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Mar-23-17
 | | perfidious: Larsen would have known all about that particular handicap. |
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| Mar-23-17 | | Retireborn: That's news to me about Korchnoi, but I do recall from somewhere that he once used the word "medician" (in the context of the 1978 match) and people thought he was saying "magician".... |
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| Mar-23-17 | | cunctatorg: Korchnoi was a rare personality among the great players; in my opinion we can't hope for someone compared to him in the visible future. |
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| Apr-23-17 | | mistreaver: My two percent about Korchnoi career, with some key games analyzed in detail: http://www.chessentials.com/best-ch... |
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May-15-17
 | | Keyser Soze: A small but nice vid about him
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yy4... |
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| Sep-12-17 | | Whitehat1963: Korchnoi, Keres, Geller, Larsen, Bronstein, Rubinstein, Reshevsky, Ivanchuk, Shirov ... who was the greatest to never have won the championship? |
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| Sep-12-17 | | WorstPlayerEver: Schlechter |
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| Sep-12-17 | | Nosnibor: <Whitehat> Pillsbury and Charousek should be considered but early deaths robbed them of ultimate greatness. |
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| Sep-12-17 | | Whitehat1963: Should we count Topalov as a real champion? If not, he certainly deserves mentioning, too. |
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Sep-12-17
 | | keypusher: <Whitehat1963: Korchnoi, Keres, Geller, Larsen, Bronstein, Rubinstein, Reshevsky, Ivanchuk, Shirov ... who was the greatest to never have won the championship?> Korchnoi or Rubinstein, though I would vote for Korchnoi. Schlechter belongs on the list, as WPE pointed out. But of all the people listed, only Rubinstein (i) had his career before there was a qualification system AND (ii) never got a match with the WC. |
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| Sep-12-17 | | Petrosianic: <Whitehat1963: Should we count Topalov as a real champion? If not, he certainly deserves mentioning, too.> No, he was never undisputed World Champion, so he should get a mention, even though he was only really ascendent for a short time. Tarrasch deserves a spot too. But I'm not sure about Ivanchuk and Shirov. Maybe I'm selling them short, but in these days where there are so many top players it's harder to think of it as a tragedy if they don't all become champ. Especially Shirov. He was 0-17 against Karparov, and was never a serious contender after Kasparov was gone. |
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| Sep-12-17 | | Whitehat1963: Ivanchuk, despite his inconsistency, has been mostly a top 10 or 20 player for an eternity in an era when there are SO many great players. That's why I mention him. Other potentials: Leko, Morozevich, Svidler, Timman, Salov, Polgar, etc. We might soon include Aronian, Caruana, Nakamura, and others. It's beginning to be extremely difficult to separate the consistent top contenders from the rest. |
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| Sep-12-17 | | Petrosianic: Well, that seems reasonable, at least as far as Ivanchuk is concerned. I don't know if I'd agree that the second group (Moro, Polgar, et al) really qualify, though. They were all great players, but I can't see any of them being great enough to be World Champion. With Chucky, though, he DID have the potential to do it if he could put it together long enough. As for your third group (Aronian, Caruana, et al), it's too early to judge them. |
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| Sep-12-17 | | Whitehat1963: Agree that Moro, Svidler, Leko, Polgar, etc. deserve mention with the likes of Korchnoi, Keres, Geller, and Rubinstein. And Tarrasch and Pillsbury were two I'd missed. |
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| Sep-12-17 | | Petrosianic: Well, maybe we're talking at cross purposes. When I think of The Best Players to Never Become World Champion, I think of people who had a real shot at doing it, and very well might have done it if circumstances or luck, or whatever had gone their way. I don't think of people who were great players, but honestly were never going to be the very best at any given time. Are we talking about the same thing? Or to put it another way, would you consider that players like Larsen, Marshall and Portisch belong on the list? |
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| Sep-12-17 | | Whitehat1963: Nowadays, you must consider players consistently among the top 20, when before, say, 1955, you only considered the top 10 or even 5 among the very top contenders. These days, a champion can easily lose to players outside the top 30. I don't think that happened too often in the days of Lasker, Casablanca, Alekhine, etc. The era of Soviet domination expanded the number of top contenders, I think anyway. |
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| Sep-12-17 | | Whitehat1963: I definitely don't think Marshall, who was clobbered by Capa and Lasker, deserves mention. But Pillsbury and Rubinstein surely do. |
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| Sep-12-17 | | Whitehat1963: And I mistyped. I meant that Moro, Polgar, etc. DON'T deserve mention. |
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| Sep-12-17 | | Whitehat1963: If I had to vote, my heart would say Rubinstein, but my head would say Korchnoi. |
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| Sep-12-17 | | Petrosianic: Yes, Pillsbury and Rubinstein seem to fit my definition. In addition to Lasker and Capa, Marshall ALSO lost a match to Tarrasch 8-1. That's why I wouldn't consider him (he was a great player but he was never going to be The Very Best). But I have similar misgivings about people like Judith Polgar (who was a combined 0-22 against Kasparov and Kramnik), or Shirov, who was 0-17 against Kasparov. If the Biggest Boys slaughter you that badly, then you don't deserve to hold the title. I think you're right that these days a champion can easy lost to someone outside the Top 30. But the Top 30 is a much smaller piece of the pie now than a hundred years ago. In 1917, anybody who was anybody was in the Top 30. If we said "The Top 1% of International Players", the figures might look very different. Champions may be no more vulnerable than before on that count. Somebody like Portisch was obviously a great player, and the kind that yo could count on to make the Candidates again and again and again, to the point that it was a surprise when he didn't make it. But he never got far in them, and was always gone before the Finals. So is he great? Absolutely. A serious threat to win the title? Not so much. But you could almost make a case for Larsen just because a lot of people were really afraid of him in the late 60's. |
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| Sep-12-17 | | Whitehat1963: So, if you had to narrow it down to five players? Me: Korchnoi, Rubinstein, Pillsbury, Keres, Geller. |
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| Sep-12-17 | | Whitehat1963: You're right about needing to say the top X percent of grandmasters, or something similar. |
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| Sep-12-17 | | Whitehat1963: Then again, maybe I'd put Topalov in there instead of Geller. |
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| Sep-12-17 | | Howard: Tarrasch probably deserves a place in the top-10 though not in the top-five. Regarding Pillsbury, CL&R said back around 1976 that he may have been a bit overrated by chess historians. His only significant tournament victory was at Hastings 1895, for one thing. Not only that, the magazine noted that his successful blindfold exhibitions contributed to his greatness. On the other hand.....Soltis said in one of his columns back in the 1980's that in his view, Pillsbury and Keres were probably the two strongest players never to become WC. Can't believe he left out the late Korchnoi though !! |
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| Sep-12-17 | | Petrosianic: Five Players? Korchnoi, Keres, Rubinstein, Reshevsky, and Smyslov. Oh, wait Smyslov WAS champion, wasn't he? It's easy to forget. Let's make the last one Tarrasch, just for a dark horse. But here's a question. If Spassky had lost in 1969, where would he rank on this list? Would he rank higher or lower than Korchnoi? |
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