Great Chess Performances at the Elite Level

A great athletic feat inevitably brings to mind the accomplishments of performers from previous eras; when Kobe Bryant authors a streak of games with at least 45 points, educated fans recall an even more prodigious Wilt Chamberlain scoring streak. Similarly, Fabiano Caruana's fantastic result in the Sinquefield Cup--winning his first seven games in a row en route to an undefeated first place score of 8.5/10 against the highest rated field in chess history--has inevitably drawn comparisons to some other tremendous winning streaks/first place results. Bobby Fischer won 20 consecutive games en route to capturing the World Championship in 1972. He won his last seven games in the 1970 Interzonal, swept Mark Taimanov 6-0 in the Candidates Quarterfinals, swept Bent Larsen 6-0 in the Candidates Semifinals and won the first game of his Candidates Finals match against former World Champion Tigran Petrosian (Fischer lost the second game but won the match 6.5-2.5). In a 2005 article, Jeff Sonas--who has developed his own chess rating system to compare players from different eras--declared that Fischer's sweep of Larsen is the greatest match performance in chess history. According to Sonas' 2005 calculations, Anatoly Karpov's Linares 1994 triumph is the single best tournament performance in chess history, followed by Garry Kasparov (Tilburg 1989), Emanuel Lasker (London 1899), Garry Kasparov (Linares 1999), Mikhail Tal (1959 Candidates) and Alexander Alekhine (San Remo 1930). Based on official FIDE ratings, the three best tournament results are Fabiano Caruana (3103 performance rating, Sinquefield Cup 2014), Magnus Carlsen (3002 performance rating, Pearl Spring 2009) and Anatoly Karpov (2985 performance rating, Linares 1994).

While Fischer's 20 game winning streak is an unparalleled feat considering the stakes and the caliber of his opponents, Fischer actually had an even longer streak (24 games)--albeit against relatively "weaker" players--from 1963-65, punctuated by his unprecedented 11/11 sweep of the 1963-64 U.S. Championship. Fischer scored 25.5/26 in 1963! Fischer only played one tournament game in 1964, a final round victory against Anthony Saidy to top off his perfect score in the U.S. Championship. Fischer skipped the 1964 Interzonal and the 1964 Chess Olympiad because of his disputes with the way that FIDE organized international chess. Instead, he went on tour throughout the United States giving simultaneous exhibitions. Imagine LeBron James leaving the NBA for a year to play in the Rucker League or go on tour with streetball players and you get some sense of what the chess world lost in 1964 (not to mention what was lost when Fischer abruptly left the sport in 1972).

Mikhail Tal, who stormed the chess summit in the late 1950s and early 1960s and became the youngest World Champion (23, a record since broken by Garry Kasparov), enjoyed a revival in the early 1970s after battling some serious health problems. Tal put together the two longest official elite level undefeated streaks: 95 games (46 wins and 49 draws from 1973-74) and 86 games (47 wins and 39 draws from 1972-73). Tal's streaks are even more remarkable when one considers his deserved reputation for spectacular attacks and combinations; clearly, Tal was a much more well-rounded and consistent player than many people may realize.

Any list of great chess streaks must mention Jose Raul Capablanca, who went eight years without suffering a loss (1916-1924), including his successful 1921 World Championship match against Emanuel Lasker. However, Capablanca only played 63 games during that span.

Is Caruana's recent performance a sign that he is poised to become World Champion? It will be interesting to see if Caruana is able to dethrone Magnus Carlsen, the highest rated chess player of all-time.

Where Should Magnus Carlsen be Ranked in the Chess Pantheon?

It is interesting and fun to try to rank the greatest practitioners of all-time in a given field but, no matter how conscientiously one attempts to be objective, such selections are inherently subjective.  My Pantheon series honored the 10 greatest retired professional basketball players of all-time, while also providing some recognition to four active players whose career arcs seemed destined to launch them into Pantheon territory. While I am proud of the work that I did on that project, there is a certain charm and elegant simplicity to Julius Erving's take on this subject; he has not changed his all-time starting five since he was in high school: Erving explained that his quintet "was, is, and always will be Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, Elgin Baylor, Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell, with Connie Hawkins coming off the bench as my sixth man to play guard, forward and center."

Erving has reiterated his philosophy in multiple recent interviews that he has conducted as part of his tour to promote his autobiography, Dr. J. Erving has made it clear that he is in no way disparaging the accomplishments and/or skill level of players such as Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James but he strongly believes that the evolution of the game and the emergence of new stars do not diminish the greatness of the game's pioneers; each great player should be appreciated for what he accomplished in the context of his era. In Erving's view, those who operate at the highest levels of greatness are part of a continuum, not a hierarchy: Erving does not believe that his high-flying escapades eclipsed those of Baylor and Hawkins but rather that he continued down the mid-air path that they blazed, much as Jordan, Bryant and James have subsequently continued down that path as well.

Erving's approach could also be applied regarding a chess Pantheon. Olimpiu G. Urcan notes that recently crowned World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen has evoked comparisons with many of the sport's most highly regarded champions because of his ruthlessly efficient playing style, cool nerves and ability to convert the slimmest edge into a win:

Our personal observation took in verbal contrasts and juxtapositions with no fewer than seven of Carlsen's great predecessors, including Paul Morphy, José Raúl Capablanca, Alexander Alekhine, Bobby Fischer, Vasily Smyslov, Anatoly Karpov and, of course, Garry Kasparov. Occasionally, commentators offered variations on this theme. One very notable one, in seeking an adequate Carlsen comparison, yoked together two previous world champions. On November 15, 2013, Kasparov tweeted that he "once described him [Carlsen] as Capablanca with the will of Alekhine." Another pundit, Susan Polgar, one of the commentators during the live broadcast of Game 10, made use of commercial product language, the lingo of soaps and cell phone sales: she described Carlsen as "an improved version of Bobby Fischer."

Perhaps Carlsen is an "improved" Fischer in terms of relative psychological/emotional stability--and those traits are certainly important elements in maintaining one's status as the world's best chess player--but both the chess ratings and the anecdotal evidence suggest that Fischer towered over his contemporaries in a way that is unmatched by any other player except, possibly, Morphy. How can one compare Morphy to Fischer, let alone to Carlsen? Carlsen is a full-time chess professional who has a team of seconds at his disposal, plus access to computer technology that has changed the very nature of the sport. If such computers had existed in Morphy's day would they have leveled the playing field or would Morphy's genius intellect have enabled him to process extra information more rapidly than his rivals? Morphy's style inspired the players who came after him, much like Fischer inspired a generation and much like Carlsen is inspiring a generation. Erving's continuum of greatness can be readily seen when making these comparisons.

Carlsen is already the highest rated player of all-time and the second youngest linear World Champion, narrowly trailing Kasparov for the latter honor. Where should Carlsen rank in the chess pantheon? Carlsen, to this point, has not been as dominant as Fischer but Carlsen shares Fischer's will to win/fighting spirit. There is also more than a whiff of Capablanca's elegant, deceptive simplicity to Carlsen's games; Carlsen's ideas often seem obvious in retrospect but the fact that he consistently beats elite Grandmasters proves that his ideas are not at all obvious until he executes them over the board.

One important element is the test of time. Erving has a "10 year rule": a player should not even be considered for all-time great status until he has logged at least 10 professional seasons (Erving has mentioned that Gale Sayers is perhaps the only exception he will make to this rule). Fischer once declared that he would regularly accept challenges for his World Championship title but he never played an officially sanctioned game of chess after winning that title in 1972; at the other end of the spectrum, Wilhelm Steinitz stood atop the chess world for 28 years, Emanuel Lasker reigned as World Champion for 27 years and Garry Kasparov wore the linear World Championship crown for 15 years.

Whether Carlsen reigns for three years like Fischer or nearly three decades like Steinitz and Lasker, he has already permanently etched his name in chess history by virtue of the quality of his games, his record-breaking rating and his decisive victory against Viswanathan Anand, a great champion in his own right. An old school chess "starting five" analogous to Erving's basketball "starting five" might include Morphy, Steinitz, Lasker, Capablanca and Alekhine. That quintet will always be special--and it is possible to make room for Fischer, Kasparov and Carlsen without either forgetting the past or dismissing modern players as products of superior conditions and/or technology

Bobby Fischer's Opinion About Why Paul Morphy Stopped Playing Chess

Chessbase.com has recently published two articles containing decades-old videos of Bobby Fischer analyzing chess games and talking about great chess players like Paul Morphy, Wilhelm Steinitz and Jose Raul Capablanca:

Rare video – Bobby Fischer analyses

Rare video of Bobby Fischer analyzing – (2)

At around the eight minute mark of the second video in the second post, FM Dimitrije Bjelica asks Fischer why Paul Morphy stopped playing competitive chess; this is a fascinating exchange, because Fischer--like Morphy before him--quit playing serious chess at the height of his powers and it seems likely that both great geniuses suffered from serious mental illness (Dr. Joseph Ponterotto's take on Fischer's brilliant yet tortured mind can be found here). This is Fischer's reply to Bjelica's question:

I don't know. He got fed up with the whole chess scene, you know. He could not get this match [to prove that he was the world's best player]. He thought that they were petty people. He thought that these people were not honorable...Just the people in chess, he felt that they were not honorable people. He did not like the type of people he met, I think. For example, Staunton refused to play him and Staunton did some dishonest things in their negotiations for a match: he did everything to avoid playing him, because he would have lost easily. He [Staunton] refused to admit this and he tried to make it appear that Morphy didn't want to play or something. 

Only a few years after that interview, Fischer cut short his own chess career for similar reasons, forfeiting his World Champion title because FIDE would not agree to all of Fischer's terms regarding his scheduled title defense against Anatoly Karpov. Fischer had very rigid--but well thought out--ideas about exactly how such a match should be conducted and he refused to compromise or change anything in his proposal. Being a perfectionist and wanting everything to be just right seems like a noble ideal but tightly clinging to such hopes/dreams in this most imperfect world can lead to a lot of self-inflicted suffering. Neither Morphy nor Fischer possessed the ability to accept the world the way it is and to function within the confines of how society is organized. In contrast, Garry Kasparov--who, like Morphy and Fischer--is a genius of the highest magnitude, has the most enviable capacity to recognize his own weaknesses and to focus on the art of the possible as opposed to obsessing over creating perfection. Kasparov feuded with FIDE much like Fischer did but Kasparov did not let the fools, the criminals and the dishonorable people chase him away from the sport that he loves. It is very tragic that Morphy and Fischer did not possess such rare inner resolve, strength and tenacity; it is very difficult to be a sensitive genius in an insensitive world--and it is eerie to listen to Fischer calmly speak about Morphy's plight just a few years before Fischer descended into his notorious period of self-imposed exile from the chess world.

Bobby Fischer Comes Home is a Beautiful Portrait of Genuine Friendship

The term "friend" has in many ways lost any real meaning now that it is possible to "friend" someone who you have never met and may barely even know. A true friend cherishes your positive qualities and loves you in spite of your negative traits; such a friend never stops trying to help you become a better person but does not abandon you if you have a setback in that quest. By his own admission, Bobby Fischer was a "difficult" person to befriend--but Grandmaster Helgi Olafsson made the effort to do so and he provided some measure of comfort to Fischer in the last stage of the great champion's life. Olafsson's book Bobby Fischer Comes Home: The Final Years in Iceland, a Saga of Friendship and Lost Illusion is a 143 page paean to the value of friendship, for without the intervention of Olafsson and the other members of the RJF Committee (the initials first stood for Robert J. Fischer but then took the double meaning "Rights, Justice, Freedom" after the group took up other causes as well) Fischer may have spent the last years of his life in prison.

In 1972, Reykjavik, Iceland was the site of Fischer's greatest triumph when he broke the Soviet monopoly on the World Chess Championship with a 12.5-8.5 victory over Boris Spassky; the margin would have been even more lopsided if Fischer had not lost the first game after making a speculative sacrifice in a drawish position and if Fischer had not forfeited the second game without showing up at all because of a dispute over playing conditions. Olafsson was a teenager when his homeland hosted that famous match and he saw several of the games in person; he recalls that a friend's father told him, "One day you might play Fischer or Petrosian [Spassky's predecessor as World Champion]!" Fischer never defended his title, retreating into a paranoia-fueled seclusion, but he emerged in 1992 to play a rematch against Spassky; unfortunately, the event was held in Sveti Stefan--violating a U.N. embargo against war-torn Yugoslavia--and the United States government issued a warrant for Fischer's arrest. Fischer lived as a fugitive for more than a decade until Japanese authorities detained him on July 13, 2004; the Japanese refused to either set him free or turn him over to U.S. authorities and the impasse lasted until Iceland--acting in response to the urgings of the RJF Committee--granted Fischer citizenship and agreed to give him asylum. Iceland received some criticism for helping Fischer, but--in an email reprinted in Bobby Fischer Comes Home--Olafsson explains why he acted on Fischer's behalf:

"There were many good reasons not to lend Bobby Fischer a helping hand whilst in Japan but given the strong possibility that the man was/is seriously ill was reason enough to try to help him. I will never regret that. Personally I make no distinction between, say, a schizo-paranoid, a person with cancer, a brain tumour or any other disease. Everyone should have some basic human rights. Jail was certainly not the correct place for Fischer."

Olafsson does not gloss over Fischer's well known--and quite despicable--anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism and paranoid rants against anyone who displeased him (a group that came to include just about anyone who ever came in contact with Fischer, including his closest family members and dearest friends). In his interactions with the deeply troubled genius, Olafsson alternated between gently challenging Fischer, patiently ignoring Fischer's outbursts until the storm passed and forcefully suggesting a change in topics--but he never abandoned Fischer and he tried to bring out the best in his friend. Olafsson sympathized with Fischer's justified outrage about his stored property being auctioned off but he did not feed Fischer's paranoid view that this action was part of some grand conspiracy. Sometimes, Olafsson just responded with silence when he knew that he could not offer any words of comfort; one such example happened after Fischer reacted to Olafsson humming by declaring, "I think I know your philosophy. It's like in the Monty Python song. Life's a bowl of s--- no matter what you make of it. Look on the bright side of life. Am I right?" Olafsson did not take the bait because he did not perceive that outburst as an insult or a challenge but rather as a symptom of a disease: "I believe that Bobby Fischer was suffering from depression. Taking medication or seeing a psychiatrist was never an option for him. He lay in bed for a good part of the day, a common sign of a depressive mood."

Olafsson describes a Fischer who was demanding, reclusive and self-centered but who was also capable of moments of kindness and tenderness. Fischer's default mode was one of wariness and distrust but when he felt comfortable in a situation he could be a charming and fun companion. Sadly, Fischer's friendship with Olafsson took the same course as most of the relationships in Fischer's life; Fischer blew up at Olafsson over a perceived slight and cut off contact with him. As you read Olafsson's heart-wrenching description of this episode you can feel the pain emanating from the pages. Far from being bitter, Olafsson expresses regret and sadness about how things turned out. A few months after that breach, Fischer died. He suffered a lot in his final days because he refused treatment, not trusting modern medical techniques. His physician, Dr. Eirikur Jonsson, recalls, "At no time did his character leave him...When Bobby Fischer was admitted to Landspitalinn in October of 2007 we realized that this individual intended to fight his disease all by himself. That day in January his fight came to the only possible conclusion. It could not have been any other way. What an incredible fighter. But for me and so many others his death was a very traumatic experience."

Near the end of the book, Olafsson writes, "I thought back to our last conversation, when he had said, 'Don't listen to my negativity, Helgi.' And I thought about his rants, the infamous interviews and his stubborn anti-Semitism. For me they were the expression of a desperate soul. Rather than talking about issues that were seemingly in his heart, I believed that they were expressing his own inner feelings. To me it always seemed that he was just expressing how bad he felt."

Olafsson offers a perceptive take on those notorious internet radio interviews: "Bobby would never acknowledge if he was going through a tough period. Most people who had gone through what he had been through in the nine months he spent in the Japanese detention centre would be in need of counseling. Sometimes he was very bitter, cynical and disillusioned. Nevertheless, after he settled in Iceland I never heard him repeat the wicked things he had said in the radio interviews during his stay in Hungary and Japan. It is a real tragedy how he disgraced himself time and again in those radio interviews.

I told him at our first meeting that such statements were unacceptable. About the 9/11 interview he later simply told me: 'I was tricked.' Bobby was not in a stable condition when Eugenio Torre and the journalists from the Filipino radio station phoned him after the attacks on the Twin Towers. They knew what to expect from him."

In contrast to the despicable, contemptible way that Torre and the others egged Fischer on and brought out the worst in him, Olafsson and other Icelanders attempted to bring out the best in Fischer. Fischer's last radio interview took place in 2006, hosted by Saga Radio's Sigurdur Tomasson; while not entirely free of his bigoted opinions (to put it mildly), this interview also featured Fischer calmly reminiscing about his days as a youngster in the vibrant New York chess scene and he offered his thoughts about various chess champions. Jose Raul Capablanca and Paul Morphy were Fischer's two favorites, while Fischer did not like Alexander Alekhine as much even though he respected Alekhine's strength. "Alekhine had a rather heavy style," Fischer said. "Capablanca was much more brilliant and talented, he had a real light touch...But the thing that was great about Capablanca was that he really spoke his mind, he said what he believed was true, he said what he felt." You don't have to be a psychologist to figure out that Fischer admired Capablanca so much because he considered him a kindred spirit both in terms of talent and outspokenness.

Fischer revolutionized chess with his opening innovations, his peerless endgame technique and his fierce will to win--and the increment-based chess clock that he patented has become standard fare in serious chess tournaments. He accomplished so much despite his serious mental health problems that one cannot help but wonder how much more he could have achieved if he had been able to stabilize his fragile mindset and volatile emotions. It must have taken an extraordinary act of concentrated will for Fischer to become World Chess Champion despite his illness; how many other great minds never become known to the world because their brilliance is trapped within a web of turbulent emotions and fears?