Major Chess Players throughout History – Famous Chess Players

There have been several major chess players throughout the history of the game. The names of Gary Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov as famous chess players have become something of a household name. Apart from them, there are players like Vishwanathan Anand from India and Vladimir Kramnik who have achieved the status of great chess players by virtue of their skill and expertise at chess.

Among the greatest and famous chess players of all times are legends like Bobby Fischer and the like. There are several methods of comparison for the greatest chess players and the ELO rating system is one such criterion that can be applied when comparing the chess players. Players like Vasily Ivanchuk have made a name for themselves in the competitive form of chess. The ELO rating was developed by Arpad Elo who devised a statistical method to compare the major chess players throughout history. Elo compiled the rating system in a book published in the 1970s and it was subsequently adopted by FIDE for their rating mechanism.

According to this system, the greatest players of all time can be compared by their ELO rating. The highest rating achieved by any player throughout history is Gary Kasparov who had an ELO rating of 2851. The mercurial American chess player Bobby Fischer had a very high ELO rating in the prime of his career. The current ratings of the players have risen in a method that has been described by experts as ratings inflation. Thus, this has made the process of comparing chess players from different eras a slightly difficult proposition.

There is another method to compare the chess players and it is known as chess metrics system. This is based on the frequency of play and is known to be better than the ELO system. According to this system the major players are listed as Bobby Fischer and Gary Kasparov. The fact remains that ratings reflect the general characteristics of a player as to how well he or she fared against the competition and not particularly the strengths and weaknesses of the players.

There have been several of famous chess players from the erstwhile USSR republics who have excelled at the game in the last few decades. However, the emergence of players from Asian countries is also increasing which is a testament to the popularity of the game among the players in this era. It has to be seen how FIDE goes about making the game more popular and accessible among the newly emerging economies. Whenever the experts are consulted on whom they think are the greatest players, the names of Bobby Fischer and the Russian double of Kasparov and Karpov come up instantly. There are other players like Tal who come up in the list of greatest players of all time as well. Thus, according to a subjective or objective criterion, the names of great players are always part of the legend and they would continue to come up in the compiled lists published in the magazines, journals and the like.