People LOVE to cherry pick Muhammed Ali's career. Yes, he was great when he fought Liston, Frazier, Foreman, Norton etc, but they are strangely silent about Ron Lyle, Alfredo Evangelista, Chuck Wepner (who!), and my personal favourite Leon Spinks who had a grand total of SIX fights at that time! Greatest fighter ever? No freaking way!
How do you think he gets his content? By not reviewing it or ever seeing articles on his own. Common, hes a content creator. He knew every player. This is like when people believe in pro wrestling, santa claus and reality tv.
@@chanelname969 but he did make a bad move lol. and there is some truth to the statement that most gms nowadays with the level of technology would demolish players from that era
Fischer became world champion- beat all the Russians, before computers. He sat in his NY apartment and played against himself. He was truly amazing, beyond what most people know.
Also not many know that he won majority of his tournaments in his time,some of the ones he lost was because he didnt like the conditions of the tournament,or because of soviet cheating. I dont remember if it was 1963,but in some tournament,probably the candidates,the 3 russian players drew all their matches with each other,with the average game being 19 moves. Clear sign of cheating. Fischer also was ahead in the 1967 interzonal at the half way point,and quite ahead of everyone else,but then decided to leave coz he didnt agree with the rules. So fischer could've won the world championship long back
@@niranjanrajesh1058 Yep. The Russians basically ran the chess world, and would predetermine who would win, and the players all fell in line...or else! In the match against Spassky, the Russians had the full squad of past and future WCs and all the serious contenders amassed and prepared against him. The entire saga, from the 1962 Interzonal (Where Petrosian, Keres and Geller (nice team!!!) ganged up and cheated him out. Fischer went home, and boy did he go to work.
Agreed. Fischer defeated a Soviet team composed of some of the greatest chess players ever. Soviets worked as a team and did everything they could to try to slow Fischer down. But in his prime. Fischer was over 100 elo over Spassky. He is still top 20 players in terms of elo pb despite elo inflation.
This is ridiculous. If the person includes Alpha Zero as the most dangerous, then NO human player would be on the list, it would merely be the top 5 chess engines, so article is completely in error with the 4 human players.
@@uberneanderthal Morphy should've been nº1 or nº 2 then. Kasparov was almost defeated by Karpov numerous times, so he shouldn't be that high in the position I guess.
I think Alpha Zero was included because among chess engines it was 100% unique as a non materialistic attacker. In one game vs Stockfish, Alpha Zero was down a knight and two pawns for almost 40 moves. That is astounding.
@@Obi-WanKannabis I thought humans wrote the code to look for the head and trigger a gun shot... It's a very hard program to write in reality, but very different from the AlphaZero approach
@@deepakhr3057 AlphaZero was given the instructions on the rules of chess and played against itself learning something each game untill it became ridiculously good at it. Sure, you can argue that it is a player and not a chess engine, but ultimately you could code an aim bot to learn how to aim like that and it wouldn't be fair to put it up against humans.
Bobby Fischer against Boris Spassky 17 wins 11 losses! My old computer tought 5:22 minutes Capablanca-Reti game move! Same computer tought 4:37 Kasparov-Kramnik game move! Capablanca better than Kasparov! Capablanca would Beat The Prime Boris Spassky easily 8 wins 5 draws no loss! Boris Spassky The weakest chess world champion Ever! Even Magnus Carlsen would Beat The Prime Boris Spassky easily 6 wins 6 draws no loss!
Bobby Fischer, the only grand master who demolished the Russian grand masters. Remember that chess was and is very popular in Soviet Union (Russia today) and they produced terrific grand masters. But Bobby annihilated all of them, this loner from the US. This was back in the day where chess computer engine was non existent.
@Elijah S. . Fischer was the #1 rated player in the world for much longer than one year. And he was also world champion for more than one year because he didn't forfeit his title until he refused to defend it 2-3 years later.
@@simongpunkt : unfortunately geniuses are often insane that’s why they’re geniuses they’re wired differently from everybody else? I wouldn’t want to go Explore inside the head of a genius like that! It would scare the shit out of me! And Bobby was a tormented genius, he hated his own people! But he was the genius!
Top players nowadays are amazing, but they can memorize computer moves that they would of NEVER figured out on their own. Back in the 60s and 70s they didn't have super chess computers, they sat in a room for hours upon hours with a chess board figuring out what the best move is. Pure geniuses back in the day.
So what, do your think that Fischer never studied openings and endgames? Do you actually think that he studied like Alphazero - never seeing any games by any other players ever in his life? And in any case, just because Fischer's preparation methods were massively inferior doesn't mean that he was actually a better player. It may very well be that his memory was simply subpar for modern chess and so he couldn't have handled modern GMs regardless how he prepared
This commentary on the game proves they just have no inside their clue to how life was like before computers. And even less appreciation for the political context of the cold war. It's pretty sad.
He was pretty clearly the best player of the 1960s. Only reason he didn't become world champion in 1963 or certainly 1966 is because of his weird hangups. One Interzonal he was was winning with 8.5 out of 10 and up and quit. Larsen ended up winning it with 17.5/24, so I don't think there's any doubt he'd have won or at least easily qualified for the Candidate's. I also think he would have been Karpov, even having not played for 3 years. He took a similar break from 1967-1970, then took 3/4 from Petrosian in USSR vs the World and demolished the Interzonal that same year. Is it possible Karpov could have beaten a rusty Fischer? Of course. However, Fischer also spotted Spassky 2 games and still won by 3. Karpov wasn't 5 games better than Spassky. Maybe 2-3 over 24. Fischer also probably could have won by more, but opted to just force draws the latter half of the match with only 1 decisive game after game 13.
@@12jswilson its weird but i typed something of this sort just now under another comment section. Didnt copy tho. He dropped out of the 1967 interzonal while leading the whole thing. He won the 1963 interzonal and then lost in the candidates to the 3 russians who colluded and drew all their matches against each other with the average game between them being just 19 moves. As you said he didnt play pro chess in his formative years between 1967 and 1970. Then came back and won a blitz tournament by a huge margin consisting of the strongest players in the world,despite them having played blitz a lot and him not having played blitz many times. Then won the interzonal in convincing fashion,which wouldve been the 3rd consecitive he won an interzonal had he not wuit the 67 edition. Then smashed taimanov,larsen and petrosian. Then smashed spassky. Only lost 2 actual games against spassky,and one was by making a blunder that idt hes ever made in his career. Won every single us tournament that he competed in. Only perfect score in history of the tournament. His only major loss/poor performance in his career was in the 1958 candidates,and its ridiculous that thats even considered bad since he was just 15,and playing in the candidates. Hes by far the most dominant player ever
@@12jswilson its weird but i typed something of this sort just now under another comment section. Didnt copy tho. He dropped out of the 1967 interzonal while leading the whole thing. He won the 1963 interzonal and then lost in the candidates to the 3 russians who colluded and drew all their matches against each other with the average game between them being just 19 moves. As you said he didnt play pro chess in his formative years between 1967 and 1970. Then came back and won a blitz tournament consisting of the strongest players in the world,despite them having played blitz a lot and him not having played blitz a lot.
@@12jswilson its weird but i typed something of this sort just now under another comment section. Didnt copy tho. He dropped out of the 1967 interzonal while leading the whole thing. He won the 1963 interzonal and then lost in the candidates to the 3 russians who colluded and drew all their matches against each other with the average game between them being just 19 moves. As you said he didnt play pro chess in his formative years between 1967 and 1970. Then came back and won a blitz tournament consisting of the strongest players in the world,despite them having played blitz a lot and him not having played blitz a lot.
Morphy's calculation ability was astounding. Study the complexity of his 1858 blindfold simul games in Paris and you'll see what I mean. Fischer was right when he said he had "full sight of the chessboard and never blundered". It must have been terrifying for his opponents when they realized they were caught in the web.
That's what I like about chess players like Hikaru, they're so honest with their thoughts. Questioning Tal's abilities as a chess player, not realizing that it was a game from when he was 12, 13 years old. It all adds up.
Yes! He didn't agreed with that game of Tal (despite of not being aware of that it was a game of 12 yr old tal), and he found out the mistakes and criticised it, that's true honesty
Lol true honestly you guys dont know what ur talking about the guy has problems with every gm. Shit talks lower rated player. Called TAL TRASH like he achieved tals wc title
Yeah Bobby was definitely the most talented. It would’ve been awesome to see how good he would have been now and days with the computers and more openings
@@Shendue and its true though, you kinda start to win in the middle or the end game with all the memorizing but yeah all things have to evolve its life
@@Shendue over simplification. He knew all the theory he just liked to freestyle to counter expectations. He would certainly be formidable with today's tools as better theory craft creates better counter play.
Well he beat Nigel short 8-0 at the age of 58. While nigel was top 3 in the world. And he has a higher accuracy from his games than even Carlsen has with correct computer help. He was also winning classical tournaments with insane score. Beating them 10 games in a row. Which even if you say that the grandmasters from that era were weaker, I highly doubt even Magnus could beat them 10 in a row without a single draw. It's very easy to see that he is the greatest of all time.
2300 just isn't impressive to people who've been studying and playing chess for over a decade and play at a top level. It's a really high rating yes, but when you're at a level where you can consistently beat 2300s even with piece odds/time odds then of course you'd be unimpressed by 2300s. Out of 10000 games against 2300s Hikaru would lose maybe 1 or 2 depending on his mood. It's crazy but that's how it works
Tal didn't like that game either. What Tal said about it in "Life and Games of Mikhail Tal", his assessment is that he played horribly: "Black has an extra bishop, for which I now do not see any compensation at all. On the other hand, it was not difficult to detect that the black king's pawn cover had been weakened. White continues as if nothing has happened." "Much as I would like to, I cannot place this game in the category of 'intuitive' or 'Tal' sacrifices." "Such a critical assessment is by no means a sign of the sceptical attitude of a venerable grandmaster to his young inexperienced namesake. If I had had to annotate this game 25 years ago, the verdict would have been the same. It is difficult to believe that white should miss the chance to win the game immediately using 'artihmetic': 11.h3 Qf5 (11...Qxg2 12.Rh2) 12.g4 Qg6 13.Nh4 Ne5 14.Bb5+ or 14.Qe2." He was 12 at the time, Zilber was 15. Nevertheless it is representative that, even at 12, Tal had the spirit of a great attacker. He makes a terrible blunder, yes, but continues on attacking as if nothing happened and his fierce attack is enough to overcome his 15-year-old opponent. I think it is a perfectly fair game to represent Tal as an attacking player (attacking being the whole point of the list), although the author of the article should have provided some context about this.
I don't really think any if that matters when assessing a game or move. It was a bad move, in fact there are few moves worse than it. He was 12, sure, he was attacking, yeah, he won, of course. But you could also show an 800 rated game where 1 player blunders 5 times attacking and stumbles into a checkmate and crown him best attacking player. His attack was not a good attack, it wasn't a good move or a good plan. Just because his opponent blundered more it doesn't give more credit to the bad move. There are much better ways to display good attacks.
Hikaru at 3:15 blowing my mind. He looks at a position and instantly knows a series of moves that are obvious to him. It's like a language they can speak that only a few can understand.
its pretty easy actually, im 1800 and if i was looking at that in a 10 minute rapid game id find that in 5 seconds, but hikaru obviously instantly spots it
They stopped Alpha. Stockfish became stronger only after implementing neural networks. Leela is based on Alpha's ideas and it's almost as strong as Stockfish. If Google continued to work on Alpha there is no doubt it would be the strongest.
Tal, like Fischer, played human moves. When you play human moves, you blunder sometimes, but only if your opponent catches it. I prefer the older players, pre engine. The engines changed everything. It may be better chess, but it is not that exciting, and is really killing classical chess.
@@volfgankamei5348 Sooner or later, sure. But when you see a totally new line, in say move 7, that player has prepped the heck out the upcoming lines using engines, to not just assist, but show him the moves. That's quite a bit different than when it was pre engine with a book, notation and buddy. I'm amazed they can remember everything, but the best miss moves and blunder all the time. The best of the best just do it a little less...so that hasn't changed.
@@jamie49868 There's a reason blitz and bullet chess exist. Beginners generally play classical to understand how the basics but once they understand the basic tactical patterns they don't play classical anymore unless they want to get a title or something
@@jokersupremacy3774 Depends. If Morphy were around today, he would also have today's resources. He'd probably suggest that Alpha-Zero had a more elegant way to win.
Think Alekhine doesn't get the credit he deserves. Some of his moves seem kind of flaky at first, but Alekhine's depth of calculation set him apart. It's kind of like how you can have Stockfish play a suspect opening against a super-GM but will still crush them in the end. It can just calculate much more deeply. And obviously getting an opponent out of book is a plus if you know what you're doing.
Bobby Fischer is the greatest player of all time. Today is the era of the engine. There are many games you see where a GM goes through an engine line only to fall apart once he leaves the path.
@@henk7747 Magnus indirectly uses engines by playing some moves because they were recommended by an engine. Even Magnus benefits from engines. If Magnus ignored engine recommendations he wouldn't do as well. If any strong player totally ignored engine lines they would do worse than they do.
@@dannygjk agreed. But he can still obviously play at an extremely high level without engines lol. But yeah regardless of all of this, Bobby shouldn’t be considered the greatest just because he was born in a time before engines.
i think Fischer was so scary even the soviet GMs acknowledged his unmatched dominance! Raul Capablanca was probably the most solid player ever, and Kasparov has to be the one that made chess so refined and entertaining
Well, chess is also a type of sport so there are other factors than just accuracy. You can play for your opponents psychologhy if you can. Apparently Tal managed to do that somehow against great chess players in his era. Yes it seems like he does not stand a chance against todays super GM's like Hikaru, Carlsen, Mamedyarov etc. However, he became the world champion with his unusual attacking strategy. I think these are enough to think that he was just dangerous. Unpredictable people are terrifying to stand against, in everything.
Maybe tal can stand a chance if he is born the same year carlsen is... And learn from past champs and have a chess engines to evaluate and analyze his games etc. like stockfish.. Btw in his era he is already considered to be a very dangerous tactical chess player without any doubt.. And without the presence of chess engines guides or anything we have right now thats why many people called him a magician i mean that's the difference between his time and our time cuz we are so much advanced right now especially in learning chess.. If he ever exists in our time i doubt carlsen would really can catch up with him(cuz i study most of their games😅)but that's a probability who knows i like both chess players anyways and im not good at comparing them..
@@traplover6357 ya who knows if tal grew up with computers. What if Paul Morphy had chess engines to learn from. Who knows. These players were amazing.
If I remember well from Tal's book, it is a game he played when in the childhood not when he was at the top level. He did put this game in his book because it was a wrong sacrifice but that he manage to win. Somewhat autoderision ffom the Magician
Practically every person on the planet will never be as good as someone or something else at every single thing they ever do. That’s not a reason not to do any of those things.
Chess today is mostly a game of technique and almost anyone can learn technique with correct and sufficient practice. Intuition and creativity on the other hand lie in the realm of genius. That's why Morphy and Tal continue to fascinate. Capablanca and Fischer too.
Tal was renowned for playing the actual person sitting across from him and exploiting their psyche rather than just playing the board. OTB is a significantly more nuanced game and experience than online play (obvious, but with the unfortunate overwhelming prevalance of Online play nowadays it deserves mention). Tal used this to his advantage, as opposed to someone like Fischer who was more concerned with being pinpoint accurate with every move. There is more than one way to skin a cat. I 100% guarantee that a 2500 today would not play as well sitting right across from Mikhail Tal over an actual chess board than they would playing a random online playing the exact same moves. And they would lose.
During the mid to late 1970s, several NHL players were suddenly overcome by the “Philadelphia Flu” according to former Boston Bruin coach, Don Cherry. Players were terrified of stepping onto the ice to face the Philadelphia Flyers. Apparently several players were suddenly afflicted with “Fischer Fever” before facing the mercurial American maverick, RJ Fischer.
Hikaru: A computer doesn't belong on this list of most dangerous Chess players Alpha Zero: *turns into Skynet* "Who's not the most dangerous now, human?!!"
I think the reason Ivanchuk was so deadly is because he has one of the most robust opening repertoire which makes it very difficult to prepare against him. There is a famous game where he pushed Kasparov's pieces into a corner into a position so bad that Kasparov would have probably been glad to give up a piece in exchange for space but he never had time to gain any activity.
The point of the Tal game, to me at least, is to show where his hyper-aggressive (in this case, over-aggressive) style originated. How he was doing it for basically his entire life.
My vote is for the pride and sorrow of chess Paul Morphy. If you asked me a year ago I would have said Fischer. The more I read about Morphy and the more I learn about chess the greater appreciation I have for Morphy
What amazed me about Fischer, he could beat the Soviet Chess Method. i.e. He beat teams of players (who were playing 'through' the player Bobby actually faced over the board). One man, against a whole army. And, he often still won!
And because of it, he should expect to get paid accordingly as well as acknowledged for the feat. It would have been even better if they were caught RED handed though. 😉
Bobby was so good he understood that there is no challenge at his level so now he hates chess. I feel like if he started playing Magnuson and possibly lost to him or was challenged by him perhaps it would spark his love again
@@yessir6427 yeah that's why I said Bobby WAS so good. not IS... I was speaking of when magnus first hit GM as a little boy. Bobby was old and gray and at the end of his life and very jaded over chess, complaining that computers ruined chess as it went from moves from the heart with deep emotion, to "it's all about memory and memorization of placements".. picking every move with the highest % to perfect as possible... it took the imagination out if it. the algorithms are designed to pick all 100% perfect.. unless throttled off to make it possible for a human to win at any level depending on skill. for any setting skill level under Gm the algorithm actually makes bad and wrong moves on purpose at random..
The human computer that was Bobby Fischer. "It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead."
Yurtaev, for sure, in this category. Still remember the BCM cover headline: "Yurtaev's incredible Queen sacrifice". I replayed that game was could not make sense of the sacrifice, but was satisfied to learn that neither could a bunch of GMs because truly there was no immediate tactical gain; just a positional attempt and a psychological suckerpunch. Yurtaev - look him up.
6:55 Tal was 13 years old when he played this game in 1949. Karpov was born in 1951. Obviously Karpov would've played better moves, because by his time, chess had evolved a lot. You have to look at things in the context of time. That's like saying "Karpov would've been really bad at chess in 1949, given that he was -2 years old at the time."
No, he was 12. He turned 13 later that year. Zilber was 15. Tal writes about this game in his memoirs and says that looking back at it, he doesn't see any compensation at all for the bishop now and doesn't include the game among any great "Tal sacrifices". "Much as I would like to, I cannot place this game in the category of 'intuitive' or 'Tal' sacrifices." "Black has an extra bishop, for which I now do not see any compensation at all. On the other hand, it was not difficult to detect that the black king's pawn cover had been weakened. White continues as if nothing has happened."
@@lucasmatsuoca If the article is just going to equate overall strength with danger, then it should just be called "Top 5 chess players of all time", but I imagine the author has made such an article before, so they just worded the title slightly and just changed one or two people. A lazy idea for sure. Morphy, Kasparov, and Fischer all belong on the "Top 5 strongest". Alpha Zero as well if we go by the author's bullshit inclusion of computers. Tal is the only play on that list that is dangerous, despite not being one of the strongest of all time.
@@dysonsphere2394 "dangerous" is quite vague, idk how to exactly evaluate this quality, i mean, Karpov was pretty dangerous if you think about it, 1 positional mistake and you're done, is like walking over a line. Magnus also Dangerous, very useless and abstract top 5, with the awful finish of including alpha Go as you said
@@lucasmatsuoca Yeah, I'd agree that it's really vague, and 'dangerous' can be defined differently by pretty much everyone. Though yeah, I can see the reasoning in why you'd consider the more tactical players like Karpov do be dangerous as well
@@lucasmatsuoca you can easily see how dangerous a player is in blitz for example. Tal even flagged Kasparov one month before his death in a blitz game. He built a reputation for playing insane moves, and had both the psychological and tactical skills to back it up.
so taken at face value, your title is correct. tbh i was thinking the same thing. as a true player of the game, Fischer was never really out matched... if we actually play the game, and not just use theory to mindlessly memorize positional advantage, Fischer would win every time, and yes he had a massive wealth of personal experience and memorization himself...
Morphy could only beat the players infront of him. Im confident that if we picked up an 18 year old Morphy and brought him to 2021, showed him how to use a computer and gave him a year, he would at least give Magnus a run for his money.
Morphy is easily the most talented chess player ever. Its unimaginable how much more he could have accomplished with more dedication to chess and especially with today's resources.
assuming that this 18 years old Morphy would even WANT to spend countless hours at this computer, memorizing decades of opening theory in order to catch up with Magnus, rather than walk out and see the bizarre world of the 2020s he was a human being, not some chess robot
Fischer's physique coupled with his visage and play-to-win attitude was intimidating IMO. With Tal, you fear you would be in the wrong end of a brilliancy. In Kasparov, you would prolly falter due to his attacking style coupled with impeccable preparation, prolly a combo of Fischer and Tal.
I watch fights. There are boring champions who squeak out technical victories on points and then there are exceptional champions that take their opponents out. Bobby is so exciting for me to watch because he gives himself multiple ways to win- remains fluid- hes hard to plan against because hes not a rigid boring computer. He’s in a league of his own!
Player: a *PERSON* taking part in a sport or game. Person: a *HUMAN BEING* regarded as an individual. They're trying some stupid word play to explain their unpopular opinion and the word play itself isn't even correct.
@@disposable3167 not until someone pointed it out but even then he judges pretty harshly for a 12 year old before 1950. But praises morphy cause his opponents barely knew what they were doing.
In a way, computers elevated chess and ruined chess at the same time. Fisher said that said that today's game at the highest level is largely memorization of lines and I agree. The game is still good, and a higher level of play, but the reliance on engines to work out lines stifles creativity imo.
Tal is way underrated, just because a dumb stockfish hates his moves doesn't means he was bad. Playing chess like him in that era against some of the best player and defeating them also need balls.
He was 12 at that time, he would have had a very different thought process then, than when he was world champion. It's more understandable, he wasn't just saying Tal's bad. I still think almost nobody would just give up the bishop like that
