Max Euwe underated ?YES

Well, that's debatable I'd say. Is a professional someone who makes a lot of money from chess, or someone who has no other source of income ? If the latter then Kieseritzky was a "chess professional", even though he lived and died in poverty.

I'd assume also that Euwe must have made at least some money from tourney prizes, books etc.

Euwe is considered the only "amateur" chess champ because he was not a full-time chessplayer I believe he was a full-time college professor. Of course other players also had other jobs, both Vidmar & Botvinnik were electrical engineers, but apparently both were considered "professional" chess players as well. BTW Vidmar is said to have wished he had Botvinnik's chess ability, while Botvinnik is said to have wished he was as good an engineer as Vidmar. In fact I may start a new thread about "moonlighting" IMs & GMs with other jobs.

It would be an interesting topic actually. This was an issue between eg Lasker and Tarrasch: in fact both of them had 'other' occupations, but Lasker's (fiction writing) didn't make a substantial income for him while Tarrasch's (medical practice) did. Tarrasch then looked down on Lasker as someone who wanted to make a living from chess.

Well, it seems you're reponding to someone.  While I'm not a huge fan of Chessmetrics retro-rating, I do think it uses sufficient data to evaluate more modern, i.e. 20th century and beyond, players with some accuracy.  According to Chessmetrics, Spassky was, in fact, rated #1 for 6 mos., between Jan. and Aug. 1966. Kramnik never reached #1 rating spot.

While I was there I made a little chart of WCs with their (whether elo or chessmetric-assigned) peak rating:

Steinitz - 2826
Lasker - 2878
Capablanca - 2877
Alekhine - 2860
Euwe -2769
Botvinnik - 2862
Smyslov - 2824
Tal - 2799
Spassky - 2773
Fischer - 2895
Karpov - 2848
Kasparov - 2886
Kramnik - 2826
Anand - 2833

. . . just grist for the mill.

It's really also doubtful that Soviet-era chess players were professionals. They received "stipends" not salaries, and they weren't in millions of dollars. They needed to give lectures etc. in return for the stipends, and the stipends could also be withdrawn (and in some cases were). Many of them also had other interests / occupations.

The champions' score against players in the world top ten while they themselves were one of the top ten:

Lasker 63%
Capablanca 62%
Kasparov 61%
Fischer 59%
Alekhine 57%
Karpov 56%
Steinitz 56%
Anand 53%
Botvinnik 53%
Kramnik 52%
Smyslov 51%
Spassky 50%
Petrosian 50%
Topalov 49%
Ponomariov 49%
Tal 47%
Euwe 47%
Khalifman 37%

I believe Kasimdzhanov never made it into the world's top ten.  Other notables include Magnus Carlsen 57%, Harry Nelson Pillsbury 56%, Johannes Zukertort 55% and Akiba Rubinstein 54%.

Arpad Elo himself compared the process of rating players to "the measurement of the position of a cork bobbing up and down on the surface of agitated water with a yard stick tied to a rope and which is swaying in the wind."  Ratings are most useful for comparing players who are regularly competing against the same pool of players.  If only we could get Euwe and Anand to sit down together for a match...

Fezzik wrote: "In the 1958 Interzonal tournament, Spassky and another youngster were leading. Tal defeated him and went on to become World Champion"

Spassky actually failed to make it into Portoroz Interzonal 1958.  He lost to Tal in the last game of Soviet Championship/Zonal 1958 in Tal's hometown of Riga.

Best Sonas performance rating:

Anatoly Karpov 2899 Linares 1994
Bobby Fischer 2887 Candidates match with Larsen, Denver 1971
Emanuel Lasker 2882 World championship match with Steinitz, Moscow 1896
Garry Kasparov 2881 Tilburg 1989
Vladimir Kramnik 2874 Brain Games championship match with Kasparov, London 2000
Mikhail Tal 2869 Candidates tournament, Bled/Zagreb/Belgrade 1959
Alexander Alekhine 2865 San Remo 1930
Mikhail Botvinnik 2862 World championship match with Tal, Moscow 1961
Jose Raul Capablanca 2833 New York 1918
Tigran Petrosian 2829 Candidates tournament, Curacao 1962
William Steinitz 2829 Match with Blackburne, London 1876
Vassily Smyslov 2824 Candidates tournament, Zurich 1953
Viswanathan Anand 2820 Frankfurt 1997
Boris Spassky 2814 Candidates final match with Korchnoi, Kiev 1968
Max Euwe 2783 World championship match with Alekhine, Netherlands 1935

See also the Rate the World Champions thread.

I wonder how our current world champion will do.Vishy is off to a good start already impressive record in comparison to other chess greats.

"I've read several hagiographies of Lasker, but Rubinstein, Nimzovich and even Schlecter may have been better than him during his tenure"

Nimzowitsch better than Lasker? :-) Just look at the tournaments Lasker won between S:t Petersburg 1895/96 and New York 1924 against the strongest opponents in the world, often with a huge margin. Events like London 1899, Paris 1900, S:t Petersburg 1914, Berlin 1918, Mährich Ostrau 1923 etc. Not to mention going 8-0 with a few draws in title matches against decent players, and 10-2 against a Steinitz that still was a remarkable opponent (+4 -0 =2 against Pillsbury in S:t Petersburg 1895/96).

Nimzowitsch didn't win a single top event during Lasker's reign as World Champion. Schlechter is remembered for drawing a short match against Lasker, but never had a comparable result in his whole career and never finished ahead of Lasker in a tournament. In S:t Petersburg 1909 he failed to reach a plus score when Lasker went +11. Rubinstein had a great 1912 but already in 1914 he didn't even reach the final group in S:t Petersburg, and he never finished ahead of Lasker in a tournament.

The problem with having such a long career as Lasker's is that people sometimes pick a couple of bad results or unplayed matches rather than look at the big picture. To me he is often quite underrated, no less so than Euwe.

Yes thats a very good point .Thanks for posting Regards soldierpiper

Nimzowitsch is one the greatest theorist in chess, but he was not a great player.  Nimzowitsch was too nervous to be a world championship.  The same could be said of Rubinstein.  He (Rubinstein) was just too frail to be world champion.  This is certainly true after World War 1, but probably also before the war.  One thing that doesn't come across when playing through games is that Lasker must have had nerves of steel.  Euwe's  coolness under pressure is underestimated.  Euwe played over 70 games against Alekhine (one of the greatest attackers of all time) and more or less held his own.  Euwe was an amature boxer which says a lot (to me) about his coolness under fire.

Yes being athletic really helps ones brain  see my profile page.

Personally, asking who was the weakest or strongest WC is just an odd question. Is it meant to challenge the validity of their accomplishment or how deserving they are of accolades? Is it intended to dismiss their achievements?

The ultimate achievement in chess is the WC title. They all have it. And everyone arguing about who was strongest or weakest not only doesn't, but almost certainly never will.

I guess I just don't understand.

I don't think it's any more strange to discuss which World Champions had the greatest achievements in their careers than it is to discuss non World Champions in the same way, active or not. It's hard to claim that Euwe must be ranked as equal with Kasparov in career accomplishments, and it's hard to argue that Polugaevsky must be ranked equal with Korchnoi.

It is just a topic to compare them to each other ,like other sports .No disrespect is intended .Makes for a interesting conversation not to mention all the histories being brought to light by this topic.

I'd always rank Sampras and Borg as greater Wimbledon players than Krajicek even if all three won the competition. As I see it not admitting that Sampras and Borg achieved more would be to dismiss their accomplishments a bit.

Agree about Nimzowitsch: one of the greatest theoreticians, but he was not an all-time great player. A very good player for his time, though.

I think Rubinstein could have become World Champion before WW1. Not a foregone conclusion that he would have achieved it, but he had a great chance. I agree though: it was REALLY tough to defeat Lasker in a match! Capablanca managed it because he was arguably the biggest genius chess has ever seen, and because Lasker realized Capablanca was just better than Lasker was.

Euwe is definitely underrated. He achieved a lot in chess, but doesn't have any kind of "aura." He seems like a "normal" person who was a very strong grandmaster that played his best when he got his big chance. Also, during his time the other top players are seen (deservedly so!) as special: Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine...even Tarrasch, Marshall, Nimzowitsch, and Rubinstein seem to stand out more.

But it is exactly this which makes Euwe heroic. A regular guy who was able to improve up to chess immortality.