@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!!
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!!