World Chess Champions Tier List

It has always amazed me that people thought Kramnik was boring, I guess they forgot the good old days.

Fischer, Capa, Garry
Carlsen, Botvinnik, Alekhine, Karpov, Tal
Smyslov, Steinitz, Spassky
Anand, Petrosian
Lasker
Euwe(? the only picture I don't recognize), Kramnik

S Tier: Fischer, Capablanca, Kasparov

A Tier: Carlsen, Botvinnik, Alekhine, Karpov, Tal

B Tier: Symslov, Steinitz, Spassky

C Tier: Anand, Petrosian

D Tier: Lasker

F Tier: Euwe, Kramnik

I wouldn't put Capa in the top, and maybe not Fischer (Sorta depends. FWIW his story is definitely the most entertaining / interesting)

Botvinnik won... 1 match as world champ? He lost or tied almost all of them, and he even called himself first among equals. Not sure I'd put him so high.

In general I'd probably put Lasker higher and Kramnik higher. Tal lower (he's a fan favorite but champ for very short time, like Kramnik).

I don't know... it's hard for me to put them in a list because I tend to go by raw playing strength... and if I do that then all the modern players are above the historical players.

For example, did you know Kasparov and Karpov played over 100 games in WCC match format? And did you know after all that Kasparov's score is barely over 50%? (less than 51% IIRC)

If you played five 20 game matches with someone and scored 50.5% then would you consider yourself far above them? No? Then why is Kasparov far superior to Karpov?

Same for Kramnik. Computers rate him highly, and he beat Kasparov in a match. But people put him lower than Tal because his play is not exciting. Who cares about exciting if he'd crush Tal in a match?

So I'm no good at making lists like this.

Then Fischer should be lower. He may have revolutionized chess and been far above his contemporaries, but he played a grand total of zero games as world champ, so should score a big fat zero for "how long he kept the title"

He basically gave up it up as soon as he won it.

Can you pleeease fix the typos.

Kasparov is superior to Karpov not because his overall score was higher but because he won ALL of their 4-5 matches (except for the 1984 one which was discontinued at a 3-5 score but Kasparov was coming back from 0-5)

IIRC they drew at least one, and in those days the champ kept his title when there was a draw.

But when he did win it was usually only by 1 game. So how is that "far above" ? 

The best argument would be that Kasparov was better against the field. In other words he did better against other top 10 players than Karpov. I don't know how true that is, but still, it's always unfortunate that Karpov gets overlooked when he was 99% as good as Kasparov, and people rate Kasparov as the best ever.

There's also the case of the man, the myth, and the legend.

Tal the man wasn't very good if we're talking purely about world champions.

But Tal the legend goes far beyond reality. He's the man who "led his opponent into a deep dark forest where the path out was only wide enough for one." He's the man who calculated nothing, and instead contemplated removing a hippo from a swamp while sacrificing pieces against world class players.

So the heart swells, and Tal is ranked highly while a virtuoso like Kramnik is forgotten.

Hypothetically, if there were a ranking list by percentages that went like:

1. Kasparov 100%

2. Karpov 99.9%

3. [Someone else] 90%

Kasparov would still be the best ever. The reason for Kasparov's domination is not that he wiped out Karpov in their matches (which he didn't) but his excellent results in main tournaments. See for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_Kasparov#Other_records,  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linares_International_Chess_Tournament#Winners, etc.

The entire topic is pretty stupid imo because you can order the world champions in whatever way you like and there's no argument going on here because people are ordering by different things.

Sure, that's a fair argument.

Particularly what comes to mind are Kasparov's "super simuls" where he demolished national teams (playing clock simuls against grandmaters)

Tal > Kramnik imo because he gave a new "flavour" to the game - a unique playing style for someone who had great results and became world champion (despite his health troubles)

Haha, it's funny you say that because AFAIK, of the two, Kramnik was the only one with heath troubles. He has some kind of chronic arthritis in all his joints. He had to take medication while playing or deal with the pain.

Tal, in comparison, wasn't sick, he just drank a lot.

Again, AFAIK. Maybe Tal had a disease and I don't know about it.

If you don't know about something: google it. You are literally typing something onto a computer in 2020 and taking those precious seconds typing four words will save you us both time and help you learn something.

I'm not trying to be mean but seriously learn to search.

Wiki says he was "frail" and then lists lots of health problems due to drug abuse.

I know one of his hands was deformed, but other than that, what kind of genetic problems did he have? He was "frail"? That's not a disease. Kramnik has a real disease.

Kramnik has been diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, an uncommon form of arthritis. It causes him great physical discomfort while playing. In January 2006, Kramnik announced that he would skip the Corus Chess Tournament in Wijk aan Zee to seek out treatment for his arthritis.^[50] He returned from treatment in June 2006, playing in the 37th Chess Olympiad. He scored a +4 result, achieving the highest rating performance (2847) of the 1307 participating players.

imo, tal belongs in the first tier

….but that's maybe because he's my favourite player and I'm completely biased