Author: Stephen Ham
Date: 07:05:26 09/17/04
Go up one level in this thread
On September 16, 2004 at 18:17:06, Albert Silver wrote: >>Hello Joe, >> >>There are plenty of applicants for this title. The chief of which are: Keres, >>Korchnoi, Fine, and Reshevsky. One might even tongue-in-cheek add Vishy Anand's >>name to the list. Sure he won the FIDE World Ch. in 2000, but the FIDE World Ch. >>then was not a real (classical chess) World Championship, played under the >>qualifying and final standards of former REAL championships. Nonetheless I'd >>argue that Anand's the world's strongest player at present. > >He's more active than Gary, but I wouldn't write off Kasparov just yet. People >were doing that in 95-96 after he had a few lackluster results, and suddenly he >decided to get serious again, and left everyone trying to pick up the pieces of >their chess faces, so to speak. ;-) > >Anyhow, Fine is a top candidate, but remember he also declined the opportunity >to play for the WC in 1948 despite being invited. Rubinstein is another matter. >Rubinstein never got the opportunity. > > Albert Bom Dia, Alberto I agree with you, per usual. However, it's my perception that Kasparov isn't as dominant as he once was, as evidenced by his last few outings. And since his last few outings were relatively sparce, I'll also opine that he's a bit rusty. I think that he's on a downward slope now for performance, and probably also for desire to play. Conversely, Anand is mowing everybody else down and seems to be getting stronger, if that's possible. I also agree with you about both Fine and Rubinstein. However, I think that Joe's speculation about the best player never to win the WC needs some definitions enforced. For example, in my mind, one needs to be the dominant player for a period of time in order to be considered a WC. That's just my own personal bias. Instead, I think that there were shorter periods when others were the best player in the world (e.g. Tarrasch, Rubinstein were probably the best for a couple years or so). But I never viewed them as rightful WC's since their era of supremacy was so short. For example, I think that Rubinstein was the strongest player in the world for a couple years when Lasker was fading and Capablanca was ascending. Conversely, I think that most of us consider Korchnoi to be the strongest player never to be WC. However, I'd argue that Korchnoi, unlike the other candidates, was never the strongest player at any point in his lifetime. For example, in the 1960's, Spassky was the best in the world. By 1971, Fischer was the strongest player in the world and by the mid-70's Karpov proved to be at least his equal. Karpov subsequently got stronger only to be replaced by the even stronger Kasparov. So the whole matter gets confusing, as I see it. The reason is that Zukertort, Tarrasch, Rubinstein, Fine, Keres, Reshevsky all have claims to being the strongest in the world for a period. But these peak periods were relatively short (e.g. 1-2 years). But the best candidate for strongest non-WC was Korchnoi, IMHO. And he was never the strongest in the world. I find this both interesting and confusing. ;-) Tudo de bom, Stephen
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