Who is the G.O.A.T. in chess?

@Manchineel

Peak strength has absolutely nothing to do with longevity. By your standard Paul Morphy doesn't rank among the greats. No chess player in history, with Morphy being the sole exception, was as strong as Fischer. Fischer, literally, destroyed the entire Soviet chess empire. Kasparov only beat Karpov 12.5 to 11.5 and 13 to 11. That's hardly the kind of annihilation Fischer routinely did to his opponents. Why is it that in this thread people have so much trouble with such easy stats. No one BUT Fischer ever won a Candidates match by 6-0 and they never will!! No one ever again will win the US Championship by 11-0.

If you're going to go by longevity then you've missed the boat yet again. Emanuel Lasker was World Champion for TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS! However, I think both longevity and times defending the title are both dreadful metrics for assessing who was the greatest. What does "greatest" mean in the original question? I think it means who was the strongest. From about 1963 to 1972 Fischer kept setting records for degree of annihilation of opponents like when he won an Interzonal by a record 3.5 points. I've never seen Kasparov or Carlsen or anybody else win an important tournament by that amount.

Fischer was the greatest ever. No matter how one wiggles and dances you cannot produce statistics like 6-0 and 11-0 from even a single grandmaster, including Kasparov. Numbers matter!!

www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ALeKk03XSyP2G9nNYjIKTHfOl10p7HLVvg%3A1594409195396&ei=68AIX4HsF8K90PEPq6iXgAU&q=who+is+the+greatest+g.o.a.t+chess found it

@Eleuthero If you care about the strongest, the answer is obviousy Carlsen.

Your argument is basically. "Fisher had two great tournaments, US championship and against Spassky".

Fisher is not even top 3 in history. Move on.

When I play through Morphy's games, they are clean and brilliant with off and on really unusual dynamic moves [like his Kh8 move to push g5-I doubt many GMs who have not previously seen that idea would come up with it OTB]. He was also playing against the best in the world with them having unlimited time and him making his moves immediately. He even offered Paulsen knight odds in a game [but he was too proud to take the odds]. Measured by peak performance against the best of their time, I vote Morphy. My ranked list [today-tomorrow it may be different] would be:
1. Morphy 2. Kasparov 3. Fischer 4. Karpov 5. Capablanca 6.Pillsbury 7. Spassky 8. Lasker.
I am excluding current players because computers mean it is a different game these days: human + software vs same.

Seriously though, it's hard to compare players from different eras, but if you had a time machine and sat all the world champions down to play a tournament, Magnus would easily crush everyone. I think prolly Kramnik would come in second, Kasparov third, Anand fourth, Fischer fifth etc. I don't think those are the top 5 of all time, that would require a bit more nuance, but 1.Carlsen 2.Kasparov 3.Fischer, with 2 and 3 being possibly interchangeable seems pretty realistic to me.

Bobby Fischer

@Machineel

Carlsen is the GOAT? Give me a break. He tied his last two World Championship matches which led to the horrible resolution of the tie problem via rapid play. No classical match should be resolved by non-classical time formats. It's an abomination. He was no better than Radjabov and no better than Caruana. Frankly, the only reason he did better than that against Anand is because Anand was in his forties and well past his prime.

Why can't you wrap your head around the difference between a tied match, a 6.5-4.5 match, and winning 18.5-2.5 in 3 Candidates matches? I don't get it. Fischer's unprecedented 3.5 margin of victory in the 1970 Palma de Mallorca Interzonal has never happened in the 40 years of Interzonals. He won a LOT of tournaments by utter wipeouts. What's your arithmetic/statistical evidence for placing anyone above Fischer? I swear to God that on this website, people have an inordinate disdain for direct arithmetic evidence but make no requirement of themselves to produce such evidence. Show me ANY tournament where Carlsen won with an 80% or 100% score in super-GM competition. Any!! I won't hold my breath.

@Eleuthero You didn't even name 50% of Carlsen's match opponents right

If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.

Sir Isaac Newton

@Eleuthero
Fischer was certainly extremely dominant over his opposition when he was active. I doubt that any of today's top grandmasters would have trouble defeating him in a match. They're simply much stronger, since they've had around 50 years of games and theory to learn from since Fischer, as well as engines to help with analysis and understanding.
Dominance shows strength relative to opposition of the time. Fischer in his prime would still be very strong today, but he wouldn't be at the top. The actual strength of top players has been increasing over time, and I expect that it will continue to do so.