Jim West On Chess: Fischer Greater than Kasparov?

Sunday, August 21, 2016

Fischer Greater than Kasparov?

Personally I agree with this letter to the editor in The Washington Post.

Bobby Fischer was greater than Garry Kasparov by virtue of his peak performance in 1970 and 1971 when he defeated 20 consecutive grandmasters.

But if you measure greatness by number of years at the top, Kasparov arguably had the better career.

"My study of chess was accompanied by a strong attraction to music, and it was probably thanks to this that from childhood I became accustomed to thinking of chess as an art, and have never regarded it as anything else, for all the science and sport involved in it. And, moreover, an art which in some ways is closer to music than it is customary to think. Perhaps chess and music are drawn together by laws of harmony and beauty which are difficult to formulate and difficult to grasp, or perhaps by something else." - Vasily Smyslov