Who's The Best Positional Player In Chess?

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blake78613

Above all Botvinnik was fighter.

Kinn72

Capablanca shoyld be higher on the list as positional player

heinzie

Vladimir Topalov

Jason112

Capa is the best positional player, and all respect capa but everyone holds their breath at the mention of Tal the magician.

heinzie

Hahaa I forgot the emoticon Sealed

rigamagician

Viktor Kramnik, Vladimir Topalov and who can forget Boris Fischer!  He was pretty good at positional play as well.

philidorposition
Fezzik wrote:

 Toppy's chess was remarkably similar to Rybka's (higher agreement of moves), but Anand showed a much deeper understanding of the positions.


sources please?

chessroboto

I vote: A. Karpov

philidorposition
Fezzik wrote:

Chessbase.com for one, but I'd have to dig up the exact article. You could also run Rybka on the games for yourself. (And no, I'm not accusing Topalov of cheating.)


No, not about cheating, I would just be very surprised if Topalov's overall top 3 match up rate with Rybka 4 for the whole match would be higher than Anand.

orangehonda
philidor_position wrote:
Fezzik wrote:

Chessbase.com for one, but I'd have to dig up the exact article. You could also run Rybka on the games for yourself. (And no, I'm not accusing Topalov of cheating.)


No, not about cheating, I would just be very surprised if Topalov's overall top 3 match up rate with Rybka 4 for the whole match would be higher than Anand.


I don't remember if they used Rybka 4 (or 3) but overall I remember seeing Topo's match up was slightly higher... no idea where I saw it though.  But in the critical positions or number of blunders, Topa had the worse of it.  It only takes 1 or 2 moves to lose a game, after that the best defense may be more or less easy to see (lots of 1# and 2 matches) but you're still losing Smile

donglan
Fezzik wrote:

In defense of Tal.

Tal was a brilliant positional player! Everyone remembers his magical attacks, but they were well grounded in the position. One of his colleagues (Spassky?) said that Tal's strategy was simple: develop the pieces toward the center, then sac them somewhere.

Of course there was much more to Tal's game. A decade after winning and losing the world title, Tal was the #1 player in the world. He set the record for consecutive games unbeaten, and he did so in a very positional style.

Tal used his tactical attacking abilities to justify his positional judgements. Tactics are not the opposite of positional play. Tactics come organically from sound positional play.


That was right Tal deserved a right title as champion and one of the best positional player.

Festy1

Tigran Petrosian

Anatoly Karpov

Ulf Andersson

remolan

No one mentioned Fischer.

patzermike

Surely Smyslov deserves a mention. He was a creator of new opening systems and had great endgame accuracy.

MNMSkyBlue

Rubenstein. He had a decent opening, a strong and logical middlegame, and an endgame that was as good as Lasker's, considered the best endgame player of all time.

patzermike

Agree. Rubinstein often had Capa's knack for simple but devastatingly accurate chess.

Maybe_Player wrote:

Rubenstein. He had a decent opening, a strong and logical middlegame, and an endgame that was as good as Lasker's, considered the best endgame player of all time.

MNMSkyBlue

Ooh Capa also deserves a mention. He was a chess Titan.

MNMSkyBlue
harryz wrote:

Karpov

His endgame wasn't that strong. But his middlegame was pretty good. But he was more like a tactical player rather  than a positional player.

MNMSkyBlue
harryz wrote:
Maybe_Player wrote:
harryz wrote:

Karpov

His endgame wasn't that strong. But his middlegame was pretty good. But he was more like a tactical player rather  than a positional player.

Positional play is mostly based on middlegame, no?

Nope.

Mostly based on endgame.

patzermike

Fischer opined that Capa was somewhat overrated as an endgame wizzard. He thought capas forte was powerful middlegame play that so often gave him the superior endgame.