No, there is no way this is true. I know India is big, but there are a lot of people in the world not in India as well.

Outside of Kasparov, and Fischer this may be true

Wasn't Fischer one of the most well known people in the world after he beat Spassky or is that completely made up?

seems plausible to me, it was a huge news event afaik

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.

But it's safe to say that chess isn't a very popular sport for the large number of people who aren't in India. There are more than a billion people in China- they may be very familiar with Lin Dan, arguably the greatest badminton player of all time, but not at all familiar with Fischer.
Pop quiz- in terms of name awareness who's more popular, Lewis Hamilton, F1 champion or Karthik Narain? Pretty good chance it's the latter, again because of where he hails from.

I'm not trying to troll- it's just that hero worshipping in India is just so much more exaggerated than in many other nations- I was in the US when Mike Jordan was at his peak- his popularity was easily eclipsed by Kapil Dev (at that time).

When a country of 1 billion has only 1 individual Oly gold medal to its name, its sportstars however they rank world wide, are guaranteed a degree of idolatry.

I agree with you in the context of within the nation of India.

Heres a key question:

Will Anand always pale in comparison to Krammnik because....

Anand lost in a world title match to Kaspy while Krammnik was the person who fianlly dethroned Gary?

It would be interesting to revisit this, since Magnus has played so well the last couple years (and is now eligible for the overall undisputed list) and Anand has remained strong as well.

I'm not really a fan of GOAT lists in any sport but Anand has earned even more of my respect by the way that he won the Candidates and fought for the title again, also his other tournament performances in the last couple of years have been generally very good.

He's a legend of the game, no doubt, and is likely in the top-10 OAT. That said if a top-20 list OAT were put together and they were made to play each other in a double round robin tournament I think he'd do better than 10th.

Yeah I agree. I like GOAT lists though. GOAT lists GOAT.

From the era of OLDS, I have Lasker, Capablanca, and Alekhine in my top ten. Steinitz was influential and all, but eh, Lasker is my arbitrary cutoff point of OLDNESS.

Then Botvinnik is definitely in. Fischer and Karpov too. Karpov would be the GOAT if a certain player who shares all of the latters in his last name hadn't come along.

I don't think Tal, Petrosian, and Spassky reached the same level of accomplishment and/or dominance of those six. But they might have a case if there's a spot left open at the end.

Then there are the guys who came up in the '80s. Well, there's the GOAT of course. Nigel Short. I mean Garry Kasparov. That's seven. So we're onto 90s/00s and 00s/10s.

So it's Carlsen, Kramnik, and Anand who need to make their cases. I have Kramnik over Tal, Petrosian, and Spassky -- he won more WC matches than all of them, AND beat Kasparov -- and Anand over Kramnik, in no small part due to still killing it as an OLD. Carlsen's in too obviously, when you consider that he's been wrecking it for five years, has two WC wins under his belt, AND was a very strong player for a few years before he was #1. And projection of course. Unless his last tourney was an omen of sorts and he's gonna be a patzer soon.

Ya I think I agree with those guys being the top-10, although I can't help but think that a profound genius like Paul Morphy would have been able to compete at the top in any era.

OT question - Keres was never world champ but assuming he was, where would he rank on these lists.

11-15 or so.

In 12-team leagues he would be, at worst, a GM2 with upside.

If Anand retires, he will be the No. 1 ranked player with Gulfgate Hairfixing of all time. Actually I wonder how it feels to play chess with such a thing on your head. It should get pretty hot during battle and it may even cost him some Elo points.

Or maybe it's a secret conduit for PEDs.

Side effects include severely broken English. And whatever other indescribable weirdness is going on here.

Maurice could use a little hairfixing too!



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Fischer is undoubtedly the goat

/close thread

Yep. The games were on live TV in the United States.