Is Bobby Fischer the best chessplayer of all time?

how does it come that Lasker never gets mentioned? Always Bobby Fisher or Capablanca. Why not Lasker?

lasker underrated
lasker outshined by other old masters

@cp560 Good interesting informations. Who else was crushing his opponents in the candidates tournament like Fischer did in 1971? And you must consider that Fischer had to beat the Russian chess school alone in their time of domination of this sports. As you mentioned while Fischer was playing for the world title Karpov was studying his games together with the best chess coaches in the world. When i was asking my question i was of course not only talking about results and the period of dominance in world chess i was talking about the genius of the moment about the way and style of play at a certain time. And Fischer mentioned his reason for quitting chess because when it became a science where teams of players prepare the opening lines then it's not a good game anymore cause the genius of the moment is getting lost. I think the most exciting games in chess are those where suddenly out of the game someone created something unexpected genius which developed out of the position of the game like Fischer did in his youth with Byrne or Kasparov did with Karpov with his 20 moves mate line after a rook sac. Let's see if Carlsen or Caruana are able to present us one imortal game this worldcup i have not a lot of hope but wee will see... What Carlsen showed against Karjakin was not very convincing in the kind of manner he won.It was not the win of a dominant chess genius.

I am pretty sure that a Fischer at his best would stand no chance in a top seed contest today. With a bit of luck he would avoid being the last... The players just got much better in the „information society“.

Avoiding madhouse or jail is another story.

@Sarg0n: What you say makes sense. I have no comment to make about your last sentence though.

I happen to believe that Sir Isaac Newton is the greatest physicist ever. But he's been proved wrong. Newton could not compete in terms of knowledge with Einstein or even Feynman or Hawkings. Physics moved on, but could not have done so without Newton's contribution. Newton is not the best but was completely revolutionary in the way that he described reality. Way ahead of his contemporaries.

I feel the same way about understanding the effectiveness of the world greatest champions. For me, there are five players vying for the number one spot and, in terms of chess dominance, I cannot separate them: Paul Morphy, Bobby Fischer, Emanuel Lasker, Garry Kasparov and Magnus Carlsen. Equals.

Botvinnik's influence is everywhere - maybe there is an argument for saying he was the best ever. Lasker was champion for ever - 27 years, why not him.

@Sarg0n According to ratings what you say is simply not true. Maybe Ding, Carlsen, Mamedyarov and Caruana would have some edge over him today, other guys like for instance Wojtaszek or Topalov would be underdogs. Chess is not only preparation there is some component of talent, the knowledge of some sort principles and it's something difficult to achieve being it the mid XX century or the XXI century. And provided an Open top seed tournament I think he would have a very decent chance of winning.

Fischer‘s opponents defended really worse. Today he would face by far better techniques.

Only those 4 guys and maybe Giri, MVL and Wesley. The rest of the players blunder quite often in simple/technical positions.

Also Fischer overperformed current GMs against 26XX oposition.

Fischer would win no game against Karjakin. ;)

Actually, it’s like soccer. 30 years ago one could have not imagined how fast yet profound it will be in future.

Karjakin's been developping some sort of dubiously intentional style lately, so he'll probably end up in a LOT of trouble.