Top 20 highest ELO ever

Impressive stuff.  But what's more impressive?

Garry Kasparov still #1 after over a 10 years

Magnus Carlsen at #2 and only being 20 years old

Or Bobby Fischer still in the top 10 for almost 40 years?

It's interesting looking at it, and scrolling through "Year-month" column, seeing 2006, 2011, 2010 and then BAM 1972

Ofcourse I doubt anyone doubts that Fischer would have broken the 2800 barrier had he continued playing but by how much ?! 

Capablanca would have had the highest rating if the system existed back then. he didnt lose a match for many many years in his chess career till I think reti beat him.

The most impressive thing is that Eljanov managed to get on that list :-)

Capablanca was undefeated over 63 games (+40, =23) between 10 February 1916 and 21 March 1924.

The longest unbeaten run in terms of games is Tal. 86 games (+47, =39)

Tal's streak is much more impressive given that he did it in 2 years I believe. When you only play 8 games a year and are as good as Capa was ofcourse its easy to go years without a defeat. 

Fischer might have reached 2800 if he had kept playing, but it was very hard to do that with so few 2600 players around. Fischer lost points in his match against Spassky and would have had to beat Karpov clearly just to stay in the 2780s.

This is an interesting point. Spassky was second in rating in 1972 and 100 ( or more ) points lower than Fischer !  I don't know who was 3rd and 4th in rating about that time ? I suspect maybe Korchnoi, Petrosian ? I also wonder what was Karpov's rating in 1975 when the match with Fischer should have taken place ? 

In 1975 Karpov had reached as high as 2705 but he fell below 2700 the following years. The only 2650 player in 1975 apart from Fischer and Karpov was Korchnoi with 2655.

I believe the players since 2000 ( at least ) have had an easier time breaking 2700 because they have many more players close to them in rating to "feed" off of. Fischer had NONE and there werent the super tournaments in Fischer's day as there have been since 2000. Most of the top ten today ONLY play in these super events thus protecting their ratings and keeping them artificially high. If all of the top players played in strong open events too ( as Ivanchuk does ) I dont believe any would stay over 2800 and a few would even drop below 2700.... 

Since Fischer didnt have ANY players close to him in rating to "feed" on his 2785 is even more remarkable. 

1970 FIDE rating list. Top 7 players
  
    1 Fischer Robert James..............   USA  2720
  2-3 Spassky, Boris....................   URS  2670
      Korchnoi, Viktor..................   URS  2670
  4-5 Geller, Efim......................   URS  2660
      Keres, Paul.......................   URS  2660
  6-7 Larsen, Bent......................   DEN  2650
      Petrosian, Tigran.................   URS  2650
 
  January 1971 FIDE rating list. Top 9 players
  
    1 Fischer Robert James..............   USA  2740
    2 Spassky, Boris....................   URS  2690
  3-4 Kortchnoi, Viktor.................   URS  2660
      Larsen, Bent......................   DEN  2660
    5 Petrosian, Tigran.................   URS  2640
  6-9 Portisch, Lajos...................   HUN  2630
      Botvinnik. Mikhail................   URS  2630
      Geller, Efim......................   URS  2630
      Polugaevsky, Lev..................   URS  2630
 
  July 1971 FIDE rating list. Top 6 players
  
    1 Fischer Robert James..............   USA  2760
    2 Spassky, Boris....................   URS  2690
    3 Kortchnoi, Viktor.................   URS  2670
    4 Larsen, Bent......................   DEN  2660
  5-6 Petrosian, Tigran.................   URS  2640
      Polugaevsky, Lev..................   URS  2640
 
  July 1972 FIDE rating list. Top 6 players
  
    1 Fischer Robert James..............   USA  2785
    2 Spassky, Boris....................   URS  2660
  3-4 Petrosian, Tigran.................   URS  2645
      Polugaevsky, Lev..................   URS  2645
  5-6 Kortchnoi, Viktor.................   URS  2640
      Portisch, Lajos...................   HUN  2640
 
  July 1973 FIDE rating list. Top 6 players
  
    1 Fischer Robert James..............   USA  2780
  2-3 Karpov, Anatoly...................   URS  2660 
      Tal, Mikhail......................   URS  2660
    4 Spassky, Boris....................   URS  2655
  5-6 Portisch, Lajos...................   HUN  2650
      Kortchnoi, Viktor.................   URS  2650
 
  May 1974 FIDE rating list. Top 6 players
  
    1 Fischer Robert James..............   USA  2780
    2 Karpov, Anatoly...................   URS  2700 
    3 Kortchnoi, Viktor.................   URS  2670
    4 Spassky, Boris....................   URS  2650
    5 Portisch, Lajos...................   HUN  2645
    6 Petrosian, Tigran.................   URS  2640
 
  January 1975 FIDE rating list. Top 6 players
  
    1 Fischer Robert James..............   USA  2780
    2 Karpov, Anatoly...................   URS  2705
    3 Kortchnoi, Viktor.................   URS  2655
  4-6 Petrosian, Tigran.................   URS  2645
      Polugaevsky, Lev..................   URS  2645
      Tal, Mikhail......................   URS  2645

Thanks goldie ! I am surprised Spassky disappeared from the top 6 from 1974-1975 ! He must have had some bad results. 

In 1978 professor Elo published retrospective ratings of historical players. Capa got 2725, for a five-year period.

edit: They were done before that though, as I recall seeing these ratings referenced in Evans' column in the early 70s.

Fischer had a 50 point lead 1970-71 and then it was suddenly 125 after his incredible results in the qualification. It would have been difficult to keep such a lead and maybe it soon would have returned to the more "normal" numbers of 1970-71 if Fischer hadn't stopped playing.

Yeah, but I wonder if that woulda been the case if he didn't try and go for that pawn with his bishop in game 1 and didn't lose game 2 by forfeit.

A forfeited game isnt rated.