personally I feel bobby fischer is all-time no 1 but carlsen is definitely the best atm
who is the best chess player of all time?
Sort:
carlsen?
kasporov
Anand
Not anymore, but at one time.
if they lived in the era, it will be a toss among Fischer, Kasparov and Carlsen. I believe the first will top the rest.
Apr 23, 2014
0
#188
aman_makhija wrote:
Anand
Not anymore, but at one time.
Are you saying that Anand was once the Best Player of All Time - but he isn't anymore?
Maybe you're right, it's a question of what is meant by "of all time".
Chances are the best player of all time hasn't been born yet.
Borislav Ivanov
In my opinion the best player of all time has to be decided by considering things such as the development of the game through the time in which they played, contributions to theory, etc. Because otherwise it's pretty much going to be whoever happens to be the most recent world champion. Given the constant development of chess theory the best player of all time should be someone who wasn't just basing half his moves on things which were written by someone a hundred years ago.
Capablanca would rate highly for me because he was an endgame expert (so his strength was in 'pure' chess skill rather than based on theory), as would Morphy and Karpov. Maybe throw in Fischer as well
If it's an average between objective skillset and relative to one's peers and time period probably Rubinstein (despite never having actually won the title his tournament record was amazing and outclassed Schliemann, who in turn Lasker barely defended his title against). Just relative to the competition it's Fischer hands down, he defeated Taimanov and Larsen 6-0 and won against Spassky despite Spassky having a win by forfeit. In terms of raw objective skill it's a toss up between Carlsen and Kasparov.
As a bonus I'd say Tal was the luckiest world champion due to the fact that his love of sacrifices, sometimes even grounded in psychology or "Intuition" (a word that simply glorifies flip-coin Chess to "borrow" a term from Dan Heisman), could have gotten him in big trouble against the likes of Petrosian, Bronstein, Botvinnik, Geller, Najdorf, etc. Make no mistake he was a great player obviously but needlessly got himself into big trouble.
Speaking of Geller, perhaps he's the second greatest to never become world champion relative to one's peers (objectively Aronian runs away with that honor since he's currently world #2) behind Rubinstein, he was like a Kasparov light whose style was heavily calculation oriented, and had a plus score against Fischer!
aman_makhija wrote:
Anand
Not anymore, but at one time.
He was an excellent player, but got outclassed by Kasparov in the 90s and got outclassed by Carlsen in the new 10s. The 00's were a relatively weak decade for Chess.
TheGreatOogieBoogie írta:
If it's an average between objective skillset and relative to one's peers and time period probably Rubinstein (despite never having actually won the title his tournament record was amazing and outclassed Schliemann, who in turn Lasker barely defended his title against). Just relative to the competition it's Fischer hands down, he defeated Taimanov and Larsen 6-0 and won against Spassky despite Spassky having a win by forfeit. In terms of raw objective skill it's a toss up between Carlsen and Kasparov.
As a bonus I'd say Tal was the luckiest world champion due to the fact that his love of sacrifices, sometimes even grounded in psychology or "Intuition" (a word that simply glorifies flip-coin Chess to "borrow" a term from Dan Heisman), could have gotten him in big trouble against the likes of Petrosian, Bronstein, Botvinnik, Geller, Najdorf, etc. Make no mistake he was a great player obviously but needlessly got himself into big trouble.
Speaking of Geller, perhaps he's the second greatest to never become world champion relative to one's peers (objectively Aronian runs away with that honor since he's currently world #2) behind Rubinstein, he was like a Kasparov light whose style was heavily calculation oriented, and had a plus score against Fischer!
Tal beat all Petrosian, Bronstein, and actually became world champion by beating Botvinik, so I don't see your point there.
"If it's an average between objective skillset and relative to one's peers and time period probably Rubinstein"
He didn't finish ahead of Capablanca or Lasker even once, so it's hard to see him as better than them, and even harder to see him as the best chess player ever regardless of the criteria used.
TheGreatOogieBoogie wrote:
aman_makhija wrote:
Anand
Not anymore, but at one time.
He was an excellent player, but got outclassed by Kasparov in the 90s and got outclassed by Carlsen in the new 10s. The 00's were a relatively weak decade for Chess.
Disagree. You just wait. I think Anand will smash Carlsen
kaynight wrote:
Kasporov_Jr.
lmao! :D 2nd is magnis_carlsin_jr lol
Fischer did so many things that no one else ever did or has done. Unfortunately, there was a price to pay for that sort of genius.
Lord_Voldemort11 írta:
Yereslov wrote:
aww-rats wrote:
Bobby Fischer, end of argument.
Bobby Fischer only managed to defeated Spassky for the first time in 1972 (the same year he quit), and he never proved that he could stand a chance against Karpov. He cowered and left the chess world before he could fully develop. Botvinnik, on the other hand, proved his dominance for four decades.
You don't know what you are talking about. Fischer was not interested in continueing chess. He was about to stop playing against spasski too if his demands were not met. Fischer played all the greatest players at his time, and beat all of them. No one stood a chance, and he got bored, i guess.
Well that's a bit untrue, though.
I'm not dissing Fischer, as I think he was one of the best players, but still, the smoke's bigger than the fire.
First of all, Tal beat him, several times, and secondly, he didn't really have that much of an opposition.
Let's face it, Spassky wasn't that much of a challenge for him; he was a rather mediocre world champion, and never near to those that came before and after him.
I wonder what would have happened if Fischer played someone like Alekhine or Capa.
I hear no human can beat the best programmed computer now. Where does that fit in?
Jul 20, 2014
0
#200
GnrfFrtzl wrote:
Lord_Voldemort11 írta:
Yereslov wrote:
aww-rats wrote:
Bobby Fischer, end of argument.
Bobby Fischer only managed to defeated Spassky for the first time in 1972 (the same year he quit), and he never proved that he could stand a chance against Karpov. He cowered and left the chess world before he could fully develop. Botvinnik, on the other hand, proved his dominance for four decades.
You don't know what you are talking about. Fischer was not interested in continueing chess. He was about to stop playing against spasski too if his demands were not met. Fischer played all the greatest players at his time, and beat all of them. No one stood a chance, and he got bored, i guess.
Well that's a bit untrue, though.
I'm not dissing Fischer, as I think he was one of the best players, but still, the smoke's bigger than the fire.
First of all, Tal beat him, several times, and secondly, he didn't really have that much of an opposition.
Let's face it, Spassky wasn't that much of a challenge for him; he was a rather mediocre world champion, and never near to those that came before and after him.
I wonder what would have happened if Fischer played someone like Alekhine or Capa.
Tal only beat Fischer in the candidates, 1959, 4-0, which were also at the height of Mikhail's powers as he went on to defeat Botvinnik for the world title. The rest of their games were draws, or Fischer won.
Fischer played against arguably the best generation of chess players ever, post 1946 to about 1972: Botvinnik, Smyslov, Tal, Petrosian, Spaasky, Bronstein, Keres, Korchnoi, Geller, Benko, Gligorich, Larsen, Taimanov. It's a whole new argument, but you would be hard pressed to find a comparable list of talent after. Even Kasparov didn't face any of the above in their prime. Spassky was a worthy champion. Fischer had never beaten him until 1972 and Boris downed Petrosian, one of the greatest ever, easily top 10 all time.
How about Karpov? He was good. But I think it should be fischer ,karpov, kasparov or paul morphy.