Lobowolf Posted July 10, 2010 Report Share Posted July 10, 2010 Yasser Seirawan's latest book, "Chess Duels" arrived at my house yesterday. In addition to some great games, annotations, and anecdotes, he names his "5 greatest chess players." For the curious: 5. Boris Spassky4. Viswanathan Anand3. Bobby Fischer2. Anatoly Karpov1. Garry Kasparov Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mike777 Posted July 10, 2010 Report Share Posted July 10, 2010 ok.....I bite If we assume the top 5 why in the world would fisher be 3? I can only guess...he was too mentally ill too ever be numberone with current computers? ---------- In any event it is always fun to compare different generations...with assumptions..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JLOGIC Posted July 10, 2010 Report Share Posted July 10, 2010 Mike, Kasparov is as auto of a #1 as you can get in a game or sport. The only question is whether Fischer should be #2 or #3 imo. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pooltuna Posted July 10, 2010 Report Share Posted July 10, 2010 Yasser Seirawan's latest book, "Chess Duels" arrived at my house yesterday. In addition to some great games, annotations, and anecdotes, he names his "5 greatest chess players." For the curious: 5. Boris Spassky4. Viswanathan Anand3. Bobby Fischer2. Anatoly Karpov1. Garry Kasparov I don't see José Raúl Capablanca, Paul Morphy, or Alexander Alekhine on the list oh wait none of these guys have played in the last 50 years :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lobowolf Posted July 10, 2010 Author Report Share Posted July 10, 2010 He clearly went primarily with peak ability, not relative to peers. While no doubt he recognizes the genius of Capablanca, Alekhine, etc., they're the giants, and others are on their shoulders now. As for Karpov v. Fischer, Karpov got longevity credit. I think a peak Fischer beats a peak Karpov, but Karpov proved he was the best, albeit in a Fischer-less world, for a hell of a long time. He spent more than two years just defending the world championship. In the world of what-if, it's possible that if Fischer hadn't retired, Karpov might not have been world champion. I think Fischer easily beats him in '75 and '78 (years in which Karpov struggled mightily to beat Korchnoi) The interesting match would have been '81. It's not at all clear that Karpov would have caught Fischer before Kasparov caught Karpov. Karpov was definitely one of the elite, but he did catch a break in coming a long during the gap between two other elites. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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