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Chess Lists
July 7, 2020
In the first number of Chessworld Magazine, Bobby Fischer gave this list:
The 10 Greatest Players of all Time
by Bobby Fischer
from Chessworld Jan/Feb 1964 Vol. 1, No. 1
1. PAUL MORPHY
Perhaps the most accurate player who ever lived, he would beat anybody today in a set-match. He had complete sight of the board and never blundered even though he moved quite rapidly, rarely taking more than five minutes to decide a move. I've played over hundreds of his games and am continually surprised and entertained by his ingenuity.
2. HOWARD STAUNTON
His games are completely modern; where Morphy and Steinitz rejected the fianchetto, Staunton embraced it. In addition, he understood all of the positional concepts which modern players hold so dear, and thus – with Steinitz – must be considered the first modern player. His right to be on a list of the ten greatest players of all time is firmly founded in the profundity of his insights, especially in the opening, and the great wealth of book knowledge that was his.
3. WILHELM STEINITZ
Before him, the King was considered a weak piece, and players set out to attack the King directly. Steinitz claimed that the King was well able to take care of itself and out not be attacked until one had some positional advantage. Pawns out to be left back, Steinitz claimed, since they can only move forward and can’t retreat to protect the same ground again. He understood more about the use of squares than did Morphy, and contributed a great deal more to chess theory. Steinitz didn’t mind getting himself into cramped quarters if he thought that his position was essentially sound.
4. SIEGBERT TARRASCH
Razor-sharp, he always followed his own rules. In spite of devotion to his own supposedly scientific method, his play was often witty and bright. He was a great opening theorist, vastly superior in this respect to Emanuel Lasker, for example, who was a coffee-house player: Lasker knew nothing about openings and didn’t understand positional chess.
5. MIKHAIL TCHIGORIN
The first great Russian player and one of the last of the Romantic School. At times he would continue playing a bad line even after it was refuted. He was the finest endgame player of his time. In the later years of his career, after trial and error, he gave up trying to refute Steinitz’ lines and began playing them himself.
6. ALEXANDER ALEKHINE
He always wanted a superior center; he maneuvered his pieces toward the King side, and around the twenty-fifth move, began to mate his opponent. He disliked exchanges, preferring to play with many pieces on the board. His play was fantastically complicated, more so than any player before or since. Never a hero of mine. His style worked for him, but it could scarcely work for anybody else. His conceptions were gigantic, full of outrageous and unprecedented ideas. It's hard to find mistakes in his games, but in a sense his whole method was a mistake.
7. JOSE CAPABLANCA
He had the totally undeserved reputation of being the greatest living endgame player. His trick was to keep his openings simple and then play with such brilliance that it was decided in the middle game before reaching the ending -- even though his opponent didn't always know it. His simplicity is a myth.His almost complete lack of book knowledge forced him to push harder to squeeze the utmost out of every position.
8. BORIS SPASSKY
He can blunder away a piece, and you are never sure whether it's a blunder or a fantastically deep sacrifice. He sits at the board with the same dead expression whether he's mating or being mated.
He has some weaknesses, but he makes it difficult for an opponent to take advantage of them. He doesn’t play closed positional chess very well, Still, he always seems a little ahead of you on theory. He rates a place on this list because of his dynamic, individual style.
9. MIKHAIL TAL
Even after losing four games in a row to him I still consider his play unsound. He is always on the lookout for some spectacular sacrifice, that one shot, that dramatic breakthrough to give him the win.
In spite of Spassky’s irregularities, he is, in fact, a sounder player than Tal, but Tal is more brilliant.
10. SAMUEL RESHEVSKY
From 1946 to 1956 probably the best in the world, though his opening knowledge was less than any other leading player. Like a machine calculating every variation, he found moves over the board by a process of elimination and often got into fantastic time pressure. He can see more variations in a shorter period of time than most players who ever lived. Occasionally, in fact, he comes up with new moves – spontaneous ideas he had fabricated from no knowledge.
(W.K. - I have edited the long comments).
________
This article received a huge amount of criticism because favorites like Emanuel Lasker and Mikhail Botvinnik were not on the list. But if you put them on the list, then who do you take off? And should Bobby himself be there?
In recent years, the older masters on the list have been replaced by the moderns. One such gives these as the best that have ever been:
1. Garry Kasparov
2. Anatoly Karpov
3. Magnus Carlsen
4. Wilhelm Steinitz
5. Jose Raul Capablanca
6. Bobby Fischer
7. Alexander Alekhine
8. Mikhail Botvinnik
9. Paul Morphy
10. Vishwanathan Anand
https://www.ichess.net/blog/greatest-chess-players/
There isn’t a chessplayer alive who could look at this list and not wish to change it in some way.
________
In 1977, The Book of Lists was published. This refers to any one of a series of books compiled by David Wallechinsky, his father Irving Wallace and sister Amy. Each book contains hundreds of lists on unusual or obscure topics. Some of these:
- 9 Cats Who Traveled Long Distances to Return Home
- The 5 Most Hated and Feared persons in History
- 10 of the Worst Generals in History
- Ellery Queen’s 17 Greatest Fictional Detectives of All Time
- 15 Famous Events That Happened in the Bathtub
- Irving Chernev’s 12 Greatest Chess Players of All Time.
- 8 Remarkable Escapes from Devil’s Island
________
In 1982, Andy Soltis, under the influence of the lists books of the time published two columns with chess lists. The first in Chess Life April of 1982 was entitled LISTOMANIA – mainly about player’s ratings. This was followed by another in May of 1982 with the Ten Most Expensive Chess Books, The Longest Running Chess Magazines and the Best-Selling Dover Chess Books.
In 1984 he published The Book of Chess Lists (McFarland) and wrote this:
“This book grew out of two articles I wrote in my column for Chess Life during 1982. Those columns drew the greatest response of any I had done in four years of writing for the national chess magazine. Readers had suggestions for additional lists took issue with those I printed or offered a bit of information or trivia that could be worked into another column. They suggested lists of longest games, biggest blunders, best time-pressure players – even the most obnoxious masters. As I suspected, chessplayers love lists.”
That book has 218 pages with 63 lists. I have always thought that it was one of Soltis’s best and most interesting books.
(to be continued)
July 7, 2020
In the first number of Chessworld Magazine, Bobby Fischer gave this list:
The 10 Greatest Players of all Time
by Bobby Fischer
from Chessworld Jan/Feb 1964 Vol. 1, No. 1
1. PAUL MORPHY
Perhaps the most accurate player who ever lived, he would beat anybody today in a set-match. He had complete sight of the board and never blundered even though he moved quite rapidly, rarely taking more than five minutes to decide a move. I've played over hundreds of his games and am continually surprised and entertained by his ingenuity.
2. HOWARD STAUNTON
His games are completely modern; where Morphy and Steinitz rejected the fianchetto, Staunton embraced it. In addition, he understood all of the positional concepts which modern players hold so dear, and thus – with Steinitz – must be considered the first modern player. His right to be on a list of the ten greatest players of all time is firmly founded in the profundity of his insights, especially in the opening, and the great wealth of book knowledge that was his.
3. WILHELM STEINITZ
Before him, the King was considered a weak piece, and players set out to attack the King directly. Steinitz claimed that the King was well able to take care of itself and out not be attacked until one had some positional advantage. Pawns out to be left back, Steinitz claimed, since they can only move forward and can’t retreat to protect the same ground again. He understood more about the use of squares than did Morphy, and contributed a great deal more to chess theory. Steinitz didn’t mind getting himself into cramped quarters if he thought that his position was essentially sound.
4. SIEGBERT TARRASCH
Razor-sharp, he always followed his own rules. In spite of devotion to his own supposedly scientific method, his play was often witty and bright. He was a great opening theorist, vastly superior in this respect to Emanuel Lasker, for example, who was a coffee-house player: Lasker knew nothing about openings and didn’t understand positional chess.
5. MIKHAIL TCHIGORIN
The first great Russian player and one of the last of the Romantic School. At times he would continue playing a bad line even after it was refuted. He was the finest endgame player of his time. In the later years of his career, after trial and error, he gave up trying to refute Steinitz’ lines and began playing them himself.
6. ALEXANDER ALEKHINE
He always wanted a superior center; he maneuvered his pieces toward the King side, and around the twenty-fifth move, began to mate his opponent. He disliked exchanges, preferring to play with many pieces on the board. His play was fantastically complicated, more so than any player before or since. Never a hero of mine. His style worked for him, but it could scarcely work for anybody else. His conceptions were gigantic, full of outrageous and unprecedented ideas. It's hard to find mistakes in his games, but in a sense his whole method was a mistake.
7. JOSE CAPABLANCA
He had the totally undeserved reputation of being the greatest living endgame player. His trick was to keep his openings simple and then play with such brilliance that it was decided in the middle game before reaching the ending -- even though his opponent didn't always know it. His simplicity is a myth.His almost complete lack of book knowledge forced him to push harder to squeeze the utmost out of every position.
8. BORIS SPASSKY
He can blunder away a piece, and you are never sure whether it's a blunder or a fantastically deep sacrifice. He sits at the board with the same dead expression whether he's mating or being mated.
He has some weaknesses, but he makes it difficult for an opponent to take advantage of them. He doesn’t play closed positional chess very well, Still, he always seems a little ahead of you on theory. He rates a place on this list because of his dynamic, individual style.
9. MIKHAIL TAL
Even after losing four games in a row to him I still consider his play unsound. He is always on the lookout for some spectacular sacrifice, that one shot, that dramatic breakthrough to give him the win.
In spite of Spassky’s irregularities, he is, in fact, a sounder player than Tal, but Tal is more brilliant.
10. SAMUEL RESHEVSKY
From 1946 to 1956 probably the best in the world, though his opening knowledge was less than any other leading player. Like a machine calculating every variation, he found moves over the board by a process of elimination and often got into fantastic time pressure. He can see more variations in a shorter period of time than most players who ever lived. Occasionally, in fact, he comes up with new moves – spontaneous ideas he had fabricated from no knowledge.
(W.K. - I have edited the long comments).
________
This article received a huge amount of criticism because favorites like Emanuel Lasker and Mikhail Botvinnik were not on the list. But if you put them on the list, then who do you take off? And should Bobby himself be there?
In recent years, the older masters on the list have been replaced by the moderns. One such gives these as the best that have ever been:
1. Garry Kasparov
2. Anatoly Karpov
3. Magnus Carlsen
4. Wilhelm Steinitz
5. Jose Raul Capablanca
6. Bobby Fischer
7. Alexander Alekhine
8. Mikhail Botvinnik
9. Paul Morphy
10. Vishwanathan Anand
https://www.ichess.net/blog/greatest-chess-players/
There isn’t a chessplayer alive who could look at this list and not wish to change it in some way.
________
In 1977, The Book of Lists was published. This refers to any one of a series of books compiled by David Wallechinsky, his father Irving Wallace and sister Amy. Each book contains hundreds of lists on unusual or obscure topics. Some of these:
- 9 Cats Who Traveled Long Distances to Return Home
- The 5 Most Hated and Feared persons in History
- 10 of the Worst Generals in History
- Ellery Queen’s 17 Greatest Fictional Detectives of All Time
- 15 Famous Events That Happened in the Bathtub
- Irving Chernev’s 12 Greatest Chess Players of All Time.
- 8 Remarkable Escapes from Devil’s Island
________
In 1982, Andy Soltis, under the influence of the lists books of the time published two columns with chess lists. The first in Chess Life April of 1982 was entitled LISTOMANIA – mainly about player’s ratings. This was followed by another in May of 1982 with the Ten Most Expensive Chess Books, The Longest Running Chess Magazines and the Best-Selling Dover Chess Books.
In 1984 he published The Book of Chess Lists (McFarland) and wrote this:
“This book grew out of two articles I wrote in my column for Chess Life during 1982. Those columns drew the greatest response of any I had done in four years of writing for the national chess magazine. Readers had suggestions for additional lists took issue with those I printed or offered a bit of information or trivia that could be worked into another column. They suggested lists of longest games, biggest blunders, best time-pressure players – even the most obnoxious masters. As I suspected, chessplayers love lists.”
That book has 218 pages with 63 lists. I have always thought that it was one of Soltis’s best and most interesting books.
(to be continued)
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