Tuesday, January 12, 2021

Top chess players of all time?

Still on chess...There was a time when I was quite curious about who the best chess players of all time were. There was an article before (not sure if I can still find it online) that sort of assessed the top players from different eras including when there were no formalities of time constraints to games or number of games played for the championships. Here is an entry from wikipedia for a quick reference to the topic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_top_chess_players_throughout_history

I screen-capped this image showing the 16 official world chess champions who are among the top players in history. Call me sentimental or old-fashioned but these people with the exception of perhaps the last 3 world champions had little of the advanced tools now available to the so-called super grand masters (ELO rating >2600). Among them, I am personally a fan of Capablanca, Fischer, Botvinnik, Kasparov and Petrosian (in that order).

From top (L-R): Row 1 - Wilhelm Steinitz, Emanuel Lasker, Jose Raoul Capablanca & Alexander Alekhine; Row 2 - Max Euwe, Mikhail Botvinnik, Vassily Smyslov & Mikhail Tal; Row 3 - Tigran Petrosian, Boris Spassky, Robert Fischer & Anatoly Karpov; and Row 4 - Garry Kasparov, Vladimir Kramnik, Viswanathan Anand & Magnus Carlsen

Not include for obvious reasons are prominent GMs who could have become champion or were recognized as champions but with asterisks on their accomplishments. Viktor Korchnoi is arguably one person who could have been world champion on 2 or 3 occasions. There are also the likes of Paul Morphy and Aron Nimzowitch, who are very prominent for their contributions and were recognized among the strongest if not the strongest players of their time. I think 'classical' would be also be an appropriate word to describe many of them who along with other masters of the game developed the theories and praxis that have come to define many of the variations of the game as its played today.

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