Kasparov chess poster
He was very good in all aspects of the game from the opening to the endgame, from the positional theory to the tactics, from the attack to the defence and even pshycology. It wouldn't be close between us.įor now its true because he is already old.And he's not even active in tournaments.īobby Fischer was a very intelligent, cunning and an interesting gentleman (yes, gentleman). Maybe his strength is around 2600 or 2650. In the book Mortal Games, Kasparov is quoted: "Bobby is playing OK, nothing more. Many grandmasters observing the match said that Fischer was past his prime. In his rematch with Spassky in 1992, wikipedia says:įischer won the match, 10 wins to 5 losses, with 15 draws. Plus, there's no guarantee Fischer would have kept playing as well as he did in his prime. Even if Fisher played for another 15 years, it's unlikely his rating would have ended up being much higher than Kasparov's. Most of Fischer's opponents had lower ratings than most of Kasparov's (keep in mind that your rating goes up by more the higher rated your opponent is).
Kasparov was world champion for 15 years and his highest rating ever was 2851. If fischer kept playing i think he could have a rating over three thousand when he died (And I also wanted to correct several mistakes the original poster made). However, I think it's impossible to compare players of different eras because there are so many variables. I agree that in his prime he certainly was the best in the world in his day. Just to be clear: I'm not saying that Fischer wasn't the best player ever. This is a logical fallacy known as the "false dilemma". No proof? Well than, obviously Fischer is the best! Give these tools to players 100 years ago, and they'd be just as good as anyone.
I think that it is generally agreed that Karpov, Kasparov, and Korchnoi are better than players 100 years ago - simply because more and better chess books are available now, and modern players have computers to study from. If we could take any one of these players in their prime, time-travel them into the modern age, and let them study from all the new books written in the last ~100 years, any of them would be as good as any modern GM.Ĭould somebody show me proof where Karpov, Korchnoi and Kasparov have shown themselves to be better than all of these guys Fischer is better than?Īs mentioned in the above paragraph, it's very difficult to compare modern players to players 100 years ago. The problem with comparing modern players to players like Capablanca, Lasker, and Steinitz is: Capa, Lasker, and Steinitz didn't have books written by Capa, Lasker, and Steinitz to learn from - they invented new ideas and wrote the books! Later players were able to study these books, learn from their ideas, and improve on them. Tal actually beat Fischer more times than Fischer beat him. Fischer said that nobody alive would be able to beat Morphy in a match.Ī simple diagram will explain this entire thing.įischer>Spassky>Petrosian>Botvinnik>Tal, Smyslov and Bronstein, and Euwe, and Keres, and Reshevsky>Alekhine>Capablanca>Lasker>Steinitz>everybody before him.
He absolutely wipes the floor with the other contenders for the best.įischer himself said that Paul Morphy was the best chess player of all time. Gary Kasparov was the first guy to have a rating over 2800, and 2 others have done that since (Anand and Kramnik). was the first guy to get over 2800 ELO rating.įischer's highest rating ever was 2785. This has been discussed many times in these forums: