FISCHER'S TOP TEN!

1. Paul Morphy

"Perhaps the most accurate player who ever lived, he would beat anybody today in a set-match. He had complete sight of the board and seldom blundered even though he moved quite rapidly. I've played over hundreds of his games and am continually surprised and entertained by his ingenuity."

2. Howard Staunton

"His games are completely modern, but very few of them show brilliancies. He understood all the positional concepts we now hold so dear."

3. Wilhelm Steinitz

"He always sought completely original lines and didn't mind getting into cramped quarters if he thought that his position was essentially sound."

4. Siegbert Tarrasch

"Razor-sharp, he always followed his own rules. In spite of devotion to his own supposedly scientific method, his play was often witty and bright."

5. Mikhail Tchigorin

"The first great Russian player and one of the last of the Romantic School. At times he would continue playing a bad line even after it was refuted."

6. Alexander Alekhine

"Never a hero of mine. His style worked for him, but it could scarcely work for anybody else. His conceptions were gigantic, full of outrageous and unprecedented ideas. It's hard to find mistakes in his games, but in a sense his whole method was a mistake."

7. Jose Capablanca

"He had the totally undeserved reputation of being the greatest living endgame player. His trick was to keep his openings simple and then play with such brilliance that it was decided in the middle game before reaching the ending -- even though his opponent didn't always know it. His almost complete lack of book knowledge forced him to push harder to squeeze the utmost out of every position."

8. Boris Spassky

"He can blunder away a piece, and you are never sure whether it's a blunder or a fantastically deep sacrifice. He sits at the board with the same dead expression whether he's mating or being mated."

9. Mikhail Tal

"Even after losing four games in a row to him I still consider his play unsound. He is always on the lookout for some spectacular sacrifice, that one shot, that dramatic breakthrough to give him the win."

10: Samuel Reshevsky

"From 1946 to 1956 probably the best in the world, though his opening knowledge was less than any other leading player. Like a machine calculating every variation, he found moves over the board by a process of elimination and often got into fantastic time pressure."

What else Fischer had to say about:

Morphy:

 

"A popularly held theory about Paul Morphy is that if he returned to the chess world today and played our best comtemporary players, he would come out the loser. Nothing is further from the truth. In a set match, Morphy would beat anybody alive today."

"Perhaps the most accurate player who ever lived, he would beat anybody today in a set-match. He had complete sight of the board and seldom blundered even though he moved quite rapidly. I've played over hundreds of his games and am continually surprised and entertained by his ingenuity"

"Paul Morphy was a great chessplayer, a genius... Morphy, I think everyone agrees, was probably the greatest genius of them all..."
Bobby Fischer, Yugoslavia press conference, 1992

 

Steinitz:

 

"He is the so-called father of the modern school of chess; before him, the King was considered a weak piece and players set out to attack the King directly. Steinitz claimed that the King was well able to take care of itself, and ought not to be attacked until one had some other positional advantage. He understood more about the use of squares than Morphy and contributed a great deal more to chess theory."

Capablanca:

 

"Capablanca was possibly the greatest player in the entire history of chess."

Staunton:

 

"Staunton was the most profound opening analyst of all time. He was more theorist than player, but nonetheless he was the strongest player of his day. Playing over his games, I discover that they are completely modern; where Morphy and Steinitz rejected the fianchetto, Staunton embraced it. In addition, he understood all of the positional concepts which modern players hold so dear, and thus - with Steinitz - must be considered the first modern player."

Alekhine:

 

"Alekhine is a player I've never really understood; yet, strangely, if you've seen one Alekhine game you've seen them all. He always wanted a superior center; he maneuvered his pieces towards the King's-side, and around the twenty-fifth move began to mate his opponent"