Comparison of top chess players throughout history

Statistical methods

Elo system

Main article: Elo rating system, List of chess players by peak FIDE rating

The most well known statistical method was devised by Arpad Elo in 1960 and elaborated on in his 1978 book The Rating of Chessplayers, Past and Present. He gave ratings to players corresponding to their performance over the best five-year span of their career. According to this system the highest ratings achieved were:

• 2725: José Raúl Capablanca
• 2720: Mikhail Botvinnik, Emanuel Lasker
• 2700: Mikhail Tal
• 2690: Alexander Alekhine, Paul Morphy, Vasily Smyslov

Though published in 1978, Elo's list did not include five-year averages for later players Bobby Fischer and Anatoly Karpov. It did list January 1978 ratings of 2780 for Fischer and 2725 for Karpov.

In 1970, FIDE adopted Elo's system for rating current players, so one way to compare players of different eras is to compare their Elo ratings. The best-ever Elo ratings are tabulated below. there are 133 chess players in history who broke 2700, and 15 of them exceeded 2800.

:{| class="wikitable sortable" style="font-size:100%;" |+Table of top 20 rated players of all time, with date their best ratings were first achieved !Rank !Rating !Player !Date !Age

|- style="text-align: center;" |011 | 2882 |2014-05May 2014 |

|- style="text-align: center;" |022 | 2851 |1999-07July 1999 |

|- style="text-align: center;" |033 | 2844 |2014-10October 2014 |

|- style="text-align: center;" |044 | 2830 |2014-03March 2014 |

|- style="text-align: center;" |055 | 2822 |2017-02February 2017 |

|- style="text-align: center;" |066 | 2820 |2018-09September 2018 |

|- style="text-align: center;" |077 | 2819 |2016-08 August 2016 |

|- style="text-align: center;" |088 (tie) | 2817 |2011-03March 2011 |

|- style="text-align: center;" |088 (tie) | 2817 | |2016-10October 2016 |

|- style="text-align: center;" |1010 (tie) | 2816 |2015–07July 2015 |

|- style="text-align: center;" |1010 (tie) | 2816 |2015-10October 2015 |

|- style="text-align: center;" |1010 (tie) | 2816 |2018-11November 2018 |

|- style="text-align: center;" |1313 | 2810 |2014-12December 2014 |

|- style="text-align: center;" |1414 | 2804 |2021-11December 2021 |

|- style="text-align: center;" |1515 | 2801 |2024-11December 2024 |

|- style="text-align: center;" |1616 | 2798 |2015-10October 2015 |

|- style="text-align: center;" |1717 | 2795 |2023-03March 2023 |

|- style="text-align: center;" |1818 | 2794 |2024-10October 2024 |

|- style="text-align: center;" |1919 | 2793 |2012-11November 2012 |

|- style="text-align: center;" |2020 | 2788 |2008-07July 2008 |

|- style="text-align: center;" |}

Average rating over time

The average Elo rating of top players has fluctuated significantly over time. For instance, the average of the top 10 active players rose from 2751 in July 2000 to 2794 in July 2014, a 43-point increase in 14 years. The average rating of the top 100 players, meanwhile, increased from 2644 to 2703, a 59-point increase. Many people believe that this rise is mostly due to an anomaly known as ratings inflation, making it impractical to compare players of different eras.

Elo said it was futile to attempt to use ratings to compare players from different eras and that they could only measure the strength of a player as compared to their contemporaries. He also stated that the process of rating players was in any case rather approximatehe compared it to "the measurement of the position of a cork bobbing up and down on the surface of agitated water with a yard stick tied to a rope and which is swaying in the wind".

Chessmetrics

Many statisticians besides Elo have devised similar methods to retrospectively rate players. Jeff Sonas' rating system is called "Chessmetrics". This system takes account of many games played after the publication of Elo's book, and claims to take account of the rating inflation that the Elo system has allegedly suffered from.

One caveat is that a Chessmetrics rating takes into account the frequency of play. According to Sonas, "As soon as you go a month without playing, your Chessmetrics rating will start to drop."

Sonas, like Elo, claims that it is impossible to compare the strength of players from different eras, saying:

Nevertheless, Sonas' website does compare players from different eras. Including data until December 2004, the ratings were:

In 2005, Sonas used Chessmetrics to evaluate historical annual performance ratings and came to the conclusion that Kasparov was dominant for the most years, followed by Karpov and Lasker. He also published the following list of the highest ratings ever attained according to calculations done at the start of each month:

:{| class="wikitable sortable" style="font-size:100%;" !Rank !Rating !Player |-

''Warriors of the Mind''

In contrast to Elo and Sonas's systems, Raymond Keene and Nathan Divinsky's book Warriors of the Mind attempts to establish a rating system claiming to compare directly the strength of players active in different eras, and so determine the strongest player of all time (through December 2004). Considering games played between sixty-four of the strongest players in history, they came up with the following top ten:

1. Garry Kasparov, 3096
2. Anatoly Karpov, 2876
3. Bobby Fischer, 2690
4. Mikhail Botvinnik, 2616
5. José Raúl Capablanca, 2552
6. Emanuel Lasker, 2550
7. Viktor Korchnoi, 2535
8. Boris Spassky, 2480
9. Vasily Smyslov, 2413
10. Tigran Petrosian, 2363 These "Divinsky numbers" are not on the same scale as Elo ratings (the last person on the list, Johannes Zukertort, has a Divinsky number of 873, which would be a beginner-level Elo rating). Keene and Divinsky's system has met with limited acceptance, and Warriors of the Mind has been accused of arbitrarily selecting players and bias towards modern players.

Moves played compared with computer choices

The idea of this approach is to compare the moves played by humans to top engine moves, with the rationale that players more likely to choose these moves are also stronger.

Early efforts

A computer-based process of analyzing chess abilities across history came from Matej Guid and Ivan Bratko at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 2006. A similar project was conducted for World Champions in 2007–08 using Rybka 2.3.2a (then-strongest chess program) and a modified version of Guid and Bratko's program "Crafty". CAPS (Computer Aggregated Precision Score) is a system created by Chess.com that compares players from different eras by finding the percentage of moves that matches that of a chess engine.

Markovian model (2017)

In 2017, Jean-Marc Alliot of the Toulouse Computer Science Research Institute (IRIT) presented a new method, based on a Markovian interpretation of a chess game. Starting with those of Wilhelm Steinitz, all 26,000 games played since then by chess world champions have been processed by a supercomputer using the Stockfish chess engine (rated above 3310 Elo).

These predictions have proven not only to be extremely close to the actual results when players have played concrete games against one another, but to also fare better than those based on Elo scores. The results demonstrate that the level of chess players has been steadily increasing. Magnus Carlsen (in 2013) tops the list, while Vladimir Kramnik (in 1999) is second, Bobby Fischer (in 1971) is third, and Garry Kasparov (in 2001) is fourth.

Larry Kaufman (2023)

Larry Kaufman published an article in 2023 estimating the ratings of chess players throughout history by comparing their games with the choices of top engines, using Chess.com accuracy scores. He considered only world championship matches and tournaments (official or unofficial, and including women's championships), Candidates and Interzonal events, and non-title matches between the world champion and top contenders. He ignored drawn games, because he believed that previous analyses favoured players who played cautiously, with drawn games generally having fewer inaccuracies than wins.

He estimated ratings for players at their peak years, on a scale corresponding to Elo ratings in 2023. He estimated ratings for 47 players, with the following top ten:

1. Magnus Carlsen, 2858 (peak years 2013–2021)
2. Garry Kasparov, 2821 (peak years 1993–2001)
3. Bobby Fischer, 2802 (peak years 1970–1972)
4. Ian Nepomniachtchi, 2786 (peak years 2020–2022)
5. Vladimir Kramnik, 2785 (peak years 2000–2007)
6. Viswanathan Anand, 2780 (peak years 2007–2014)
7. Veselin Topalov, 2773 (peak years 2005–2009)
8. Anatoly Karpov, 2746 (peak years 1974–1984)
9. Mikhail Tal, 2711 (peak years 1958–1960)
10. Vasily Smyslov, 2687 (peak years 1953–1957)

(Kaufman noted however that Fabiano Caruana could not be considered by his methodology because his World Championship match had all classical games drawn. He speculated that Caruana "might well be number two of all time".)

Kaufman concluded that the quality of play rose steadily by about 2.5 Elo points per year from 1900 to 2023, though he conceded that the rate was greater in the 19th century and thus that Paul Morphy "might have rivaled Fischer for the top spot if we could properly correct for these factors". He corrected ratings for 2.5 points per year before for 2017 (the midpoint of Carlsen's peak), to estimate players' strength relatively according to their time:

1. Bobby Fischer, 2917
2. Garry Kasparov, 2871
3. José Raúl Capablanca, 2868
4. Alexander Alekhine, 2864
5. Emanuel Lasker, 2862
6. Magnus Carlsen, 2858
7. Mikhail Tal, 2856
8. Harry Nelson Pillsbury, 2853
9. Vasily Smyslov, 2842
10. Reuben Fine, 2842

He made a third list correcting by 2 points per year before 2017, instead of 2.5 points per year. That list again had Fischer first (2894) and Kasparov second (2861); and had Carlsen third on 2858.

Subjective lists

Many prominent players and chess writers have offered their own rankings of players.

Bobby Fischer (1964 and 1970)

In 1964, Bobby Fischer listed his top 10 in Chessworld magazine: Morphy, Staunton, Steinitz, Tarrasch, Chigorin, Alekhine, Capablanca, Spassky, Tal, and Reshevsky. He considered Morphy to be "perhaps the most accurate", writing: "In a set match he would beat anyone alive today."

In 1970, Fischer named Morphy, Steinitz, Capablanca, Botvinnik, Petrosian, Tal, Spassky, Reshevsky, Svetozar Gligorić, and Bent Larsen the greatest chess players in history.

Irving Chernev (1974)

In 1974, popular chess author Irving Chernev published an article titled Who were the greatest? in the English magazine CHESS. He followed this up with his 1976 book The Golden Dozen, in which he ranked his all-time top twelve: 1. Capablanca, 2. Alekhine, 3. Lasker, 4. Fischer, 5. Botvinnik, 6. Petrosian, 7. Tal, 8. Smyslov, 9. Spassky, 10. Bronstein, 11. Rubinstein, and 12. Nimzowitsch.

Miguel Quinteros (1992)

In a 1992 interview GM Miguel Quinteros gave the opinion:{{cite book |author-link1=Yasser Seirawan

Viswanathan Anand (2000, 2008 and 2012)

In 2000, when Karpov, Korchnoi and Kasparov were still active, Anand listed his top 10 as: Fischer, Morphy, Lasker, Capablanca, Steinitz, Tal, Korchnoi, Keres, Karpov and Kasparov.

When interviewed in 2008 shortly after Fischer's death, he ranked Fischer and Kasparov as the greatest, with Kasparov a little ahead by virtue of being on top for so many years.

In 2012, Anand stated that he considered Fischer the best player and also the greatest, because of the hurdles he faced.

''Chess Informant'' readers (2001)

Svetozar Gligorić reported in his book Shall We Play Fischerandom Chess?  (Batsford, 2002):At the beginning of 2001 a large poll for the "Ten Greatest Chess Players of the 20th Century, selected by Chess Informant readers" resulted in Fischer having the highest percentage of votes and finishing as No. 1, ahead of Kasparov, Alekhine, Capablanca, Botvinnik, Karpov, Tal, Lasker, Anand and Korchnoi.{{cite book| last=Gligorić| first=Svetozar| author-link=Svetozar Gligorić

David Edmonds and John Eidinow (2004)

BBC award-winning journalists, from their book Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How the Soviets Lost the Most Extraordinary Chess Match of All Time  (HarperCollins, 2004): Fischer, some will maintain, was the outstanding player in chess history, though there are powerful advocates too for Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, and Kasparov. Many chess players will dismiss such comparisons as meaningless, akin to the futile attempt to grade the supreme musicians of all time. But the manner in which Fischer stormed his way to Reykjavik, his breathtaking dominance at the Palma de Majorca Interzonal, the trouncings of Taimanov, Larsen, and Petrosian—all this was unprecedented. There never has been an era in modern chess during which one player has so overshadowed all others.{{cite book | author-link1=David Edmonds (philosopher) | url-access=registration

Vladimir Kramnik (2005 and 2011)

In a 2005 interview, Vladimir Kramnik (World Champion from 2000 to 2007) did not name a greatest player, but stated: "The other world champions had something 'missing'. I can't say the same about Kasparov: he can do everything."

In an interview in 2011, Vladimir Kramnik said about Anand: "I always considered him to be a colossal talent, one of the greatest in the whole history of chess", "I think that in terms of play Anand is in no way weaker than Kasparov", and "In the last 5–6 years he's made a qualitative leap that's made it possible to consider him one of the great chess players".

Leonard Barden (2008 and 2025)

In his 2008 obituary of Bobby Fischer, Leonard Barden wrote that most experts ranked Kasparov as the best-ever player, with probably Fischer second and Karpov third: "Most experts place him [Fischer] the second or third best ever, behind Kasparov but probably ahead of Karpov. As Kasparov himself wrote in My Great Predecessors, Fischer's superiority over his contemporaries at his peak was greater than any other world champion's."

In 2025, Barden stated that Kasparov remained the greatest player in history owing to his consistently higher-class results over a quarter of a century against the strongest opposition, adding: "I might take a different view if Magnus Carlsen maintains his present level for another five years, although I won't be around to see it. I reluctantly discard Fischer, my personal hero of the three, because his absolute peak was over too brief a period."

Levon Aronian (2012, 2015, and 2022)

In a 2012 interview, Levon Aronian stated that he considers Alexander Alekhine the best player of all time.

In a 2015 interview after the 8th round of the Sinquefield Cup, Levon Aronian stated that he considers Garry Kasparov the strongest player of all time.

In a 2022 interview after the 5th round of the first leg in FIDE Grand Prix 2022, when asked if he thought that in the future Garry Kasparov or Magnus Carlsen would be considered the 'GOAT' (Greatest Of All Time), Levon Aronian stated that "I kind of feel that Magnus will be the greatest for a long long time, because for me he is probably already the greatest but it is still continuing. It will take a long time to beat his achievements."

Magnus Carlsen (2012, 2015, 2020 and 2021)

In 2012, Magnus Carlsen said that Kasparov is the greatest player of all time, adding that while Fischer may have been better at his best, Kasparov remained at the top for much longer.

In December 2015 he said he would like to play Fischer and Kasparov at their peak performance.

In January 2020, Carlsen said, "Kasparov had 20 years uninterrupted as the world No 1. And I would say for very few of those years was there any doubt that he was the best player. He must be considered as the best in history." He made a similar claim in 2021, saying "Garry Kasparov, in my opinion, the greatest player there's ever been..."

Hikaru Nakamura (2021 and 2023)

In 2021, Hikaru Nakamura published a Youtube video entitled "Hikaru's Hot Takes on the Ten Best Chess Players of All Time" in which he reviewed a chess.com article on "The 10 Best Chess Players Of All Time." In this video he suggested that it was unfair to exclude Paul Morphy and Viswanathan Anand from the 10 greatest players of all time. Nakamura stated that Bobby Fischer should "obviously be number 3" and that Garry Kasparov and Magnus Carlsen should be at number 1 and number 2 respectively with the caveat that Kasparov is only number 1 due to his time as number 1 in the world being greater than Carlsen's. At the end of the video, Nakamura said he "can live with" the top 5 as: Kasparov, Carlsen, Fischer, Capablanca and Karpov but he would put from 6 through 10: Anand, Kramnik, Botvinnik, Lasker, Morphy.

During Game 6 of World Chess Championships 2023, as Nakamura was commenting on the game, he mentioned Magnus Carlsen, Garry Kasparov, Vishy Anand, Bobby Fischer, Anatoly Karpov, José Raúl Capablanca and Vladimir Kramnik as the top chess players of all time in order.

Anatoly Karpov (2021)

Karpov named Capablanca, Alekhine, Fischer, himself, and Kasparov as his top five in 2021.

World Champions by world title reigns

The table below organises the world champions in order of championship wins. (For the purpose of this table, a successful defence counts as a win, even if the match was drawn.) The table is made more complicated by the split between the "Classical" and FIDE world titles between 1993 and 2006.

References

References

1. Arpad E. Elo, ''The Rating of Chessplayers, Past and Present'', Arco, 1978. {{ISBN. 0-668-04721-6.
2. [http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=1160 Arpad Emre Elo – 100th anniversary], ''Chessbase'', 2003
3. [http://ratings.fide.com/toplist.phtml?list=men World Top chess players and Statistics] at FIDE.com
4. (27 July 2009). "ChessBase News | Rating inflation – its causes and possible cures". Chessbase.com.
5. ''Chess Life'', 1962.
6. (30 August 2003). "Arpad Emre Elo – 100th anniversary".
7. [http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=2345 The Greatest Chess Player of All Time – Part I], Jeff Sonas, at [[Chessbase]]
8. [http://chessmetrics.com/cm/Documents/AboutSystem.htm About the Chessmetrics Rating System] {{webarchive. link. (15 May 2012 , by Jeff Sonas)
9. "Peak Average Ratings: 1 year peak range".
10. "Peak Average Ratings: 5 year peak range".
11. "Peak Average Ratings: 10 year peak range".
12. "Peak Average Ratings: 15 year peak range".
13. "Peak Average Ratings: 20 year peak range".
14. Sonas, J.. (2005). "The Greatest Chess Player of All Time – Part IV". Chessbase.
15. Sonas, J.. (2005). "The Greatest Chess Player of All Time – Part II". Chessbase.
16. ''Warriors of the Mind'', [[Raymond Keene]] and [[Nathan Divinsky]], (1989)
17. "Divinsky-Keene rankings".
18. (1992). "The Oxford Companion to Chess". [[Oxford University Press]].
19. Winter, Edward. (1996). "Chess Explorations". Cadogan.
20. [http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=3455 Computers choose: who was the strongest player?], ''Chessbase'', 2006
21. [http://www.truechess.com/web/champs.html "Compare the World Champions!"], by Charles Sullivan, ''TrueChess'', 2007
22. (DanielRensch), Daniel Rensch. (3 January 2017). "Who Was The Best World Chess Champion In History?".
23. [http://content.iospress.com/articles/icga-journal/icg0012 Who is the master?], ''ICGA Journal, 39–1'', April 2017
24. Kaufman, Larry. (4 September 2023). "Accuracy, Ratings, and GOATs".
25. Bobby Fischer, "The Ten Greatest Masters in History", ''Chessworld'', Vol. 1, No. 1 (Jan.-Feb. 1964), pp. 56–61.
26. "Fischer's Top 10".
27. ''the Even More Complete Chess Addict'', by Mike Fox and Richard James, 1993, pp. 129–30
28. ''CHESS magazine'', November 1970, p. 70
29. ''CHESS'' magazine, April 1974, pp. 201–202
30. ''Twelve Great Chess Players and Their Best Games'', Irving Chernev, 1995 (reprint of 1976 edition).
31. "The Grandmaster on his ten greatest chess players".
32. link. (6 February 2009 , [[Chessbase]], 15 February 2008)
33. [http://www.thehindu.com/sport/other-sports/article3486974.ece Anand takes a dig at Kasparov], [[Viswanathan Anand]], The Hindu
34. "The most important interviews by GM Vladimir Kramnik, World Chess Champion 2000–2007". Kramnik.com.
35. (31 August 2011). "Vladimir Kramnik on Chess, Anand, Topalov, and his future".
36. Barden, Leonard. (19 January 2008). "Obituary: Bobby Fischer".
37. Ingle, Sean. (6 September 2025). "Record-breaker: Leonard Barden's chess column celebrates 70 years and a place in history".
38. (22 August 2012). "Aronian names Alekhine best player of all time". WhyChess.
39. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGdywyQlo2E ''"Well, in my opinion Garry is the strongest player of all time"''
40. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqK_eEA-9GQ ''The Soviet School of Trash Talking''
41. (1 January 1970). "Magnus Carlsen: – Jeg tar verdensrekorden – VG Nett om Sjakk". Vg.no.
42. [https://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/16/sport/magnus-carlsen-chess-world-number-one/ Chess prodigy Magnus Carlsen: 'Bobby Fischer is my dream opponent'.], 2015-12-16, [[CNN]]
43. [https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/jan/09/magnus-carlsen-i-will-always-be-proud-no1-fantasy-football-chess Magnus Carlsen: ‘You need to be very fortunate to be No 1 in fantasy football’], [[The Guardian]], 10 January 2020
44. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxz4NWDZgug Magnus Carlsen ranks Garry Kasparov], chess24 [[YouTube]] channel, 6 May 2021
45. (24 August 2021). "Hikaru's Hot Takes on the Ten Best Chess Players of All Time - YouTube".
46. (30 March 2023). "The 10 Best Chess Players of All Time".
47. "Karpov at 70: "My great blunder was I agreed to hold the match with Kasparov in the Soviet Union"".