Three weeks ago, I came upon a story published on the internet captioned ‘The name of the game is domination’ by Albert Silver. It featured chess icon Bobby Fischer, who, had he been alive, would have celebrated his birth anniversary this March, and would have turned 70. Very likely, the story would have been published to coincide with Fischer’s birth anniversary.
The question is forever asked and debated: Who was the greatest chess player ever? Schonberg in his book Grandmasters of Chess argued that there is no greatest anything, because it is unlikely that a consensus would be finalised unilaterally. In many sports, the greatest player is not necessarily the one with the finest competitive record. Muhammad Ali lost a couple of fights and was floored on a few occasions. Yet Ali is generally considered the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time. The debate rages on.
There are many who think that Garry Kasparov was the greatest in chess. Others consider that Bobby Fischer at his best was slightly the more dominant player. How will we know for sure? They both have exemplary records. Kasparov was ranked world number one for two decades—a record that is probably unparalleled in all of sport. Fischer in juxtaposition to this performance cannot be judged in a similar category because he mysteriously disappeared after he won the world championship title. What I do know is that they both produced innumerable masterpieces over the chess board. Harry Golombek writing for the Times of London likened Fischer’s sixth game with Spassky in his world championship match to “a Mozart symphony”, perfect in detail and simple in its execution.
Elo expert statistician and owner of the Chessetrics website Jeff Sonas wrote comprehensively in a four-part series of articles titled ‘The greatest chess player of all time’. Using ruthless statistics he determined that for an eight-month period, from the end of the Larsen match until a few months before the Spassky encounter, Fischer boasted a higher Chessmetrics rating than anyone else in history. Based upon Sonas’s method, the second best peak rating of all time was held by Garry Kasparov with a 2886 rating on the March 1993 Chessmetrics list immediately following his +7 score in Linares, one of the two strongest tournaments of all time.
Bobby Fischer, October 1971……..2895
Garry Kasparov, March 1993………2886
Mikhail Botvinnik, October 1945….2885
Emanuel Lasker, May 1894…………2878
Jose Raul Capablanca, May 1921….2877
Alexander Alekhine, May 1931………2860
Anatoly Karpov, March 1989…………2848
Viswanathan Anand, March 1999…..2833
Vladmir Kramnik, August 2001………2826
Wilhelm Steintz, April 1876……………2826
The months and years represent the dates of publication of the official rating lists.
Norwegian chess phenomenon Magnus Carlsen has shattered Kasparov’s legendary 2851 Elo rating record. He now stands at 2872, the highest recorded rating on the planet; higher than world chess champion Vishy Anand. He is currently competing in the Candidates Tournament in London to determine a challenger for Anand.
Space would not permit prolonged discussion on the subject of recorded ratings. In a nutshell, however, Elo measures how well a player does against another, and then the rating is calculated to show the difference between the players. When Fischer set his 2785 record rating, the record was not so much in that single number, but the difference between him and the number two player Boris Spassy at 2660. His real record was being 125 Elo more than his closest rival. The same is true of Kasparov’s 2851. The number alone was quite meaningless in and of itself. What was meaningful was the 82 Elo advantage it held over his closest rival Vishy Anand rated 2769 in the same rating list. Historically, the greatest Elo gaps by any champion since 1971 are:
Rank Name Elo Edge Date of Publication
1 Bobby Fischer 125 January 1972
2 Garry Kasparov 82 January 2000
3 Anatoly Karpov 65 January 1982
4 Magnus Carlsen 62 January 2013
5 Veselin Topalov 34 July 2006
6 Vishy Anand 23 July 2007
