Was/is who?

hikaru is sick

Hikaru Nakamura

Smallville

The greatest of all time.

/thread

It's true that nakamura is almost certainly the best blitz player of all time. But it's kind of unfortunate how much allinmclovin likes him in general.

I have no idea how you could even begin to measure the strength of more classical players, so who knows?

Most of every single super strong player has also been super strong at blitz. I recently read an anecdote about Fischer playing his host at a place he had been staying at, a decent GM in his own right, at 5-0. Fischer went 18-0 against him. And when Kasparov played on ICC he was just destroying in spite of the fact he was clearly not used to the interface. And then there are guys like Roman Dzindischavili who also just destroy at blitz.

I don't think there's any way to measure. Hikaru is obviously very strong, but AFAIK he's also the player with the highest ELO who regularly plays under a known handle aside from Radjabov who is currently higher rated than Nakamura and vastly slower.

Anand.

Actually there is a decent argument for Fischer.

I heard a story about Fischer playing I think 5 minutes to 30 seconds or 1 minute vs. the 10th or so best player in the country (Who played in numerous US Championships) and winning at least 80% of the games.

I also heard a story about Fischer playing blind 5 minutes vs. 5 minutes vs. the same player and winning nearly all of the games.

I think that Tal should be mentioned.

At least of living players, it would be hard to argue otherwise. Doesn't he still beat the top players in the world in rapid games? I'd imagine that in blitz he'd also be near unbeatable.

Yeah, he's pretty much dominated the rapid part of Amber for the last 20 years

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melody_...nament#Winners

Today, this would be either Grischuk or Nakamura ( I've heard that Magnus Carlsen is very good too ).

Ever: probably Fischer. There are many accounts of him demolishing GMs at 5 0 or even with "time odds" of 5 minutes to 1 minute and very rarely losing; together with his result of +17=4-1 at Herceg Novi in 1970 ( his only loss was to Korchnoi ) makes the case strong. I heard one story after some GM (unnamed!) had a blitz session of losing almost every game to Fischer, asked "What do I need to improve?". Fischer said something like: You need to improve your openings...also, your middlegame....endings too!

Probably the same mental capabilities that made him better at blitz are what drove Fischer to push Fischerrandom chess. Less preparation, more intuition.

Fischer worked harder and better at preparation at the opening than anyone else in the world.

He even prepared better by himself vs. the entire Soviet Chess Machine of top players and trainers.

He just didn't like how any random low master could book up in theory and obtain relatively equal and/or simplified positions vs. him so he got into Fischerrandom chess.

On the off chance anyone cares the GM here was Peter Biyaisis (not sure about the spelling).

what a guy!

If we are talking about online, then probably Nakamura, but saying that he might be best ever live blitz player..? Not so sure about it. From top of my head I cannot remember him proving this at all, can someone provide me with some examples of his live blitz results or something? I wasn't following the U.S chess scene closely so maybe I missed something From what I have seen with my own eyes though, Grischuk and Mamedyarov are absolutely sick at blitz. Anand in my opinion is the best in rapid, but not blitz somehow.

Of the many, many Fischer stories around, I have never heard or read about this one before. Is there a source for this, because I highly doubt its accuracy.

See a lot of Nakamura mentions, but from what I've seen, Grischuk (depressnyak) is clearly stronger in blitz. Grischuk is my vote for current players.


All-time, probably Fischer. Lots of legendary Fischer-playing-blitz anecdotes, and I believe he crushed pretty much every blitz tourney he entered.

fischer is probably the right answer, but there should not be a blitz thread without mentioning blitz "legends" such as kiril georgiev, valentin arbakov and the late genrikh chepukaitis

I think it's unlikely that it's a player from a previous era. To get really good at blitz it's important to play a lot of blitz as well as just being a really strong chessplayer. Fischer didn't have world-class opposition to play regularly against, and the Soviet schools of chess typically didn't encourage playing lots of blitz. So I would say no one before the internet era really had the opportunity to become as strong a blitz player as Nakamura or Grischuk or whoever.

Among the world champions, as well as Fischer, Capablanca, Tal and Karpov all had a reputation as excellent blitz players. If you thought someone like Karpov would be too slow and methodical to be a brilliant blitz player, you are thinking the wrong way -- players like Karpov and Capablanca have a talent for putting the pieces on the right squares, which is just as important in top level blitz as flashy tactics and lightning calculation.

There's a J.H. Donner essay about blitz where he says Fischer is the second best blitz player in the world - he can't beat Petrosian.

Pretty sure he couldn't:

Herceg Novi 1970

That "essay" was concerning some blitz games between Fischer ( who would be at most 20 years old ) and Petrosian in the early 1960s since Donner's book "Chess Pieces" was written in 1963, long before Fischer's dominance in the early 1970s. Of course, Petrrosian was on the decline when the famous Herceg Novi tournament was played in April 1970. There were accounts that Fischer only used about two minutes on average for each of the games in that event yet somehow ( "Soviet propaganda"! ) scored 19/22 and likely put much more effort in his games against Petrosian!

Are we talking about internet blitz or regular 5min games?
These two are two different dogs because of the premove factor.

Also, the highest rated player on ICC, playchess or whatever is not necessarily the best player because the rating system is pretty far from perfect.

^^QFT about the ratings.

At time there's been someone who beat out Nakamura for a top ICC rating by just blatantly abusing the system.

The thread is talking about blitz in general, or blitz as a whole (internet And live blitz play).