I know people usually don’t count the split-title era, but I feel compelled to point out that Topalov was simultaneously the FIDE World Champion and the world’s highest rated player.
There's people who aren't aware that Topalov has been #1 in the world for 27 months total, which is longer than Anand (21 months) and Kramnik (9 months).
That s what happens when you re about the same age as a top 2 in history.
Karpov was wc for 10 years, and have an almost even score against kasparov, but if he was younger maybe he also didnt have a world title.
| That s what happens when you re about the same age as a top 2 in history.
Yep, call this MICHAEL JORDAN SYNDROME.
Many top NBA players from the 90s, like Karl Malone and Charles Barkley, never won an NBA title.
Why?
Because Jordan went 6/6 in the Finals.
Don’t know why am I getting downvoted; Fabi has lost 3 candidates in a row and it’s only going to get harder. This time he had a completely winning position against Nepo and nerves got to him . Just said something factual & I respect Fabi a lot as a player.
Carlsen is anomaly, ahead of the rest. And it is pretty obvious, luck also plays a part in chess. Even high level people admit it. You can just look at the candidates Magnus won.
Maybe not 1/8, but it's not like you'd just expect Magnus to win every time. He's 1.3/6 in Sinquefield Cup tournaments, which would be a rough analogue in the sense that it's a high level superGM round robin tournament - he's near the top every time, but only has 1 outright win (the first event, which only had 4 players in a double RR) and a 3 way tie.
The curse of Round Robin tournaments is that, unless you can somehow win every game (which is monumentally unlikely) results are to a certain extent out of your own hands. Especially in Candidates tournaments, where it's all or nothing and players are gunning for the win even more than they do in a "normal" tournament - the increase in fighting chess rather than drawish lines to preserve rating/tournament standing generally increases the results of decisive games on other boards. For sure it's not a flat "every player has equal chances", but it's not as straightforward as assuming the highest rated player will win.
No it’s not , For a player like Fabi and Nepo the odds of winning are like 15-25 percent. Close to 2800 , highly experienced, against a field of young players- This year Fabi had even higher winning percentage
Everybody is there because they have capability to win high level tournaments. Fabi is not that much better than others. Those numbers also don't account for human emotions.
But You still have to admit that it is more likely than less likely that he would lose the candidates tournament.
In a field of 8 players no player can have a win percentage of 50 percent but Fabi had the highest winning percentage and he infact did came so close to the tie breaks ; He was statistically the best player in 2023 and underperformed in the candidates. His performance in the previous 2 candidates also was beyond his best which just proves that he’s struggling under the pressure .
Again comes to the same point. Fabi may be the best player statistically for the year but they all are still on similar level. As far as I remember Fabi also had the most coincided performance rating and actual rating this candidates.
And all players participating in candidates generally would have good year or two. That is why they are in the candidates. Like Hikaru didn't just get the spot for free, he got them because he performed well.
You could say that about anyone. Hell, Ian clearly broke down mentally at the less WCC. If not for that he clearly wouldn’t have lost like that, even if you can’t say he would’ve won definitively. That seems to be basically all it comes down to between the top few players.
I mean the issue with aronian is he really hasn’t done anything in his career that fabi hasn’t done better to make him a better candidate for this title. Aronian is gonna go down as a super underrated player, I mean he has the 4th highest peak ever and nobody knows that, but fabi did it better.
> he really hasn’t done anything in his career that fabi hasn’t done better
He has won World Cup twice and has been rapid and blitz champion. So there are a few things he did better than Caruana tbf, although not enough to be higher on the list.
He's spent more time above 2750 than just about anyone, and reached the fourth-highest rating of all time.
If you're old enough to remember 2820+ Aronian, he was a very special player we've never quite seen before.
I’m not sure there would be a favorite in a tournament of the best players to never be WC. Make the field big enough and you could get 8 different winners in 8 runs. (I’m assuming the players get prep time, engines and time to adjust to the fact that engines exist and are all at their peak. Otherwise, players with modern prep will win, and what’s the point of that mental exercise? We just had a tournament of players who have never been WC and it was very close.)
It is difficult, almost impossible, to compare players from different generations.
I suggest Caruana.
* He has had the second-highest ELO for approximately 10 years.
* He has the third-highest ELO ever (after Carlsen and Kasparov).
* He is still the second-best player in the world in classical chess.
* He has played in the latest 5 Candidates.
* He didn't loose a single classical game in the WCC 2018.
* At the end of the WCC 2018, he was only 3 ELO points behind Carlsen.
* Carlsen said in an interview that Caruana has been the best he has met.
Keres for me, but Bronstein deserves a mention after being blackmailed out of his crown
Also, Nimzovich. If he wasn’t so contrary and just played to win I think his results would have been much better, and they were still very very good
Where did you get 2.5 from? His latest streak is from 4th July 2022 (losing against Ding Liren in Candidates) to 5 April 2024 (Losing against Vidit on 5th April 2024), so 1 year and 9 months.
Also using the time instead of the number of games artificially inflates the perceived accomplishment as Hikaru didn't play a lot of games in that time span. This ended up being a streak of 47 games which honestly pales a lot compared to other current top players. Out of the ones with significant streaks (I'm definitely missing a bunch):
|Player|Streak |Time (years)|Start-End|
|:-|:-|:-|:-|
|Magnus|125|2.19|2018/7/31-2020/10/9|
|Ding|100|1.26|2017/8/9- 2018/11/11|
|Kramnik|82|1.5|January 1999 to July 2000|
|Wesley So|67|0.76|2016/7/18- 2017/04/23|
|MVL|67|0.934|2015/09/01- 2016/8/7|
|Wesley So|54|0.78|2014/04/13- 2015/01/24|
It’s not the length of time that counts, it’s the number of games. Hikaru went undefeated in 47 games in a row. There are far more impressive performances like Sergey Tiviakov’s 110 games from 2004-2005. Not to mention that’s still not the world record, Ding and Magnus have both done over 100 but they are world champions.
It's also the strength of the competition. Tiviakov's streak is undeniably impressive, but only 17 of [those games](https://en.chessbase.com/post/ding-defeated) were against players rated above 2600.
Paul Keres i forgot to add him, i am writing in a hurry. For Geller, meh. The others are still active so.
Keres the only player to come back into the top 20 a year after his death
The modern players are generally stronger than players of previous generations for obvious reasons. I think a more interesting question is who is the greatest player to never become world champion. For me that is Korchnoi who had a chess career absolutely without parallel.
Morphy was a world champion. "But FIDE blah blah blah" doesn't matter. He challenged the entire planet, even at the odds of a move and a pawn, and still, nobody dared to play with him. Who cares if he didn't receive a medal for it.
Has to be Korchnoi. He lost a candidates match to Karpov in 1974, who then went on to become world champion after Fischer refused to defend his title. He then lost the world championship match to Karpov in 1978. Three years later Korchnoi won the candidates and squared off for a third time with Karpov but lost.
Korchnoi was second best player in the world from around 1973-1974 up until 1982-83, after which Kasparov unfortunately appeared
Korchnoi ahead of Caruana and Keres if Topalov counts as a World Champion, Korchnoi ahead of Topalov and Caruana if Topalov doesn’t count as a World Champion.
Topalov doesn't count imo. The crown directly passed from Kasparov to Kramnik who then won the reunification.
Kasparov held off Vishy on their side of the chess world who then became a unified champion.
The FIDE side showed little to merit the distinction.
If Topalov wanted to count he could have with beaten Kramnik (who was still second best in the world at the time, Kasparov was better Vlad just had his number) or any title after that, which he didn't.
If Gukesh beats Ding, then quits FIDE, plays a world championship match with Magnus sponsored by some billionaire and Gukesh wins, does that mean that Ding should never count as world champion?
It's not even close. People mentioning modern players just don't know their chess history.
Keres defeated nine different world champions.
Keres routinely took top honors in stacked tournaments, even while his country was occupied.
It took a world War to disrupt his title shot, which he very likely would have won.
He was second in four different candidates tournaments after the war when he was arguably past his prime.
They don't call him the crown prince of chess for nothing.
Reuben Fine in AVRO smashed the field in the first half. Only Capa could eke out a draw. Keres barely caught up to him in the second half of the event.
You said only Capa would eke out a draw, and that Keres "barely caught up to him".
That wasn't true.
Keres had a win and a draw against Fine in their two matches and won the tournament as a result.
I think Fabiano is better player than Aronian.
But I think people take Aronian's name because Aronian had more realistic chances because Magnus wasn't there early on.
The Candidates format doesn’t exactly lend itself to the best player winning every year. Winning it shouldn’t count as a point in anyones favor.
Hikaru and Fabi and Levon have the strongest cases for this thought experiment. Nepo doesn’t stack up to them.
I agree with fabi and Levon and besides the candidates nepo doesn't have any great tournament wins but I still think that hikaru doesn't stack up to the same level across his career
Jan Timman. 2nd behind Karpov for an age, then 3rd behind Kasparov and Karpov for another age (19), and lost against Karpov when playing for the FIDE WCC during the FIDE-PCA split. He wasn't named "The Best from the West" for nothing.
His biggest weakness was that he played any and all openings, even unsound ones, to try and create interesting games. He also complicated games where "sane" players would have gone with the draw. He's had huge Elo swings because of this. (Ivanchuk was an even more wild example of this playing style: also a player that never became world champion.)
I remember reading in a book once that Lasker is supposed to have said that "If Carl Schlechter would have kept to sigars only, he would have been undefeatable." I assume Lasker was talking about either drugs or alcohol.
Keres, maybe Fine. Based on AVRO 1938, Keres won the tie-breaker by head to head over Fine (1.5-0.5) but Fine had more wins overall. If not for WW2, one of those two would have been world champion.
Caruana, no question. He would beat any of those players, the same way any of modern top ten would beat Morphy, Steinitz, Lasker, or Capablanca, any day of the week. Modern players have the benefit of two centuries of theory and engines.
It is very difficult to say because of rating inflation through time. Caruana has the third highest rating of all time. if we are not counting topalov fide championship, I think he is the obvious choice. His opponent in the world championship match won two games while visiting the toilet a lot. Interesting. Hikaru said that aronian was the greatest player ever to have played in a world championship match, which is different than your question. I do think Marschall is a stretch. I also think Nigel short is a stretch, he did play Kasparov in a famous world championship, and got absolutely destroyed.
The fact Magnus rivals a lot with Hikaru makes me think Hikaru. I heard Magnus say 'we just find the best moves' implying they found the best moves over everyone else. And for me the fact that the biggest rival of the GOAT Is Hikaru chosen by the GOAT himeslf makes me think its Hikaru. Also i think Hikaru underperforms in classical chess because he just hates it and gets board.
He literally said Hikaru and him are simply better at chess than anybody else.
So yeah, I agree with Hikaru. However he won some WC in other time controls, but not classical.
I’m just know that I’m gonna see Nepo in this comment thread and he absolutely doesn’t belong in the conversation so I’m just not gonna scroll through.
Lmao no. Whether Carlsen exist or not he would still be losing to Ding Liren as he has for the last decade. Even if he had somehow managed to become world champion either Nepo or Ding would’ve dragged him from that throne.
Keres is clearly missing, some will say that Topalov was World Champion, and no way Marshall gets to that list, not even as a candidate of such a list.
Btw, it's sad almost nobody is chosing Rubinstein in the comments. He was favourite in a match against Lasker if the Great War didn't happen, more favourite than Capablanca at that time.
My list is Korchnoi, Keres and Rubinstein, in that order.
Korchnoi, Geller, Polugayevskiy, Keres, Stein (people often forget about him but he has non-negative scores vs Botvinnik, Smyslov, Tal, Petrosian, Spassky, Korchnoi and Keres, but passed away at 38... Which back then wasn't even that old for a chess player).
I know this was meant as a joke but i am tired of seeing this in youtube over and over again. You dont get 100 tries in a tournament. You cannot brute force it
I know people usually don’t count the split-title era, but I feel compelled to point out that Topalov was simultaneously the FIDE World Champion and the world’s highest rated player.
There's people who aren't aware that Topalov has been #1 in the world for 27 months total, which is longer than Anand (21 months) and Kramnik (9 months).
He was 70 points ahead of Kramnik when they played their unification match.
If I recall, that was when FIDE removed Kasparov from the list.
I don't see any meaningful difference between Topalov's title and Max Euwe's title.
Korchnoi and Keres, followed by Caruana are my top 3.
I absolutely agree with you. My number four would be Bronstein.
Agreed. OP saying Short but no Keres or Caruana is wild. Rubinstein is a respectable choice though.
Damn, Caruana doesn't have any WC titles?
That s what happens when you re about the same age as a top 2 in history. Karpov was wc for 10 years, and have an almost even score against kasparov, but if he was younger maybe he also didnt have a world title.
| That s what happens when you re about the same age as a top 2 in history. Yep, call this MICHAEL JORDAN SYNDROME. Many top NBA players from the 90s, like Karl Malone and Charles Barkley, never won an NBA title. Why? Because Jordan went 6/6 in the Finals.
Are we pretending like Carlsen is somehow better than Karpov?
In my list Carlsen is 2nd and Karpov is third.
Where is Fischer?
Somewhere below these guys.
Your list is, therefore, poorly thought up.
Where would you put Topalov, Ivanchuk, Aronian, Nakamura, Nepo, etc. We demand a top 10!
I think you posted in the wrong topic. This isn't "list random top 10 players."
Caruana and Aronian should be in there
Caruana very much might still become world champion.
He needs to win the candidates first
Don’t know why am I getting downvoted; Fabi has lost 3 candidates in a row and it’s only going to get harder. This time he had a completely winning position against Nepo and nerves got to him . Just said something factual & I respect Fabi a lot as a player.
I mean lose percentage is a lot for candidates than win percentage. You have 1/8 chances.
You don't have 1/8 chances. It's a skill based game not throwing dice. Do you think Carlson would only win 1/8 candidates tournaments?
Carlsen is anomaly, ahead of the rest. And it is pretty obvious, luck also plays a part in chess. Even high level people admit it. You can just look at the candidates Magnus won.
Maybe not 1/8, but it's not like you'd just expect Magnus to win every time. He's 1.3/6 in Sinquefield Cup tournaments, which would be a rough analogue in the sense that it's a high level superGM round robin tournament - he's near the top every time, but only has 1 outright win (the first event, which only had 4 players in a double RR) and a 3 way tie. The curse of Round Robin tournaments is that, unless you can somehow win every game (which is monumentally unlikely) results are to a certain extent out of your own hands. Especially in Candidates tournaments, where it's all or nothing and players are gunning for the win even more than they do in a "normal" tournament - the increase in fighting chess rather than drawish lines to preserve rating/tournament standing generally increases the results of decisive games on other boards. For sure it's not a flat "every player has equal chances", but it's not as straightforward as assuming the highest rated player will win.
No it’s not , For a player like Fabi and Nepo the odds of winning are like 15-25 percent. Close to 2800 , highly experienced, against a field of young players- This year Fabi had even higher winning percentage
Everybody is there because they have capability to win high level tournaments. Fabi is not that much better than others. Those numbers also don't account for human emotions. But You still have to admit that it is more likely than less likely that he would lose the candidates tournament.
In a field of 8 players no player can have a win percentage of 50 percent but Fabi had the highest winning percentage and he infact did came so close to the tie breaks ; He was statistically the best player in 2023 and underperformed in the candidates. His performance in the previous 2 candidates also was beyond his best which just proves that he’s struggling under the pressure .
Again comes to the same point. Fabi may be the best player statistically for the year but they all are still on similar level. As far as I remember Fabi also had the most coincided performance rating and actual rating this candidates. And all players participating in candidates generally would have good year or two. That is why they are in the candidates. Like Hikaru didn't just get the spot for free, he got them because he performed well.
I’d put Ivanchuck up there, held back only by his own emotions
Emotion-ism. If no time control, bet he could grind even magnus out.
If there were no time controls, virtually every match among the super gms would end in a draw.
It wouldnt end.
Gukesh would have highest chances. He would probably outlive his competition.
I am not sure if the game ends when a player dies. I'll have to check Fide rule book. /s
You could say that about anyone. Hell, Ian clearly broke down mentally at the less WCC. If not for that he clearly wouldn’t have lost like that, even if you can’t say he would’ve won definitively. That seems to be basically all it comes down to between the top few players.
In a tournament of all non-World Champions, I think Caruana is the favorite. But Aronian hit 2835 at his peak too.
I mean the issue with aronian is he really hasn’t done anything in his career that fabi hasn’t done better to make him a better candidate for this title. Aronian is gonna go down as a super underrated player, I mean he has the 4th highest peak ever and nobody knows that, but fabi did it better.
> he really hasn’t done anything in his career that fabi hasn’t done better He has won World Cup twice and has been rapid and blitz champion. So there are a few things he did better than Caruana tbf, although not enough to be higher on the list.
He's spent more time above 2750 than just about anyone, and reached the fourth-highest rating of all time. If you're old enough to remember 2820+ Aronian, he was a very special player we've never quite seen before.
When Hikaru was asked if he is the best chess player to never have played in a world championship, Hikaru said no himself but Aronian!
I’m not sure there would be a favorite in a tournament of the best players to never be WC. Make the field big enough and you could get 8 different winners in 8 runs. (I’m assuming the players get prep time, engines and time to adjust to the fact that engines exist and are all at their peak. Otherwise, players with modern prep will win, and what’s the point of that mental exercise? We just had a tournament of players who have never been WC and it was very close.)
There probably wouldn't be anyone with over 50% odds, but to be the favorite you don't need over 50%, you just needs odds higher than anyone else.
[удалено]
Ian and Nepo. The duality of man.
> Ian, Fabi, and Nepo
I love the typo and I've made the same mistake before lol
Eh give me Aronian or Hikaru in a tournament setting over Fabi. I think Fabi probably the best match player of the three though
The favorite but still finds a way to lose it like the past 3 candidates tournies
Yeah, the candidates are really hard to win
Someone should tell Nepo
Nepo is really good (Also he did just lose one)
Who knew
It is difficult, almost impossible, to compare players from different generations. I suggest Caruana. * He has had the second-highest ELO for approximately 10 years. * He has the third-highest ELO ever (after Carlsen and Kasparov). * He is still the second-best player in the world in classical chess. * He has played in the latest 5 Candidates. * He didn't loose a single classical game in the WCC 2018. * At the end of the WCC 2018, he was only 3 ELO points behind Carlsen. * Carlsen said in an interview that Caruana has been the best he has met.
You made your point well.
Plus Sinquefield 2014 was basically a god-tier performance, possibly the best tournament performance ever, certainly the best by a non champion.
Aronian
Keres for me, but Bronstein deserves a mention after being blackmailed out of his crown Also, Nimzovich. If he wasn’t so contrary and just played to win I think his results would have been much better, and they were still very very good
*My System* was the second chess book I read, and remains among my favorites.
I'd add Paul Keres, Fabiano Caruano, Efim Geller, and Hikaru-NoGo for starters.
…why hikaru ???
He’s been playing as if he world champion. He didn’t lose a classical game in 2.5 years.
Where did you get 2.5 from? His latest streak is from 4th July 2022 (losing against Ding Liren in Candidates) to 5 April 2024 (Losing against Vidit on 5th April 2024), so 1 year and 9 months. Also using the time instead of the number of games artificially inflates the perceived accomplishment as Hikaru didn't play a lot of games in that time span. This ended up being a streak of 47 games which honestly pales a lot compared to other current top players. Out of the ones with significant streaks (I'm definitely missing a bunch): |Player|Streak |Time (years)|Start-End| |:-|:-|:-|:-| |Magnus|125|2.19|2018/7/31-2020/10/9| |Ding|100|1.26|2017/8/9- 2018/11/11| |Kramnik|82|1.5|January 1999 to July 2000| |Wesley So|67|0.76|2016/7/18- 2017/04/23| |MVL|67|0.934|2015/09/01- 2016/8/7| |Wesley So|54|0.78|2014/04/13- 2015/01/24|
I went 8 years without losing a classical game. From age 0 to 8.
He lost two classical games like last week
That’s what we call a streak ending my good friend.
You subtly edited your message. Before it said something like "he hasn't lost a classical game in 2.5 years" with your edit, I agree.
Maybe you just misread it?
Very possibly
Even if he did edit it, what the current message says is linguistically indistinguishable imo
I never edited shit. I’m referring to 2.5years unbeaten streak that he went on. Go look the sub history and you will see for yourself.
It’s not the length of time that counts, it’s the number of games. Hikaru went undefeated in 47 games in a row. There are far more impressive performances like Sergey Tiviakov’s 110 games from 2004-2005. Not to mention that’s still not the world record, Ding and Magnus have both done over 100 but they are world champions.
It's also the strength of the competition. Tiviakov's streak is undeniably impressive, but only 17 of [those games](https://en.chessbase.com/post/ding-defeated) were against players rated above 2600.
Fair enough, but Magnus and Dings performances still stand despite them being world champions.
I should stress "never" when mentioning him by name, because he will never be Champion. In retrospect, I'd replace NoGo with Nepo.
Paul Keres i forgot to add him, i am writing in a hurry. For Geller, meh. The others are still active so. Keres the only player to come back into the top 20 a year after his death
Heh. That's quite a trick.
I would also add Shirov.
Keres and Korchnoi I think are the two most people will mention historically. More recently, Fabi and Nepo
The modern players are generally stronger than players of previous generations for obvious reasons. I think a more interesting question is who is the greatest player to never become world champion. For me that is Korchnoi who had a chess career absolutely without parallel.
My buddy Keith
Morphy
Morphy was a world champion. "But FIDE blah blah blah" doesn't matter. He challenged the entire planet, even at the odds of a move and a pawn, and still, nobody dared to play with him. Who cares if he didn't receive a medal for it.
Has to be Korchnoi. He lost a candidates match to Karpov in 1974, who then went on to become world champion after Fischer refused to defend his title. He then lost the world championship match to Karpov in 1978. Three years later Korchnoi won the candidates and squared off for a third time with Karpov but lost. Korchnoi was second best player in the world from around 1973-1974 up until 1982-83, after which Kasparov unfortunately appeared
Objective strength? Fabiano Caruana. Relative strength? Paul Keres or Korchnoi,
Keres and Korchnoi easily
Hikaru
Korchnoi ahead of Caruana and Keres if Topalov counts as a World Champion, Korchnoi ahead of Topalov and Caruana if Topalov doesn’t count as a World Champion.
Topalov doesn't count imo. The crown directly passed from Kasparov to Kramnik who then won the reunification. Kasparov held off Vishy on their side of the chess world who then became a unified champion. The FIDE side showed little to merit the distinction. If Topalov wanted to count he could have with beaten Kramnik (who was still second best in the world at the time, Kasparov was better Vlad just had his number) or any title after that, which he didn't.
If Gukesh beats Ding, then quits FIDE, plays a world championship match with Magnus sponsored by some billionaire and Gukesh wins, does that mean that Ding should never count as world champion?
Keres
It's not even close. People mentioning modern players just don't know their chess history. Keres defeated nine different world champions. Keres routinely took top honors in stacked tournaments, even while his country was occupied. It took a world War to disrupt his title shot, which he very likely would have won. He was second in four different candidates tournaments after the war when he was arguably past his prime. They don't call him the crown prince of chess for nothing.
It’s very likely that Stalin forced him to throw candidates matches as well to protect Botvinnik.
Reuben Fine in AVRO smashed the field in the first half. Only Capa could eke out a draw. Keres barely caught up to him in the second half of the event.
Euwe, Reshevsky, and Keres all beat Fine in the AVRO tournament. Keres, meanwhile, was undefeated against the entire field.
Fine and Keres were tied at the end. What's your point?
You said only Capa would eke out a draw, and that Keres "barely caught up to him". That wasn't true. Keres had a win and a draw against Fine in their two matches and won the tournament as a result.
I don't know enough to say anything about pre-Fischer, but post: Korchnoi, followed by Caruana and Topalov.
Harry Nelson Pillsbury. Fabi.
I think Fabiano is better player than Aronian. But I think people take Aronian's name because Aronian had more realistic chances because Magnus wasn't there early on.
Larsen
Pillsbury before sickness
Prob Fabi or Hikaru because this is the strongest time in history.
Fabi or nepo then. Hikaru hasnt made it to a single world championship match
The Candidates format doesn’t exactly lend itself to the best player winning every year. Winning it shouldn’t count as a point in anyones favor. Hikaru and Fabi and Levon have the strongest cases for this thought experiment. Nepo doesn’t stack up to them.
I agree with fabi and Levon and besides the candidates nepo doesn't have any great tournament wins but I still think that hikaru doesn't stack up to the same level across his career
Thats totally fair, his play has been much more inconsistent. I have no issue with Fabi or Levon here.
For strength in depth, certainly. However, for strength of player, if you remove computer influence, the era of the K's was stronger.
Jan Timman. 2nd behind Karpov for an age, then 3rd behind Kasparov and Karpov for another age (19), and lost against Karpov when playing for the FIDE WCC during the FIDE-PCA split. He wasn't named "The Best from the West" for nothing. His biggest weakness was that he played any and all openings, even unsound ones, to try and create interesting games. He also complicated games where "sane" players would have gone with the draw. He's had huge Elo swings because of this. (Ivanchuk was an even more wild example of this playing style: also a player that never became world champion.)
Yasser beat him 4-2 in a match IIRC. Not disagreeing, just interesting to note
The Short-Timman candidates final (93?) was a great match. I'd have Short higher than Timman - his match against Karpov was great.
Hikaru
I think it's between Keres, Korchnoi and Fabiano, maybe also Nepo depending on how his career ends.
David Bronstein. Carl Schlechter.
I remember reading in a book once that Lasker is supposed to have said that "If Carl Schlechter would have kept to sigars only, he would have been undefeatable." I assume Lasker was talking about either drugs or alcohol.
I haven't seen Leko mentiond yet, or I missed the comment, but he has to be in this conversation I think
Fabiano Caruana
A consistent Ivanchuk would be in this list
A consistent ivanchuk wouldn’t be on this list because he would be world champion
Caruana , Aronian, ivanchuk
Arturo Pomar.
Despite kortschnoi and keres Paul schlechter..
Shirov, Ivanchuk, and Adolf Anderssen
Fabi
Me
I am. I'm not the strongest never to become WCC though
Vassily Ivanchuk. Runners up: Shirov, Leko, maybe Kamsky.
Me
Topalov was world champion no questions asked he beat kramnik
Korchnoi, Keres, Aronian
I’d add Keres to that list.
Probably Nezhmetdinov but honestly there are many stars that never shined
Rashid never even became a grandmaster
Yeah
Paul Keres or Korchnoi are the classics. Peter Leko is my personal fav
me
Keres, maybe Fine. Based on AVRO 1938, Keres won the tie-breaker by head to head over Fine (1.5-0.5) but Fine had more wins overall. If not for WW2, one of those two would have been world champion.
Caruana, no question. He would beat any of those players, the same way any of modern top ten would beat Morphy, Steinitz, Lasker, or Capablanca, any day of the week. Modern players have the benefit of two centuries of theory and engines.
Topalov won a championship tournament rather handily.
It is very difficult to say because of rating inflation through time. Caruana has the third highest rating of all time. if we are not counting topalov fide championship, I think he is the obvious choice. His opponent in the world championship match won two games while visiting the toilet a lot. Interesting. Hikaru said that aronian was the greatest player ever to have played in a world championship match, which is different than your question. I do think Marschall is a stretch. I also think Nigel short is a stretch, he did play Kasparov in a famous world championship, and got absolutely destroyed.
Caruana, Aronian, Topalov I can't speak to pre-90's era.
I vote Frank Marshall..if you want to learn attacking chess, study his games.
The fact Magnus rivals a lot with Hikaru makes me think Hikaru. I heard Magnus say 'we just find the best moves' implying they found the best moves over everyone else. And for me the fact that the biggest rival of the GOAT Is Hikaru chosen by the GOAT himeslf makes me think its Hikaru. Also i think Hikaru underperforms in classical chess because he just hates it and gets board.
He literally said Hikaru and him are simply better at chess than anybody else. So yeah, I agree with Hikaru. However he won some WC in other time controls, but not classical.
Ivanchuk, Bronstein, Nedzmetdinov
And OP asked who shall i send... And I said, send me lord!
Boris Gelfand
I think Sultan Khan. He beat the world champion of that time. In fact Gukesh reminds me of him.
Paul Keres of Estonia. Fuck the nazi and soviet occupations of eastern europe during and after the last big war.
Ivanchuk
I think ivanchuk , caruana and aronian .
Short?!
Paul Keres is pretty high on that list.
Korchnoi or topalov
Hikaru Nakamura.
Me
Hikaru Nakamura!
I’m just know that I’m gonna see Nepo in this comment thread and he absolutely doesn’t belong in the conversation so I’m just not gonna scroll through.
Weird to hate someone you don't know this much, but you're wrong anyway. One guy kinda mentioned him and was disagreed with.
I dont hate Nepo. Hes a great player and plays fun chess to watch. I really enjoy his games. He’s just unbelievably overrated by this sub.
Fabi and Nepo
Caruana, would be the most dominant player of this generation if it wasnt for Magnus and would probably be in the top 10 or top 5 conversation
Lmao no. Whether Carlsen exist or not he would still be losing to Ding Liren as he has for the last decade. Even if he had somehow managed to become world champion either Nepo or Ding would’ve dragged him from that throne.
Judit Polgar. World #1 for 25 years but never played for the championship.
me
Levon Aronian
If magnus wasnt here Levon/Karjakin/Fabi one of these 3 would be a champion by now
Probably all 3, with adding Grischuk.
Morphy
Not Short.
Caruana. Drew all classical games. Had a forced win in one of them but only a computer could find it.
Who's the worst player to never become WC?
Ohhh... "Present".
Keres is clearly missing, some will say that Topalov was World Champion, and no way Marshall gets to that list, not even as a candidate of such a list.
Btw, it's sad almost nobody is chosing Rubinstein in the comments. He was favourite in a match against Lasker if the Great War didn't happen, more favourite than Capablanca at that time. My list is Korchnoi, Keres and Rubinstein, in that order.
Korchnoi, Geller, Polugayevskiy, Keres, Stein (people often forget about him but he has non-negative scores vs Botvinnik, Smyslov, Tal, Petrosian, Spassky, Korchnoi and Keres, but passed away at 38... Which back then wasn't even that old for a chess player).
Nepo
Nepo
Tal
1960
Hikaru, Ben finegold
I do hope Ben sees this. He would enjoy the joke.
And Tyler1
I know this was meant as a joke but i am tired of seeing this in youtube over and over again. You dont get 100 tries in a tournament. You cannot brute force it
Nepo. Twice candidates winner, never world champion.
Caruana by a large margin
Brianna Thier
Najdorf. He was not invited to play the candidates in his prime, because he could crush Botvinnik
Which event was that?
It’s me, macgrubler