I like the good old Soviet-Russian school. The great pleiad of Soviet-Russian grand masters like Alekhine, Karpov, Kasparov. And Capablanca, Anand, Fisher are great chess players as well.
Well, objectively, Kasparov has to be considered the best of all time. But my favorite is Paul Morphy, who can be said to have personally ended the Romantic Era of chess and ushered in the Modern Era.
Yeah, this was a great time in the history of chess. But I'm afraid that the Cyber Era of chess is coming. You know, all these machines such as Deep blue...
King's Gambit. Morozevich - Anand [video=youtube;Gk-Ox4tPkDE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk-Ox4tPkDE[/video] - - - Updated - - - King's Gambit. Morozevich - Anand [video=youtube;Gk-Ox4tPkDE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk-Ox4tPkDE[/video]
I think Magnus Carlsen today is stronger than Kaparov was at his peak. But consider this, much has changed in the world of chess, the training methods became more professional and the number of top players able to beat each other - means also pushing each other to new levels - increase. So, I think it is impossible to compare the achievements of Emanuel Lasker with those of Kasparov or Carlsen. Maybe a Lasker born today would have taken surely a much quicker and possibly even a slightly better development. In general the historical ELOs point out that the greatest world chess champions were about the same league, if you take that development into account I summarized above that I see as an advantage for the more modern champions, they would have been very close to each other. The more impressive is Fischers one year ELO peak he achieved in 1972, outcasted by the rest of the Soviet world elite, training for his own and reaching these levels in 1972. Anyway, it does not mean necessarily that he would have grown much stronger without these handicaps for sure. There is another question what the best world player is, Steinitz e.g. never achieved exactly the same level as some later world chess champions, but he created the modern chess, he for himself discovered secrets no one before discovered and the other players had to adopt his principles, turn them onto him, to be able to beat him. So in a competitive sport like way, I would say he was definitely not the best chess player of all times, but in a way of creativeness and analyzing the chess, he was definitely the best or one of the best. There are some world champions, who were great players as well, but within the world champions not at the same level as the best, e.g. Max Euwe who was able to beat Alekhine in a bad shape or the guys who took advantage of Botwinniks psychological problems with defending a title, but were in fact not better than him; Smyslov or Tal.
