I don't think we can be too harsh say on Alekhine despite the various "tricks" he got up to. It depends or is affected by the time. If we were to go into it cases can be made for hundreds of past chess players, World Champions or not, for their greatness. Rubinstein and Ivanchuk and many others. Sadly for such as Korchnoi, Bogoljubov they were not only time trouble addicts but were targetted for it. You might discuss the personalities of these players. Rubinstein's developing a kind of excessive introversion after WWI and so on.

If you look at Fischer as he was, the enormously hard working obsessed player, whose play seemed miraculous going into and up to winning the World Champs 1972 and his great techinque (paradoxically his 'hero' was Capablanca while later he despised Lasker who has to be one of the great players almost from all counts and who Fischer also resembled in many ways. Spassky was a little more laid back, that was my impression of him when I met him...But seeing Fischer on the Dick Cavet shows there is a certain almost childlike charm. He wasn't a monster. He was deeply troubled. His great talent is not in doubt but he is one of the great human tragedies.

I knew he would be the world champion in the 60s as his play was incredible. But Botvinnik was also a great player, more practical than people think. And not arrogant according to the notes of his book. He admits where he goes wrong. Castigates himself!

Even Botvinnik acknowledged--if thirty years on--that Smyslov was the strongest player in the world in the mid 1950s. There is no debating that anyone winning consecutive Candidates Tournaments has much in their favour on their resume, to go with three title matches.

As to the infometrics I think they all mean nothing. Speculations about who is or might have been the greatest are all pointless as the players had in some cases luck, their were psychological factors, age, health and much else.

It is enough to play over the games and learn from what they played, or enjoy the game.

There are different causes though. Morphy was, in one book I read, obsessed with a need to play Staunton. For some reason this got to him. But also maybe it was some kind of existential thing. He's been pushing little or large wooden things around and winning mostly. I believe by the way his forte was really positional chess which puts him ahead of his time. Nevertheless, then he reverted to Law. I think he felt it was a problem he didn't have a "real" job or chess wasn't respectable enough. I don't know, being a Kiwi, but what I have read of him -- from my memory of that -- he had that problem.

The result was as usual with these things: certain percentage, has some good efficacy etc etc. Not dramatic.

But I decided to take them because I saw a Virologist on YouTube (TWiV) was takings a lot each day as was a medical worker in NY so I thought it is one of the few things I can do.

it probably does nothing. But I do need vitamins B including B12. I haven't go pernicious anaemia but it helps my well being.

But I got a sore throat and decided to take a check. I was surprised how easy it was to do and to get done. Just after I got my result by phone the Prime Minister announced that we were going into Lock down. Their way of acting is that as there is a lot not known, better to be safe than sorry. So, total deaths in NZ ~ 26.

But I also think that Fischer's superiority over his contemporaries in the years 1967-72 is also unparalleled. It's true that he played little, but his performance in the Sousse's interzonal, a tournament that he abandoned, and in the handful of tournaments he took part in from then on, like Buenos Aires (1970), including the Interzonal of Palma de Mallorca (1970) and the Candidates cicle of 1971, are simply amazing. He crushed mercilesly his oponents.

I think there was more difference between what we call 'The Nazis' and the others, some of the Wehrmacht etc. We wont get to the bottom of it. It is a subject for a novel. The story I was told by fellow chess player here was that a soldier, a chess player, recognised him on a train.

There is a YouTube by an Englishman, a novelist, who studied the SS. Paul Watkins. But it isn't as you would think, he's not a Nazi. He learnt German, I think it was to complete a degree, so he stayed with Germans. His father or one of his parents was American, the other English. The parents of one were rich and didn't like the other etc....so it was that his German family became his parents, his German "father" a father in a significant sense. Then one day that father, when he was soon to leave, called him into his study and told him something he had kept secret from everyone else. He had got into the SS near the end of the war....this had such an effect that Watkins has devoted a lot of his time, as well as writing novels etc, to studying and lecturing I suppose on WWII and the SS. The YouTubes are fascinating.

None of which helps Rubinstein but sometimes the pattern is not kept. People do unusual things.

A long story, maybe to show or say how we can all get caught up into anything, potentially. I see or feel that Rubinstein was sane but very reserved. According to the itro to my book by Bouwmeester I have had for many years he was very much affected by WWI. In any case wars are not good for chess players and humans generally.

If I can believe the parameters (10) in Jorgen Norberg'a book "Progress" then wars are decreasing in severity and size. In fact most things are getting better. Norberg is a Capitalist out and out and so it would be good to see the view of someone from the other side of the fence. I suppose these things are always subjective to a degree.