Talk:Greatest chess player of all time

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Much of this article (at least the stuff not in the "statistical methods" section, which is new) has been moved from World Chess Championship (see that article's talk page for my thoughts on why this material is better in its own article). I have, however, deleted the below section:

Hence, it is extremely unclear which single player truly is "the best", but nearly all lists of the best players include at least the following ten (in chronological order):

The list is completely subjective, and since we now have other lists which, while not really any more objective are at least attributed to particular sources, this one is probably unnecessary.

A note on Chessmetrics: it seems Sonas has recently overhauled the website, and a lot of the ratings seem to have changed (formerly, Capablanca had the highest 5-year peak average). The quote I've put in the article from him about it being impossible to compare ratings of players from different eras is from the old version of the website, but the ratings I've quoted are from the new version. I know this isn't ideal--it's a quick fix while I try to find a similar quote on the new site (if it turns out there isn't one... well, I'm not sure what the best thing to do will be then). --Camembert 18:39, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Richardcavell's edit

I'm generally reluctant to do wholesale reverts of edits made in good faith, which is why I'm explaining myself here. I think Richardcavell's edit of 20-Nov-2006 actually confuses the article. First, I don't see "what a player gains from analysing the games of a particular player" has to do with greatest player of all time. An instructive player need not be a great player, and vice versa. Second, I don't think the Fischer/Kasparov example is accurate, and will inevitably lead to people with different opinions editing it. So I'm undoing the entire edit. Perhaps better would be to produce an example ("Author X once evaluated player greatness judging by how instructive their games were"), but to my knowledge this has never been done. Rocksong 02:39, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. I take your reversion in good faith. I'd still like to see something there about subjective factors playing a role in determining who was the best chess player. - Richardcavell 03:43, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for taking my revert in right spirit! In general, I think would be good to list any "quality" subjective lists out there. I know of at least two which deserve mention: The prolific author Irving Chernev wrote a book called "The Golden Dozen" in which he ranks his top 12 (up to Fischer, i.e. Karpov not considered). It was a fairly conventional list: 1 Capa, 2 Alekhine, 3 Lasker, 4 Fischer etc. And Fischer himself did a top 10 in the 60s, claiming to have done it on analysis of play only. His list was a bit more controversial (surprise!) - he left out Lasker and I think Morphy was top. Any other, more modern, subjective lists could be added also. I don't mean by average Joe on the internet, I mean published by reputable players or authors. Rocksong 04:43, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
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