Thursday, March 08, 2012

Poll: (Relatively) Strongest Player

I've never had a poll here before, and thought this might be fun for those opinionated chess players out there...which is probably about 99% of us. I previously shared my thoughts on The Greatest and the Top Ten (including my criteria and reasoning). Probably we all agree that comparing players of different eras with each other is questionable, but this poll is of your opinion of the strongest player relative to his contemporaries. How to rank degree of dominance and length of time at the top is left up to you! I believe I've included all the obvious candidates but there is an "other" just in case. If you pick that I would like to see your choice in the comments. Your comments on why you chose a player are of course very much appreciated.

It could be that with the level of technology and technique we have now it will be almost impossible for anyone in the future to dominate like the players listed in the poll. We shall see.

And now, the nominees:

Who was the (relatively) strongest player in chess history?



  
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's hard to top Capablanca's domination of his contemporaries, in my view.

Interesting that you don't have Botvinnik up there, considering how long he was world champion. I probably wouldn't include him either, though, since his results were somewhat tarnished by Soviet pressure for other Soviet-dominated players not to beat him in tournaments.

Anonymous said...

In the 19th century, Morphy. In the 20th century, Fischer.