Best Chessplayers Never to Win the World Chess Championship
Technically, Morphy was the best chess player never to be World Champion because quite simply he was the best chess player ever, and there wasn't an official championship declared until just after his death. But going backwards through thin data is much more speculative. Who would win between Greco and Philidor? I'll leave all that behind and say that I'm restricting myself to surveying the period starting with Steinitz #1 and currently (May 12, 2010) Anand #15. Doing so also precludes looking forwards, as Carlsen hasn't had his shot yet, and then the right answer might be Ilya Nyzhnyk, or after that some Chinese three year-old. Players are measured against their peers. Thanks to BobBot for feedback while I worked on this.
1) Johannes Zukertort - His most noted contribution to the World Championship germ line is to have lost the first "Official World Championship Match" (to Steinitz in 1886). However, 1886 is a rather arbitrary starting point for the official line to start. (For historical neatness, however, one must appreciate that no match was held until after Paul Morphy died in 1884.) In 1883, Zukertort won the strongest tournament in the world (London) by three points (!!!) over Steinitz with 22/26 to WS's 19/26. Looking from the top down, Steinitz dropped almost twice as many points as did Zukertort. Only when those two had outstripped their rivals (and by statistically different margins) did a match for the "World Championship" even come into discussion. If Steinitz is the first World Champ, Zukertort is the zeroth. Zukertort even jumped out to an early 4-1 lead in their match, before completely collapsing and losing. By this time, however, his health was already in severe decline: he dies two years later at the age of 45 from a panoply of ailments. But for the ten years before this, he was clearly the number one player in the world. Had someone merely deemed the Zukertort-Anderssen or Zukertort-Blackburne match the World Championship match, then Anand would be the sixteenth in line instead.
2) Harry Nelson Pillsbury - Imagine someone who has played chess for a half dozen years, but never in any big tournament against even GM opposition. Not too hard. Could be anyone of us, really. Now imagine showing up at Linares, and winning the tournament ahead of Kramnik, Carlsen, Anand, Topalov, Aronian, Grischuk et al. Impossible? But that's exactly what Harry Pillsbury did in his international debut:
http://www.chessbase.com/news/2006/pillsbury02.gif
No internet, no databases. The historical record has no examples of him playing any earlier than three years prior! A weekender in Buffalo here, an exhibition in Philly there. Next stop, Hastings, and winning what was up to that point, perhaps the strongest tournament of all time. No one does that. In any sport -- much less chess. Unfortunately, by his second major tournament, he was already suffering the symptoms of the illness that would eventually kill him at the age of just 33.
Now the biggest knock on HNP is that his star burnt out so quickly, but just looking at his body of work during that period convinces me. He had an even record with the man who reigned as World Champion for 27 years, despite the fact that prior to their first meeting, he had zero experience against any strong opposition. The games most likely to be published are his tactical crushes, but his sense of positional chess was quite advanced, as well. For example, check out the endgame technique in this contest:
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1109209
Oh, and it was one of twelve games played simultaneously. Blindfold.
3) Akiba Rubinstein - Rubinstein was certainly the best player to never have a shot at the World Championship. People always say Keres was unlucky this or that, but he did in fact play in many tournaments to decide a challenger for the World Championship. Rubinstein zero. At the time, it was the custom for the champion to demand his terms for a match, and this resulted in Lasker sometimes avoiding his most dangerous rival at the moment. (In contrast, when the WCC seemed to be up in the air during the political tumult of Kasparov's reign, he handpicked his most dangerous challenger -- and lost.)
Rubinstein can rightly claim to be the first universal player. His most famous game was the chess equivalent of Tyson-Bruno:
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1119679
Looking at the near symmetrical position on move 15, it's hard to believe that white gets completely slaughtered in ten moves. The final combination is so elegant that any 21st-century GM would be proud to call it theirs. But what really distinguished him from his peers was his endgame technique. I'd rate him in the EG HoF inner circle with Kramnik, Smyslov, Capablanca and Fischer.
He was due to play a match with Lasker in October 1914, but the outbreak of World War I nixed it. After the war, he never again reached his peak form and later withdrew from tournament play due to mental health issues.
4) Paul Keres - Keres is usually paired with Korchnoi at the top of the discussions of BCPNtWtWCC, but like Korchnoi below he had many opportunities, but just didn't have enough. It's claimed by Evans and others that Keres dumped games to Botvinnik so as to ensure the Soviet patriarch became the World Champion in 1948. The proof is looking at the games, Keres made mistakes. Um, well, the fact that the game was lost proves their were mistakes. You'll have to do better than that. But looking at the games over the entire WWII era, I'm convinced that Botvinnik was already the best player in the world by the late 30s, tho he did whiff at AVRO. It has been claimed that WWII was especially hard on Keres, but he won the '47, '50 and '51 Soviet Championships, as well as a close second in the very strong '57 Championship. But when it came to ascending the throne, he was always just a little short. Way back of Bronstein in Budapest in 1950, 2nd in the 1953 Candidates to Smyslov (but two points back), 2nd again in 1956 to Smyslov (1.5 back), 2nd to Tal in 1960 (despite winning their encounters 3-1; Tal just pounded every one else, e.g. Fischer 4-0), second by half a point to Petrosian in '62 (but going over the games, it seems clear that had Petrosian needed more points, he would've gotten them). For two decades, the road to the World Championship ran over Keres. Literally. And the half point back at Curacao was twenty-four years after what must've been Keres' best "candidate" result: coequal first in 1938 AVRO ahead of Botvinnik, Alekhine et al. This might've resulted in a challenge to Alekhine had not World War II erupted. There is no one who has come that close repeatedly over such a long time, and not taken the crown.
5) Siegbert Tarrasch - Tarrasch's tournament results winning four major ones in a row(Breslau 1889, Manchester 1890, Dresden 1892, Leipzig 1894), marked him as a rightful challenger to Steinitz, but at the time his medical practice took first priority. When in 1894 Lasker won the title from Steinitz (and quite easily, too -- the low fruit may well have been Tarrasch's for the taking), Tarrasch's interest in the matter perked up. Unfortunately, Lasker was to dodge his logical challenger for the next fifteen years! By the time they played, Tarrash was probably twenty years past his peak and lost accordingly. While Steinitz is accorded credit for laying the foundation for the positional rules of chess (whether or not they were entirely correct), it can be honestly said that Tarrasch brought the ideas of chess strategy into the 20th century.
6) Viktor Korchnoi - Many people put Korchnoi at the top of this list because he just barely lost two matches for the World Championship (and got creamed in a third). In the 1974 Candidates' Final (that became the de facto World Championship after Fischer defaulted playing Karpov), the margin of victory may well have been a novelty in the Sicilian Dragon that was probably conceived of by Geller or Zaitsev or certainly somebody who wasn't actually Karpov. But having said that, had Korchnoi actually won the match, I think there is a good chance Fischer would've played and turned back the challenger. Fischer knew he was better than Korchnoi. Playing Karpov would've been a different story entirely. The fact that (on what would be the downside of his career) when pressed by Kasparov, Karpov found himself. The same thing might be said for the Karpov-Korchnoi match in 1978. Looking at the games themselves, Korchnoi was playing stronger chess. His play was very, very deep and strong. But despite that, Karpov overcame him. It's often said that the difference in the match was the weight of the Soviet machine thrown at the defector Korchnoi, but I think that's nonsense. I think that the intrigue spurred Korchnoi to greater levels of creativity. If you look at their resumes outside that match but of the same era, Karpov's is untouchable: total tournament dominance. Korchnoi's was not at the same par. In the absence of an aggro environment, he didn't do as well. And when possible would create one himself (c.f. his matches with Petrosian, Spassky.. -- does anyone else not get along with Spassky??!?). Karpov actually brought out the best chess in Korchnoi. But it wasn't enough.
7) Veselin Topalov - Yes, I know he won the "World Championship" tournament, but the title has to be taken off the champion's cold dead fingers (which in the literal sense, does include one tournament, in 1948). Topalov's uncompromising style and complete lack of fear of losing have had him atop or second in the world rankings for a number of years now. The only question is whether what works against mere super-GMs will work against a sitting World Champion. It didn't vs. Kramnik in 2006. And it came just short against Anand in 2010. In any event, Topalov plays very strong chess. Also to be noted is how his incredible physical preparation allowed him to outplay Anand repeatedly in the fourth to sixth hours. People who don't think chess is a sport don't really know much about chess.
8) Vassily Ivanchuk - While some players may not have become World Champion because historical luck didn't allow them to demonstrate that they were the best player, Ivanchuk has no such excuse. His biggest mistake was that he ascended the rankings at a time when there was an immovable object in the #1 spot. He made his stunning debut in 1991 by winning the Linares tournament in his first attempt ahead of Kasparov and most of the rest of the world's top ten. In most points in chess history, Ivanchuk would be World Champ in five years or so. But unlike almost every other World Champion who came before him, Kasparov was driven. (Karpov was the admirable exception: winning the title by default made him feel the need to show his stuff in tournament after tournament, and the ascension of Kasparov made him a better chessplayer than he had ever been before.) Every challenge to Kasparov incited him to work that much harder. While there are a lot more #2's in history than #1's (and Ivanchuk may well have been a #3 at best), Ivanchuk's body of work sets him apart from all the others. Twenty years after ascending the world stage, he is still the most active participant in super-GM tournaments, and constantly stuns his rivals with his fresh ideas. Admittedly, he may be slightly nuts, but that is no doubt part of the package that makes him such a great player and original thinker.
9) David Bronstein - Although Bronstein's most famous result his is draw in the 1951 match with Botvinnik, this might have been the least of his accomplishments during that era -- Botvinnik had come off of a 3-year absence while working on his PhD in electrical engineering. (Can anyone imagine a #1 player doing that nowadays?) More significantly, Bronstein had just won the USSR Championship back to back years, which at the time was equivalent to winning the national championship of Earth two years in a row. He also co-won the Candidates tournament with Boleslavsky. Subsequently he only tied the twelve-game match with Boleslavsky for the right to challenge Botvinnik, only to win in overtime. (Does anyone think Boleslavsky would've beaten Botvinnik?) It seems that Bronstein's enterprising style was best suited to winning tournaments rather than overcoming a solid World Champion. Yes, with just a tiny little bit of luck, he would've won that match, but if he had, it would've been a bigger upset than Euwe-Alekhine, catching Botvinnik at his absolute rustiest. Shortly thereafter, Smyslov and Petrosian and (the 8-years older)Keres passed him by.
10) Efim Geller - Geller is probably the most underappreciated player of the second half of the twentieth century. Always in the shadow of this year's World Champion, but still always in the shadows. His career at the top is bookended by wins in the Soviet Championship in 1955, and 1979(!). A quarter of a century at the top, but never even a title match despite candidacy six times. And unlike some players who had what it took to reach the top, but not overcome the champ, Geller had a most enviable record against the World Champions of his era:
+ 4 - 1 = 5 vs Botvinnik
+ 11 - 7 = 31 vs Smyslov
+ 6 - 6 = 22 vs Tal
+ 6 - 2 = 33 vs Petrosian
+ 6 - 9 = 22 vs Spassky
+ 5 - 3 = 2 vs Fischer
+ 1 - 2 = 5 vs Karpov
Geller would've had great chances in a match against any World Champion during his career; he just never seemed to get that far.
===
Ten names for further consideration:
Alexander Beliavsky
Joseph Henry Blackburne
Mikhail Chigorin
Reuben Fine
Bent Larsen
Geza Maroczy
Miguel Najdorf
Samuel Reshevsky
Carl Schlechter
Leonid Stein
1) Johannes Zukertort - His most noted contribution to the World Championship germ line is to have lost the first "Official World Championship Match" (to Steinitz in 1886). However, 1886 is a rather arbitrary starting point for the official line to start. (For historical neatness, however, one must appreciate that no match was held until after Paul Morphy died in 1884.) In 1883, Zukertort won the strongest tournament in the world (London) by three points (!!!) over Steinitz with 22/26 to WS's 19/26. Looking from the top down, Steinitz dropped almost twice as many points as did Zukertort. Only when those two had outstripped their rivals (and by statistically different margins) did a match for the "World Championship" even come into discussion. If Steinitz is the first World Champ, Zukertort is the zeroth. Zukertort even jumped out to an early 4-1 lead in their match, before completely collapsing and losing. By this time, however, his health was already in severe decline: he dies two years later at the age of 45 from a panoply of ailments. But for the ten years before this, he was clearly the number one player in the world. Had someone merely deemed the Zukertort-Anderssen or Zukertort-Blackburne match the World Championship match, then Anand would be the sixteenth in line instead.
2) Harry Nelson Pillsbury - Imagine someone who has played chess for a half dozen years, but never in any big tournament against even GM opposition. Not too hard. Could be anyone of us, really. Now imagine showing up at Linares, and winning the tournament ahead of Kramnik, Carlsen, Anand, Topalov, Aronian, Grischuk et al. Impossible? But that's exactly what Harry Pillsbury did in his international debut:
http://www.chessbase.com/news/2006/pillsbury02.gif
No internet, no databases. The historical record has no examples of him playing any earlier than three years prior! A weekender in Buffalo here, an exhibition in Philly there. Next stop, Hastings, and winning what was up to that point, perhaps the strongest tournament of all time. No one does that. In any sport -- much less chess. Unfortunately, by his second major tournament, he was already suffering the symptoms of the illness that would eventually kill him at the age of just 33.
Now the biggest knock on HNP is that his star burnt out so quickly, but just looking at his body of work during that period convinces me. He had an even record with the man who reigned as World Champion for 27 years, despite the fact that prior to their first meeting, he had zero experience against any strong opposition. The games most likely to be published are his tactical crushes, but his sense of positional chess was quite advanced, as well. For example, check out the endgame technique in this contest:
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1109209
Oh, and it was one of twelve games played simultaneously. Blindfold.
3) Akiba Rubinstein - Rubinstein was certainly the best player to never have a shot at the World Championship. People always say Keres was unlucky this or that, but he did in fact play in many tournaments to decide a challenger for the World Championship. Rubinstein zero. At the time, it was the custom for the champion to demand his terms for a match, and this resulted in Lasker sometimes avoiding his most dangerous rival at the moment. (In contrast, when the WCC seemed to be up in the air during the political tumult of Kasparov's reign, he handpicked his most dangerous challenger -- and lost.)
Rubinstein can rightly claim to be the first universal player. His most famous game was the chess equivalent of Tyson-Bruno:
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1119679
Looking at the near symmetrical position on move 15, it's hard to believe that white gets completely slaughtered in ten moves. The final combination is so elegant that any 21st-century GM would be proud to call it theirs. But what really distinguished him from his peers was his endgame technique. I'd rate him in the EG HoF inner circle with Kramnik, Smyslov, Capablanca and Fischer.
He was due to play a match with Lasker in October 1914, but the outbreak of World War I nixed it. After the war, he never again reached his peak form and later withdrew from tournament play due to mental health issues.
4) Paul Keres - Keres is usually paired with Korchnoi at the top of the discussions of BCPNtWtWCC, but like Korchnoi below he had many opportunities, but just didn't have enough. It's claimed by Evans and others that Keres dumped games to Botvinnik so as to ensure the Soviet patriarch became the World Champion in 1948. The proof is looking at the games, Keres made mistakes. Um, well, the fact that the game was lost proves their were mistakes. You'll have to do better than that. But looking at the games over the entire WWII era, I'm convinced that Botvinnik was already the best player in the world by the late 30s, tho he did whiff at AVRO. It has been claimed that WWII was especially hard on Keres, but he won the '47, '50 and '51 Soviet Championships, as well as a close second in the very strong '57 Championship. But when it came to ascending the throne, he was always just a little short. Way back of Bronstein in Budapest in 1950, 2nd in the 1953 Candidates to Smyslov (but two points back), 2nd again in 1956 to Smyslov (1.5 back), 2nd to Tal in 1960 (despite winning their encounters 3-1; Tal just pounded every one else, e.g. Fischer 4-0), second by half a point to Petrosian in '62 (but going over the games, it seems clear that had Petrosian needed more points, he would've gotten them). For two decades, the road to the World Championship ran over Keres. Literally. And the half point back at Curacao was twenty-four years after what must've been Keres' best "candidate" result: coequal first in 1938 AVRO ahead of Botvinnik, Alekhine et al. This might've resulted in a challenge to Alekhine had not World War II erupted. There is no one who has come that close repeatedly over such a long time, and not taken the crown.
5) Siegbert Tarrasch - Tarrasch's tournament results winning four major ones in a row(Breslau 1889, Manchester 1890, Dresden 1892, Leipzig 1894), marked him as a rightful challenger to Steinitz, but at the time his medical practice took first priority. When in 1894 Lasker won the title from Steinitz (and quite easily, too -- the low fruit may well have been Tarrasch's for the taking), Tarrasch's interest in the matter perked up. Unfortunately, Lasker was to dodge his logical challenger for the next fifteen years! By the time they played, Tarrash was probably twenty years past his peak and lost accordingly. While Steinitz is accorded credit for laying the foundation for the positional rules of chess (whether or not they were entirely correct), it can be honestly said that Tarrasch brought the ideas of chess strategy into the 20th century.
6) Viktor Korchnoi - Many people put Korchnoi at the top of this list because he just barely lost two matches for the World Championship (and got creamed in a third). In the 1974 Candidates' Final (that became the de facto World Championship after Fischer defaulted playing Karpov), the margin of victory may well have been a novelty in the Sicilian Dragon that was probably conceived of by Geller or Zaitsev or certainly somebody who wasn't actually Karpov. But having said that, had Korchnoi actually won the match, I think there is a good chance Fischer would've played and turned back the challenger. Fischer knew he was better than Korchnoi. Playing Karpov would've been a different story entirely. The fact that (on what would be the downside of his career) when pressed by Kasparov, Karpov found himself. The same thing might be said for the Karpov-Korchnoi match in 1978. Looking at the games themselves, Korchnoi was playing stronger chess. His play was very, very deep and strong. But despite that, Karpov overcame him. It's often said that the difference in the match was the weight of the Soviet machine thrown at the defector Korchnoi, but I think that's nonsense. I think that the intrigue spurred Korchnoi to greater levels of creativity. If you look at their resumes outside that match but of the same era, Karpov's is untouchable: total tournament dominance. Korchnoi's was not at the same par. In the absence of an aggro environment, he didn't do as well. And when possible would create one himself (c.f. his matches with Petrosian, Spassky.. -- does anyone else not get along with Spassky??!?). Karpov actually brought out the best chess in Korchnoi. But it wasn't enough.
7) Veselin Topalov - Yes, I know he won the "World Championship" tournament, but the title has to be taken off the champion's cold dead fingers (which in the literal sense, does include one tournament, in 1948). Topalov's uncompromising style and complete lack of fear of losing have had him atop or second in the world rankings for a number of years now. The only question is whether what works against mere super-GMs will work against a sitting World Champion. It didn't vs. Kramnik in 2006. And it came just short against Anand in 2010. In any event, Topalov plays very strong chess. Also to be noted is how his incredible physical preparation allowed him to outplay Anand repeatedly in the fourth to sixth hours. People who don't think chess is a sport don't really know much about chess.
8) Vassily Ivanchuk - While some players may not have become World Champion because historical luck didn't allow them to demonstrate that they were the best player, Ivanchuk has no such excuse. His biggest mistake was that he ascended the rankings at a time when there was an immovable object in the #1 spot. He made his stunning debut in 1991 by winning the Linares tournament in his first attempt ahead of Kasparov and most of the rest of the world's top ten. In most points in chess history, Ivanchuk would be World Champ in five years or so. But unlike almost every other World Champion who came before him, Kasparov was driven. (Karpov was the admirable exception: winning the title by default made him feel the need to show his stuff in tournament after tournament, and the ascension of Kasparov made him a better chessplayer than he had ever been before.) Every challenge to Kasparov incited him to work that much harder. While there are a lot more #2's in history than #1's (and Ivanchuk may well have been a #3 at best), Ivanchuk's body of work sets him apart from all the others. Twenty years after ascending the world stage, he is still the most active participant in super-GM tournaments, and constantly stuns his rivals with his fresh ideas. Admittedly, he may be slightly nuts, but that is no doubt part of the package that makes him such a great player and original thinker.
9) David Bronstein - Although Bronstein's most famous result his is draw in the 1951 match with Botvinnik, this might have been the least of his accomplishments during that era -- Botvinnik had come off of a 3-year absence while working on his PhD in electrical engineering. (Can anyone imagine a #1 player doing that nowadays?) More significantly, Bronstein had just won the USSR Championship back to back years, which at the time was equivalent to winning the national championship of Earth two years in a row. He also co-won the Candidates tournament with Boleslavsky. Subsequently he only tied the twelve-game match with Boleslavsky for the right to challenge Botvinnik, only to win in overtime. (Does anyone think Boleslavsky would've beaten Botvinnik?) It seems that Bronstein's enterprising style was best suited to winning tournaments rather than overcoming a solid World Champion. Yes, with just a tiny little bit of luck, he would've won that match, but if he had, it would've been a bigger upset than Euwe-Alekhine, catching Botvinnik at his absolute rustiest. Shortly thereafter, Smyslov and Petrosian and (the 8-years older)Keres passed him by.
10) Efim Geller - Geller is probably the most underappreciated player of the second half of the twentieth century. Always in the shadow of this year's World Champion, but still always in the shadows. His career at the top is bookended by wins in the Soviet Championship in 1955, and 1979(!). A quarter of a century at the top, but never even a title match despite candidacy six times. And unlike some players who had what it took to reach the top, but not overcome the champ, Geller had a most enviable record against the World Champions of his era:
+ 4 - 1 = 5 vs Botvinnik
+ 11 - 7 = 31 vs Smyslov
+ 6 - 6 = 22 vs Tal
+ 6 - 2 = 33 vs Petrosian
+ 6 - 9 = 22 vs Spassky
+ 5 - 3 = 2 vs Fischer
+ 1 - 2 = 5 vs Karpov
Geller would've had great chances in a match against any World Champion during his career; he just never seemed to get that far.
===
Ten names for further consideration:
Alexander Beliavsky
Joseph Henry Blackburne
Mikhail Chigorin
Reuben Fine
Bent Larsen
Geza Maroczy
Miguel Najdorf
Samuel Reshevsky
Carl Schlechter
Leonid Stein