@jupp53 "Lasker used psychology as an art form. This has been used in every world championship since. Excluding Alekhine, Tal, and Fischer, what has any WC done?"
Fischer was a master of psychology. From the NYT:
'Whatever it was, the Spassky mindstyle was being swamped and overwhelmed by the Fischer mind‐style. The Fischer aura had enveloped him.'
www.nytimes.com/1972/09/03/archives/psychic-murder-at-the-chessboard-encounter-at-reykjavik-boy-wonder.htmlFischer had Russians tearing chairs apart trying to find the way he was secretly mind-controlling Spassky. 50 years later the vast majority of people can't understand what Fischer did and just write him off as "crazy". The fact is though, Fischer won and Lasker's "psychology" looks like parlor tricks compared to the way Fischer mind-****ed an entire country.
"Morphy played some horrible positional games"
Reti:
Morphy was the first positional player who,...understood the strategic basis for attack...his exploitation of open lines prepared the way for Steinitz's scientific treatment of closed positions and the era of modern chess. "
Capa:
"His main strength lay not in his combinative gift, but in his positional play and general style."
Botvinnik:
"To this day Morphy is an unsurpassed master of the open games. Just how great was his significance is evidant from the fact that after Morphy nothing substantially new has been created in this field."
Fischer:
" In a set match, Morphy would beat anybody alive today... Morphy was perhaps the most accurate chess player who ever lived."
Smyslov:
"His harmonious positional understanding the pure intuition would have made Morphy a highly dangerous opponent even for any player of our times."
Euwe:
" Morphy was a chess genius in the complete sense of the word."
Kasparov:
"Morphy had a well-developed feel for position, and therefore he can be confidently regarded as the first swallow - the prototype of the strong 20th century grandmaster."
http://www.edochess.ca/batgirl/quotes.html 