Relative to their periods, who do you think is the strongest chess player?

I created a poll to keep track of results.

http://arima.io/questions/relative-to-their-periods-who-do-you-think-is-the-strongest-chess-player

Interesting.  I won't skew your results by announcing the "winner", but I was with the majority opinion.

Philidor.

For the early part of his period, before Rubinstein and Capa reached their peaks, Lasker was hugely dominant. Capa had about ten years of serious dominance. Fischer, during the period he plowed through Taimanov and Larsen, was amazing! At least Petrosian and Spassky slowed him down a bit. But Fischer didn't have long years as clear number one. Let's see if Carlsen can maintain his clear alpha status for many years.

+1

Noone dominated his contemporaries like him, and he did it for decades.

Yes! Should have remembered Philidor.

Tatzelwurm wrote:

SilentKnighte5 wrote:

Philidor.

+1

Noone dominated his contemporaries like him, and he did it for decades.

As much as I like Lasker I'm going to have to say it isn't true.  He had some very narrow title defenses and there was no FIDE around then to force him to defend the title.  He barely defended against Schlechter and Rubinstein had a very credible chance of defeating him. Lasker didn't duck him but the Great War interfered with their planned match. 

I think it's a toss-up between Fischer, Kasparov, Capablanca, and Morphy. 

Probably Morphy as the top players back then were rather weak.

"He had some very narrow title defenses and there was no FIDE around then to force him to defend the title. He barely defended against Schlechter and Rubinstein had a very credible chance of defeating him"

Which were the narrow defenses apart from Schlechter? :-) Rubinstein didn't even once finish ahead of Lasker. I think Lasker's reputation suffers from his playing from the 1880s to the second half of the 1930s instead of quitting after a couple of years as #1 like Morphy and Fischer. With Lasker it's always easy to point at the two-three events where he didn't impress and compare that with the two-three best results of other players. So I think Lasker is very underestimated and in my book the only serious competition for Kasparov as greatest ever.

Yes, who knows what could have happened with Fischer remaining active for so many years? Some people think Kurt Cobain could have ended singing duets with Shakira...