Bobby Fischer or Magnus Carlsen - Who's the best chess player of all-time?

[ShadowRun]

wow bill gates sucks !!!! .. Got to be magnus for how much and how often he won

even though I like bobby more

 

[Kratos94]

Carlsen is the best of all time. He has been the world no.1 for a long time in the strongest era of chess with all of the engines and resources readily available. I am sad he decided not to play in the Candidates, though.

 

[Chad R. Thundercock]

Fischer, hands down. He became the best without the aid of computers and he was leaps ahead of his competition.

 

[Chad R. Thundercock]

The real hypothetical question is who would win a Chess960 match? A 29-year-old Fischer, Carlsen, or Kasparov.

I'll have to give it to the guy who invented it himself, Fischer.

 

[Dobymick]

Fischer was a lot more creative and intuitive than Magnus is. In terms of raw talent I don't think anyone was as good as Fischer.

But overall I still think Magnus is the better player simply because he is the most engine like human to ever play the game. He absorbs like no other the positional style that engines uses to destroy humans. Which means a slower maneuvering game that makes it a bit more boring and drawish. Especially when he faces another engine dork like Caruana. And as humans lack the tactical capabilities of a computer they never really make a commitment and rely too much on positional play.

But what is really fascinating to me is how strong chess engines are. The current version of Stockfish has an estimated rating close to 3900 while Magnus peak rating was around 2880. Some people say that is almost impossible for a human to reach a 3000/ 3200 rating and these things are getting close to 4000 already

Anyway none of this really matters because the real GOAT was my boy Mikhail Tal

 

[Plutoburn]

I think only Americans would ask this question, rest of the world ask Kasparov vs Carlsen.

 

[no fat chicks]

Magnus

 

[SirRealKiller]

It's hard to say because I think Magnus of today is teleported back to Fischer's prime Magnus probably wins more often than not. However, I think if Fischer had access to modern training methods, data, and computers it might be different.

 

[SirRealKiller]

I think only Americans would ask this question, rest of the world ask Kasparov vs Carlsen.

I'm American and I believe the top three greatest chess players are Carlsen, Kasparov, and Fischer. I think it's hard to compare the three as they all come from different eras in chess data that was available. I think if they were all in their mental primes today with the same information available I don't know if I would be able to pick who I would expect to win a typical classical format tournament. Maybe I might favor Kasparov slightly if at his peak of performance?