Who Is Better Tal Or Carlsen

Who Is Better ?Think it Is Tal

Carlsen January 2022: 2865
https://ratings.fide.com/profile/1503014/chart
Tal September 1960: 2799
http://www.chessmetrics.com/cm/CM2/PlayerProfile.asp?Params=199510SSSSS3S129382000000111000000000000010100 
Carlsen > Tal

Tal. Its really a question about values.  It's better to win than lose. And perhaps Carlsen is more winning. However, it's even better to play creatively with imagination.  Tal was a creative genius.  Personally, I don't care about ratings.  My personal rule is not to look at ratings & base judgment on creative virtues.

#3
Carlsen's play was both creative and imaginative in the last world championship match. He was willing to give up material in several games.
https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=2122755 

yeah, but Tal is the King of creativity and imaginative power.

Tal sometimes even sacrifice his king to win games.

A lot of time has passed since 1960. In general, purely looking at playing strength, today's world champion is stronger. He has 60 years of accumulated knowledge since then, not to mention modern engines that are relevant for years now, which helped these new super GMs develop their game as well. So, that kind of comparison makes no sense.

If you look purely from the achievements point of view, Carlsen is better because he is dominant for years. Tal managed to be the world champion for one year, before Botvinik managed to take it away from him again. So arguably Tal wasn't really the most dominant player in his own time even, let alone when compared to Carlsen.

I don't care about dominance, ratings, number of wins, and years as world champion, etc.. I just care about aesthetics.  Even if Tal was never world champion I'd say he was a better chess player.

Well, the question asked “Who is better?”

Yeah, by my value judgement Tal is the better player. I don't care about ratings, etc.  That doesn't enter into my evaluation. 

Magnus Carlsen Because his elob rating is 2851 and Tal's is 2600 . Though he is a Greatest player of all the time

Who gives the definition of better?  Who says by what standards we have to judge?  Ok maybe you think the rating system is the universally agreed upon standard for determining who is better at chess. Fine, yes, by that standard Carlsen is the best.  But there is no requirement that we must use that standard. . .I simply take aesthetics standards of judgment, and if you call that "taste" that is fine too.  According to my "taste" Tal is the better player. You can disqualify my opinion.  If 99% of people disagreed with me that would mean nothing to me, anyways.  Anyhow, in my opinion the notion that the better player simply has the highest rating is quite simple, indeed too simple for my taste.  Again, I care less about ratings, etc. That's just my opinion.

I don't even know what trolling means.

Look carefully.  I think Tal is a better chess player in the same way that I think Mas Oyama is a better fighter than Bruce Lee. I judge one's art to be better than the other by an aesthetic standard. In the same way I think Beethoven is better than Mozart, and I think Led Zepplin was better than The Beatles.  I'm not doing anything as ridiculous as calling a banana an apple, I'm just judging by different standards.   

I think Tal came up with ideas that were far more improbable than any player.  For instance, it was well known that the majority of his sacrifices were unsound, objectively. . .but his style was to sac first then think through the possibilities.  I like that. That puts him in a higher realm of artistic ambition than one who would play only for a win.  The confusion he created on the board was both psychological and chaotic. . .that to me is more interesting than a game played more accurately for the win.  The instances in which he played in this manner spanned his entire career!  And he won the World Championship in this confounding style. . .in the context of his time that was revolutionary. . .stunning to his contemporaries.  This puts him in a class of his own.  

And by this standard I even put Korchnoi in the category of equal with Tal. There was good reason that Korchnoi was Tal's ultimate nemesis.  Korchnoi was searching for a different kind of depth that was in a sense complimentary to Tal's dark forest where 2+2=5. In fact Korchnoi's calculation power was like a lamp, and he laughed his way through Tal's dark forests.  I believe if things were only slightly less stressful for Korchnoi he would have defeated Karpov for the crown, and this he did without being a child prodigy and at an advanced age, relatively speaking.  And his chess was interesting!  His ideas on the black side of the French Defense, and his understanding of the Grunfeld are extremely interesting. . .especially given that he had no computers at all! Yeah, I think his style and art speaks for itself, too.

By that logic, I must be leagues better than Tal! Unsound sacrifices, I’m your man!

I like the color green better than blue, fight me.

That's not so ridiculous as it sounds. It's interesting to think that an obscure 1700 internet chess player might be regarded as among the best.  Why shouldn't it be so?  Of course, it would be even better if we could determine that you're sacrifices are not only unsound, but beautiful, and bringing beautiful chaos.  But to me there is something degenerate about internet chess.  I think I just have a prejudice against work done staring at screens and monitors. I grew up before the internet was a thing, and I learned chess before there was a chess.com. So I reserve my best appreciation for over the board chess, somehow regarding internet chess as second rate by definition.    

I did say precisely that.  And then I said that is what makes him better.

And of course Carlsen is stronger than Tal, but I only mean that Tal is better, not stronger. Yes, I am suggesting the possibility that stronger is not always better.  In the world of insatiable competition we tend only to think in terms of stronger as better. . .the winner is the best. Bet let us think of chess as art, and let us for a moment exclude the ideas of rating and strength, and ask ourselves questions about creativity and beauty on the board.  I'm reminded of Lasker's statement that a move is also beautiful by virtue of being strong. . .and we might also say that best moves are not always giving the most beautiful result.  But most people are utilitarians of sorts, practical players who only strive to win above all, and that is common sense.  But I speak the most uncommon of sense, even as Tal played the most uncommon of chess - so I can speak for him, here, upon this question.  Perhaps he'd agree with me when I tell you that winning is nothing compared to an astounding win.  A successful poem is one thing; the one inspired by divine madness (whose read Plato?), quite another.  Only the madman would prefer an astounding, beautiful defeat to multitudes of simple victories! I'm reminded of those Greeks for who the best thing was not victory, but "an opponent who can give me a beautiful death." But these are strange, unearthly, ideals.  They happen when aesthetics becomes the dominant standard, over and above expedience.  Interesting discussion!