Several methods have been suggested for comparing the greatestchess players in history. There is agreement on a statistical system to rate the strengths of current players, called theElo system, but disagreement about methods used to compare players from different generations who never competed against each other. This is because the Elo system can only compare players success-rate to their contemporaries.
The most well known statistical method was devised byArpad Elo in 1960 and elaborated on in his 1978 bookThe Rating of Chessplayers, Past and Present.[1] 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:
Though published in 1978, Elo's list did not include five-year averages for later playersBobby Fischer andAnatoly Karpov. It did list January 1978 ratings of 2780 for Fischer and 2725 for Karpov.[2]
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. As of September 2023,[update] there are 133 chess players in history who broke 2700, and 15 of them exceeded 2800.
| Rank | Rating | Player | Date | Age |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 011 | 2882 | Magnus Carlsen | 2014-05May 2014 | 23 years, 5 months |
| 022 | 2851 | Garry Kasparov | 1999-07July 1999 | 36 years, 2 months |
| 033 | 2844 | Fabiano Caruana | 2014-10October 2014 | 22 years, 2 months |
| 044 | 2830 | Levon Aronian | 2014-03March 2014 | 31 years, 4 months |
| 055 | 2822 | Wesley So | 2017-02February 2017 | 23 years, 3 months |
| 066 | 2820 | Shakhriyar Mamedyarov | 2018-09September 2018 | 33 years, 4 months |
| 077 | 2819 | Maxime Vachier-Lagrave | 2016-08 August 2016 | 25 years, 9 months |
| 088 (tie) | 2817 | Viswanathan Anand | 2011-03March 2011 | 41 years, 2 months |
| 088 (tie) | 2817 | Vladimir Kramnik | 2016-10October 2016 | 41 years, 3 months |
| 1010 (tie) | 2816 | Veselin Topalov | 2015–07July 2015 | 40 years, 3 months |
| 1010 (tie) | 2816 | Hikaru Nakamura | 2015-10October 2015 | 27 years, 9 months |
| 1010 (tie) | 2816 | Ding Liren | 2018-11November 2018 | 26 years |
| 1313 | 2810 | Alexander Grischuk | 2014-12December 2014 | 31 years, 1 month |
| 1414 | 2804 | Alireza Firouzja | 2021-11December 2021 | 18 years, 5 months |
| 1515 | 2801 | Arjun Erigaisi | 2024-11December 2024 | 21 years, 2 months |
| 1616 | 2798 | Anish Giri | 2015-10October 2015 | 21 years, 3 months |
| 1717 | 2795 | Ian Nepomniachtchi | 2023-03March 2023 | 32 years, 7 months |
| 1818 | 2794 | Gukesh Dommaraju | 2024-10October 2024 | 18 years, 4 months |
| 1919 | 2793 | Teimour Radjabov | 2012-11November 2012 | 25 years, 7 months |
| 2020 | 2788 | Alexander Morozevich | 2008-07July 2008 | 30 years, 11 months |
The average Elo rating of top players has risen 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.[3] Many people believe that this rise is mostly due to an anomaly known asratings inflation, making it impractical to compare players of different eras.[4]
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 ratherapproximate — he 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".[5][6]
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.[according to whom?]
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."[7]
Sonas, like Elo, claims that it is impossible to compare the strength of players from different eras, saying:
Of course, a rating always indicates the level of dominance of a particular player against contemporary peers; it says nothing about whether the player is stronger/weaker in their actual technical chess skill than a player far removed from them in time. So while we cannot say that Bobby Fischer in the early 1970s or José Capablanca in the early 1920s were the "strongest" players of all time, we can say with a certain amount of confidence that they were the two most dominant players of all time. That is the extent of what these ratings can tell us.[8]
Nevertheless, Sonas' website does compare players from different eras. Including data until December 2004, the ratings were:
| Rank | 1-year peak[9] | 5-year peak[10] | 10-year peak[11] | 15-year peak[12] | 20-year peak[13] |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bobby Fischer, 2881 | Garry Kasparov, 2875 | Garry Kasparov, 2863 | Garry Kasparov, 2862 | Garry Kasparov, 2856 |
| 2 | Garry Kasparov, 2879 | Emanuel Lasker, 2854 | Emanuel Lasker, 2847 | Anatoly Karpov, 2820 | Anatoly Karpov, 2818 |
| 3 | Mikhail Botvinnik, 2871 | José Capablanca, 2843 | Anatoly Karpov, 2821 | Emanuel Lasker, 2816 | Emanuel Lasker, 2809 |
| 4 | José Capablanca, 2866 | Mikhail Botvinnik, 2843 | José Capablanca, 2813 | José Capablanca, 2798 | Alexander Alekhine, 2781 |
| 5 | Emanuel Lasker, 2863 | Bobby Fischer, 2841 | Bobby Fischer, 2810 | Alexander Alekhine, 2794 | Viktor Korchnoi, 2766 |
| 6 | Alexander Alekhine, 2851 | Anatoly Karpov, 2829 | Mikhail Botvinnik, 2810 | Mikhail Botvinnik, 2789 | Vasily Smyslov, 2759 |
In 2005,[14] 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:[15]
| Rank | Rating | Player |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2895 | Bobby Fischer |
| 2 | 2886 | Garry Kasparov |
| 3 | 2885 | Mikhail Botvinnik |
| 4 | 2878 | Emanuel Lasker |
| 5 | 2877 | José Capablanca |
| 6 | 2860 | Alexander Alekhine |
| 7 | 2848 | Anatoly Karpov |
| 8 | 2833 | Viswanathan Anand |
| 9 | 2826 | Vladimir Kramnik |
| 10 | 2826 | Wilhelm Steinitz |
In contrast to Elo and Sonas's systems,Raymond Keene andNathan Divinsky's bookWarriors of the Mind[16] 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:[17]
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,[18] andWarriors of the Mind has been accused of arbitrarily selecting players and bias towards modern players.[19]
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.
A computer-based process of analyzing chess abilities across history came from Matej Guid andIvan Bratko at theUniversity of Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 2006.[20] A similar project was conducted for World Champions in 2007–08 usingRybka 2.3.2a (then-strongest chess program) and a modified version of Guid and Bratko's program "Crafty".[21] CAPS (Computer Aggregated Precision Score) is a system created byChess.com that compares players from different eras by finding the percentage of moves that matches that of a chess engine.[22]
In 2017, Jean-Marc Alliot of the Toulouse Computer Science Research Institute (IRIT) presented a new method,[23] based on aMarkovian interpretation of a chess game. Starting with those ofWilhelm Steinitz, all 26,000 games played since then by chess world champions have been processed by a supercomputer using theStockfish 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, whileVladimir Kramnik (in 1999) is second,Bobby Fischer (in 1971) is third, andGarry Kasparov (in 2001) is fourth.
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, usingChess.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:[24]
(Kaufman noted however thatFabiano 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".)[24]
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 thatPaul 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:[24]
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.[24]
Many prominent players and chess writers have offered their own rankings of players.
In 1964,Bobby Fischer listed his top 10 inChessworld magazine:Morphy,Staunton,Steinitz,Tarrasch,Chigorin,Alekhine,Capablanca,Spassky,Tal, andReshevsky.[25][26] He considered Morphy to be "perhaps the most accurate", writing: "In a set match he would beat anyone alive today."[27]
In 1970, Fischer namedMorphy,Steinitz,Capablanca,Botvinnik,Petrosian,Tal,Spassky,Reshevsky,Svetozar Gligorić, andBent Larsen the greatest chess players in history.[28]
In 1974, popular chess authorIrving Chernev published an article titledWho were the greatest? in the English magazine CHESS.[29] He followed this up with his 1976 bookThe 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.[30]
In a 1992 interview GMMiguel Quinteros gave the opinion:[31] "I think Fischer was and still is the greatest chess player of all time. [...] During his absence other good chess players have appeared. But no one equals Fischer's talent and perfection."
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 andKasparov.[32]
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.[33]
In 2012, Anand stated that he considered Fischer the best player and also the greatest, because of the hurdles he faced.[34]
Svetozar Gligorić reported in his bookShall 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 byChess 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.[35]
BBC award-winning journalists, from their bookBobby Fischer Goes to War: How the Soviets Lost the Most Extraordinary Chess Match of All Time (HarperCollins, 2004):
Fischer, some will maintain, wasthe 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.[36]
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."[37]
In an interview in 2011, Vladimir Kramnik said aboutAnand: "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 thanKasparov", 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".[38]
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 inMy Great Predecessors, Fischer's superiority over his contemporaries at his peak was greater than any other world champion's."[39]
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."[40]
In a 2012 interview,Levon Aronian stated that he considersAlexander Alekhine the best player of all time.[41]
In a 2015 interview after the 8th round of theSinquefield Cup, Levon Aronian stated that he considers Garry Kasparov the strongest player of all time.[42]
In a 2022 interview after the 5th round of the first leg inFIDE 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."[43]
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.[44]
In December 2015 he said he would like to play Fischer and Kasparov at their peak performance.[45]
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."[46] He made a similar claim in 2021, saying "Garry Kasparov, in my opinion, the greatest player there's ever been..."[47]
In 2021,Hikaru Nakamura published a Youtube video entitled "Hikaru's Hot Takes on the Ten Best Chess Players of All Time"[48] in which he reviewed a chess.com article on "The 10 Best Chess Players Of All Time."[49] In this video he suggested that it was unfair to excludePaul Morphy andViswanathan Anand from the 10 greatest players of all time. Hikaru 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, Hikaru said he "can live with" the top 5 as:Kasparov,Carlsen,Fischer,Capablanca andKarpov but he would put from 6 through 10:Anand,Kramnik,Botvinnik,Lasker,Morphy.
DuringGame 6 of World Chess Championships 2023, as he was commenting on the game, Hikaru mentionedMagnus Carlsen,Garry Kasparov,Vishy Anand,Bobby Fischer,Anatoly Karpov,José Raúl Capablanca andVladimir Kramnik as the top chess players of all time in order.[citation needed]
Karpov named Capablanca, Alekhine, Fischer, himself, and Kasparov as his top five in 2021.[50]
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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 thesplit between the "Classical" and FIDE world titles between 1993 and 2006.
| Champion | Total | Undisputed | FIDE | Classical | Years as Undisputed Champion | Years as FIDE/Classical Champion | Total reign |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Emanuel Lasker | 6 | 6 | 27 | 27 | |||
| Garry Kasparov | 6 | 4 | 2 | 8 | 7 | 15 | |
| Anatoly Karpov | 6 | 3 | 3 | 10 | 6 | 16 | |
| Mikhail Botvinnik | 5 | 5 | 13 | 13 | |||
| Magnus Carlsen | 5 | 5 | 9 | 9 | |||
| Viswanathan Anand | 5 | 4 | 1 | 6 | 2 | 8 | |
| Alexander Alekhine | 4 | 4 | 17 | 17 | |||
| Wilhelm Steinitz | 4 | 4 | 8 | 8 | |||
| Vladimir Kramnik | 3 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 6 | 7 | |
| Tigran Petrosian | 2 | 2 | 6 | 6 | |||
| José Raúl Capablanca | 1 | 1 | 6 | 6 | |||
| Boris Spassky | 1 | 1 | 3 | 3 | |||
| Bobby Fischer | 1 | 1 | 3 | 3 | |||
| Max Euwe | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | |||
| Vasily Smyslov | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||
| Mikhail Tal | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||
| Ruslan Ponomariov | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | |||
| Alexander Khalifman | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||
| Rustam Kasimdzhanov | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||
| Veselin Topalov | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||
| Ding Liren | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||
| Gukesh Dommaraju | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
Correction: There was one error, I missed Capa's match with Kostic in 1919 due to Kostic's first name being given inconsistently. Fixing this raises Capa to 2633 in the absolute list, to 2868 (third place) in the list where number 1 in 1900 = Carlsen, and to 2821 (shared sixth place) in the list of where they would be if age 30 now. Probably there are other similar data errors I haven't caught., especially among the players of long ago.
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