Hi Joseph,
As I wrote below, I would have probably included Fischer in top 5 today. I agree all these lists are highly subjective. I don’t necessarily think my longevity argument was fallacious, but my self-righteousness about Fischer being American is not something I would necessarily sign today!
And I agree it is not possible to compare across generations competently.
With best regards
Vjekoslav Nemec

Hi Joseph,
I think all GOAT debates are subjective, no matter how much we want to avoid it 🙂

Hi Joseph,
Please take into consideration I wrote this a while ago, where I was a bit more focused on being controversial. I wouldn’t necessarily sign everything I wrote in this article :).

The fact you had to write more about why Fischer isn’t in your top 5 is rather hilarious. But what is ridiculous is the above quote. The irony of your statement regarding “Fischer is only ‘up there’ due to subjectivity” is palpable, considering you inject massive subjectivity into your ‘reasoning,’ such as follies of comparing across generations (ratings don’t work this way, and comparing ‘strength of US Championships’ is a corollary of this), as well as your arbitrary imposition of ‘longevity.’

You clearly don’t like Fischer, and this has biased your reasoning. You provided a lot of excuses as to why he isn’t in your top 5. You could have written a legitimate top 5 that did not include Fischer, with valid reasons, but the ones you provided were, as I said, fallacious excuses, which only subtracts from the quality of this article (the rest of it was quite good).

To compare across generations, if you can even do that, is to be fair and not inject your incredible bias. The best way is to magically teleport current best players into the era of Fischer and have them learn and play on an even field with Fischer. Or we can teleport Fischer to the future, such that he learns and plays via the same methods of today’s best players. Such a thing is harder to envision, so it is better to stick with teleportations to the past.

Anyway, my reasoning for why you are wrong is that the world’s best chess players, even those of whom you have ranked in your top 5, have consistently ranked Fischer as among the best chess player of all time.

Their knowledge of chess is much, much deeper than mine, and, while this may seem like an appeal to authority, it really isn’t, because I am not making an appeal to their authority, but rather an appeal to their superior arguments. Their reasoning is based on the same substance and stuff that has allowed them to become amongst the best.

I am more interested in hearing your response to the very people that you have listed including Fischer as among the best; now THAT would be a very interesting reply and/or article.

PS Don’t take my comment the wrong way; I greatly enjoyed your article. As you stated in this very article, your opinions regarding Fischer were likely to ‘set some people off!’

You are just playing stupid semantic games. Fischer isn’t the Greatest because you imposed an arbitrary restriction on what constitutes as ‘great.’

The reasoning is that they aren’t biased like you are the author. The author had to impose an arbitrary restriction in order to knock Fischer out of his ‘top 5.’ The irony of this is immense, considering he claims that Fischer’s ‘fame’ is due to subjectivity rather than objectivity.