov

7. Fischer

Kasparov and Fischer are sliding.

According to Anand in an interview to a regional newspaper (sorry I could not quote as it is not in english), he says:

most of the modern moves came from Bobby Fischer (at his time there was no computers), and before him all-time great was Paul Morphy. He also places Garry Kasparov on the same pedestal as Fischer (in computer era).

So Fischer didn't really have access to engines, databases, etc.?

Robert Fischer is the greatest chess talent of ALL time!

ADK

My picks:

1. Morphy

2. Fischer

3. Kasparov

4. Capablanca

NEW UPDATE:

1. Capablanca (still on top)

2. Morphy (the child prodigy is gaining popularity)

3. Reshevsky

4. Tal

5. Alekhine

6. FISCHER! (with some newfound love)

7. Kasparov (as well)

Both Capa and Morphy learned from their opponents quickly, Capa from Corzo, Morphy from Anderssen.I'll go for Moprhy since he was in an era were logical thinking and intuition was used at the most than systems of moves combined with intuition based from opening schemes developed by the  Czars of Chess (Steinitz, Lasker, Tarrasch, Nimzovitch etc.)

Why does it matter wether a certain player was 'manufactered' to be great or they just were? In any other field we don't judge the greatest in history by their innate ability. Look at other sports like golf and basketball, Tiger Wood and Micheal Jordan are considered best ever yet they were all trained through life and they developed it all as they went. You guys are all looking at this the wrong way.

Because chess is a battle of mental strenghts and not physical. When one fires a shot at the three point area in basketball he believes it will score points but there are areas like physics that will go or against it.The coordination of his hands ,eyes, thinking and body movement greatly affects the shot (Any uncoordination of these means a missed shot unless he's lucky).So, he anticipates.In chess there is only one and that is mental thinking, a natural talent will most likely excell in this game as Capa, Morphy ,Reshevsky did in their time.(Morphy was sick when he played Anderssen) Lastly, a brother was asking our opinion about his thread...

That's a tough nut to crack I think........if you could compile a list of the 10 to 20 greatest chess players of all time, that would be a hard task...certainly there are names that will alwys be present....Botvinnik, Fischer, Morphy, Alekhine as we all know.......I think they all had their own flair about the game as well as their own personality, blood, sweat and tears..........literally!!!!!  We can be thankful for each of them and the wonderful magic that has been performed on the 64 squares!!!!!!!!!!!!

There's some as yet unmentioned players who deserve some respect for their incompletely fulfilled but enormous promise.

Harry Pillsbury deserves mention -- he was basically the only real threat to Lasker until Capablanca and Alekhine showed up, and I think he would have beaten Lasker if he'd been healthy longer... he had an amazing mind who knows how good he would have gotten...if his brain hadn't been drilled full of holes by syphillis (rather ghastly what syph does to a brain). The Irish-American James Mason was a fantastic talent... who knows how great he might have become if he hadn't been an alcoholic mess.

There was a superb (I mean really superb) young german chess player in the late 1930s, who was unfortunately a die-hard Nazi believer... he became an SS lieutenant in WWII and survived until the very end of the war and then basically committed suicide (refusing to surrender) and was "shot to pieces" is the phrase I recall reading...  an absolutely iconic Nazi ubermensch "blonde beast" -- I honestly think he would have been a contender...one look at his games will convince. Can anyone help me out with the name? (I've got to take better notes)...

Well i don't know of any players really, but i do like my Mac computer..... It's pretty good... better than anyone i know...

:D

I can't go past Morphy. I can only wonder just how good he would have been had he had decent opposition (with the possible exception of Andersson) to play against. Next would be Capablanca, Tal and the modern wonderkid, Magnus Carlsen.

Klaus Junge

 The greatest chess player of all time? the answer is me of course .

innate talent - no doubt sultan khan

Thanks, that's the fellow... I looked again at some of his games and I wonder what impressed me so much the first time. He was obviously very talented, anyone who can score a full point against Alekhine at age 18 is _talented_ ... but upon further review i think I was a bit hyperbolic in my earlier post.

I'm not too sure that by judging the innate ability of a chess player or his "natural ability" for chess is fair.  People really can't control it, for example it's like judging people based on eye color, can't really control that can we.  As for who's the best, personally I think it's Kasparov but there really isn't one because we can't have a tournament where all the greatest attend because so many great players have passed away so technically we can only have #1 players for certain times.