Bro where iS THE G.A.O.T
I wonder why he didn’t put Peter Leko or Alexander Morozevich on the list.
The first 7 places are a great choice. It gets more difficult from there.
1) There are no legends before the champion's time. Morphy and Andersen first of all. You could have written that you did not consider that era.
2) Taimanov - looks completely unnecessary. From that era, he could have been replaced by Reshevsky or Geller.
3) From the modern ones - Topalov and Nepomniachtchi played a match twice. Topalov was very high from 2005 to 2016, for almost 2 years in total he occupied the first place in the rating.
These 11 are notable great chess players too. @ebk1976
Johannes Zukertort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Zukertort
Frank Marshall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Marshall_(chess_player)
Carl Schlechter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Schlechter
Efim Bogoljubov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efim_Bogoljubow
Nigel Short https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Short
Gata Kamsky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gata_Kamsky
Alexei Shirov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Shirov
Veselin Topalov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veselin_Topalov
Boris Gelfand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Gelfand
Sergey Karjakin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Karjakin
Ian Nepomniachtchi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Nepomniachtchi
Reuben Fine is a possibility as would be Reshevsky. Fine was shown in retrospective by chessmetrics to be the strongest player in the world in 1940. He won (with Paul Keres) the AVRO tournament in 1939 although I believe Keres was the winner on tiebreak.
Fischer believed Reshevsky was the strongest player in the world from 1946 to 1956.
Of course Paul Morphy has to be considered also. I would tend to think relatively for his time that Morphy was the most dominant player ever.
Harry Nelson Pillsbury was arguably the strongest player in the world.
Perhaps David Bronstein may be the best choice of all. He came close to defeating Botvinnik in their match. Some believe he had to throw the 23rd game although that's debatable.
Sorting by peak ratings and excluding world champions can give you a perspective on the elite chess players.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chess_players_by_peak_FIDE_rating
I know Aronian, Vasily Ivanchuk and Caruana. When tournaments are grave and stressful they underperform--especially Aronian.
Hi! Bronstein WAS NOT leading TWO points before the last two games, one point advantage was the case!
What about Pillsbury? And also players before the 1st World Championship.
"Before 1950, the champion had the right to handpick a challenger."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candidates_Tournament