Quote:
Originally Posted by Montrealcorp
"reigning World Champion Viswanathan Anand described him as "the greatest chess player who ever lived."
but who is he to know such a thing
"Fischer's great rival Mikhail Tal praised him as "the greatest genius to have descended from the chess heavens".
believe what u want but imo i would trust them a bit more for no particular reason....
but thinking Carlsen should be consider better then fisher just yet , i lol....
he might be able to surpass fisher and kasparov in time , no doubt about it but hold down your horses and this match is far from being the match that will decide where Anand will hold in history..
Anand is not in his prime for sure and Carlsen is just beginning his reign, tho it will at least gives us some hint about it.
I've nothing against taking quotes from peer groups but I also remember Tal saying his favourite player was Rashid Nezhmetdinov who was nowhere near the WC level. Fischer himself I'm sure once said Lasker was the greatest player of all time.
Anyway it's all subjective since its impossible to rate players from completely different eras. A good example being many people (myself included) downgrade Fischer for never defending the title, however how do you rate Botvinnik who lost the title 3 times but regained it twice?
One thing I think we can credit Fischer for is breaking the Soviet stranglehold, not only did they have the Champion for so long but also so many of the top Grandmasters in the World at the time (hence the USSR v Rest of World match). Fischer broke that and inspired a generation such as Miles, Timman, Short etc who although they may never have won the title themselves were able to inspire further generations after them.