keres

I don´t think there is ONE player, it´s more like a group of players consisting of one or two from every era. Korchnoi would probably get my vote: two world championship matches, two lost candidates finals, four (?!) Russian titles, many many tournament wins and a quarter final in the candidates at almost 60 y/o (Brussels loss against Timman in 1991 ). Not a real fan of his style though, too tenacious/positional. All the other candidates are known and mentioned before too: Bronstein, Reshevsky, Keres, Rubinstein, Tarrasch, Leonid Stein etc....maybe chess ´historians´ will later add Gelfand, Ivanchuk and maybe Carlsen.

Grunch:

Mikhail Tal? These two are amazing players, but I'm not sure that they were ahead of Tal.

Paul Keres probably.

Read the thread title please..

Hint: Tal was a world champion

carlsen

I think we can safely say we don´t know if Carlsen will be world champion. In the case of Keres et alia that problem is uhhhh...rather inexistant. The most underrated, even in this survey, to my taste is Leonid Stein though. Fairly irrelevant and discussed before but notice how many jewish players are among the historically best.* Why? Smarter? better work ethic? More culturally interested and active?

*Plz refrain from negative associations between me and this comment, my grandfather was from the beautiful place of Ashdod, although I trust this not being NVG that will not happen

He was responding to the OP.

And therefore the comment makes sense:

I think it is a rather safe bet that Carlsen will make it sooner or later, because of the age gap. The question is what a world championship is worth these days and I am not talking $$$-worth but worth as sporting archievement.

how strong was boleslavsky ?

Number 3 in 1950, lost a playoff match to Bronstein to decide the candidates tournament, which he was leading before the last round I believe. His practical strenght declined relatively fast after that, but he was one of the top analysts and opening specialists all the way through the sixties. He wasnt invited to the 1948 World Championship Tournament, so he probably had only a few years of world contender strength in him. Kasparov discusses him in his series, I think I remember reading Boleslavsky suffered from ,,bad nerves".

Gelfand? Really?

yeah Gelfand is such a weird name to have there, there are so many players in a class below Ivanchuk and Carlsen. Shirov? Svidler? Morozevich? Adams? Kamsky? I could add more names to the list but I would say anyone younger than that has an outside chance of becoming WC some time.

Yeah, I stand corrected. Gelfand was probably a stretch. But he´s 40+ and still going strong though. 3rd or 4th in the last WC Tournament in Mexico, recent World Cup winner, many times Candidate (including the lost semi-final of the ´Elista match´ against Karpov , after taking the lead), outright winner of the 1993 Biel Interzonal etc. He´s part of a really strong generation that is only slowly receding, but probably not world champion material. He may historically be placed in the class of players like Polugayevsky, Geller, Portisch and indeed Shirov and Short, the just-nots, or one class-belows.

I'd take Kamsky, Short and Ivanchuk over Gelfand.

Please explain how Kamsky > Gelfand

It's a little closer than I thought, but Kamsky is still clearly ahead.

Kamsky has beaten Salov, Kramnik, Anand, Short, and Shirov in matches of at least 4 games. He's also played for for some form of the World Championship (vs Karpov 1996) and the finals twice (vs Anand 1995 and Topalov 2009).

Gelfand has made the semis of one Candidates matches series (1996), and made the semis of one FIDE KO (1997), and making the WC tourney in 2007 where he did finish second.

However, in the end, I honestly think back on chess in the 90s and think of Gelfand as "super GM playing in all the biggest tourneys" but Kamsky as "potential world champ". Not sure how many players in the world (if any) have match wins over both Anand and Kramnik on their resume.

Kamsky is still among top 10 players, actually. There are players like Radjabov, Elianov, Mamedyarov, Nakamura, etc. who earn rating points not winning any serious tournament and there is Kamsky who was 4 times world title contender, beating all the top players except Karpov & Kasparov, even though his rating is not that big.

Key word is "was".. I am not saying he is a bad player or anything, but judging him by something he achieved 20 years ago is quite funny.

Yes but the 2007 World Cup which he won was not 20 years ago. As for his current playing strength, didn't he win US championship, Reggio Emilia, Philadelphia, President's Cup, Baku Open, Mainz this year?

Rubenstein
Keres
Reshevsky
Larsen
Korchnoi

why not morphy...
i think pilsbury at 1 time as awesome as well

I think because Morphy simply lived at a time when the World Championship was not yet officially or privately regulated. Many do consider him the ´First´ world champion, or the first player to clearly be the strongest in an era where the game was already fairly competitive, unlike for example in times of As Suli, Ruy Lopez or Philidor. Pillsbury is definitely a candidate yeah, he played some fn awesome games and had fantastic results before syfillis (probably) kinda ruined his brain.

Many years ago, I read that the Russians banned blindfold chess because they believed that Pillsbury's premature death was due to all the displays he gave. If my memory doesn't fail me, Fine (I think) wrote that Pillsbury was believed to have contracted syphilis during his visit to St Petersburg for the great event of 1895-96. Of course, I've also seen it bandied about that the reason Capablanca lost the penultimate round to Tarrasch at St Petersburg 1914 was due to his having gone straight to the board from the bed of the mistress of a Grand Duke. Lots of temptations in St Petersburg!

Carlsen