Chess players

What's cracking, mates?

I've got another question for you. Who is your favorite chess player? Why?

Greetings from Brazil!

Magnus Carlsen.

Because he is the best player?

Yeah, he is something else. Mine is the greatest champion ever. :)

I'm inclined to agree with Dionysus. Kasparov and Fischer were both brilliant players, but Carlsen is nigh unbeatable.

As for top players, I think Carlsen is rather boring. He's a machine in the endgame, which means if you give him even a centipawn advantage transitioning to an endgame, you will likely lose. But he rarely plays anything exciting, and I think he's a bit arrogant. Kramnik is all brain and so he's hard to understand, and also quite arrogant. Anand is often passive these days, resorting to crunching down on a defensive position until he gets an advantage to break out. But he's generally pleasant and sometimes brilliant, so I do like him. I also love Peter Swidler, the best English speaker in the world.

My favorite current top player though is probably Grischuk, because he plays exciting games...he's especially fun to watch play the black pieces, because you never know if he's trying to hold or looking for a brilliant winning try.

As for players of all time, that would be much harder, but I definitely love players like Tal, Fisher, and Alekhine. Even though I myself tend to play much quieter games, I love to watch strong attacking players play brilliant tactics!

And of course, I have to mention Ivanchuk...the man will come to the board and either give you brilliance or lose on clock. Always fun to try to guess which Chucky will be there, will it be creative genius Chucky who is well prepared for a fight, or daydreamer Chucky who gets lost in the beauty of a position while his clock vanishes?

Wesley So.
Best game I ever lost

morphy and tal. i have learned and continued to learn so much from those guys.

"You must take your opponent into a deep dark forest where 2+2=5, and the path leading out is only wide enough for one." - Mikhail Tal

I've won many games with that quote in mind :) keep romantic chess alive!

You like Magnus Carlsen simply because you consider him 'the best player' by some arbitrary outdated rating system for which purpose Arpad Elo himself said it was never intended?

By that record, I like the Beatles solely because of the fact that they sold 600 million records. Let my preferences have absolutely nothing to do with their style of music, composition, or lyrics whatsoever. They're just "the best" because the numbers say so.

I am the Walrus.

Yes, good point Admiral.

But it isn't exclusively his rating that leads one to believe he is the best player. He simply does the best in tournaments, which has lead to him being the World Champion twice in a row now. That is not the result of his rating only, it is the result of his ability to win.

Selling records is a poor analogy to winning chess games, imo. I definitely agree that the best music isn't determined by # of records sold.

Static, I agree that Carlsen can be boring due to his "computer-like" slow, "squeezing" play. For more risky play, my favorite is Morozevich. Various female GM's are also fun to watch.

I will look into the games of Grischuk and Ivanchuk, thanks Static.