Crazy-ass Fischer firmly disagreed 
(he functionally called him an idiot savant while claiming HE was the actual genius 
). Anyway Kasparov is probably the GOAT of chess and I’m sure he has some smarts, but he is definitely not a renaissance man. He was a fan of Fomenko’s New Chronology, which I’m afraid is just beyond nutty.
Fischer was undoubtedly one of the greatest chess players of all time.
However he was poorly educated and achieved nothing outside chess. (I’m assuming that the excellent book by Fischer ‘My 60 memorable games’ was written by Larry Evans - Fischer just providing analysis.)
Kasparov has written many fine books (e.g. ‘My Great Predecessors’) and set up a successful chess academy.
He is a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal.
He also was instrumental on developing Chess News | ChessBase.
He’s certainly up there, but I’m not sure by what metric one would label him “greatest”. So far as I know, Carlsen still has the highest Elo ranking of any human, which is the obvious way to compare them.
Eh, I’m not making a strong argument - I genuinely don’t care. Carlsen has called him the GOAT in a recentish interview, but maybe he was just trying to be modest. I guess it depends on if you believe “Elo inflation” is a thing or not, which is another thing I don’t have a strong opinion on. Let’s just say likely somewhere on the Mt. Rushmore of chess and leave it at that.
Hmm… so who is on that Mt Rushmore?
Carlsen, Kasparov, Fischer, and… Morphy? I guess only the finally spot is really up for debate.
Morphy probably was the most dominant player of his time. Sounds good to me.
I’d also pick Morphy.
So, two chess masters that went crazy and two that haven’t…yet.
Eh. Peak ELO depends massively on the competition available. Average accuracy (according to some engine) strongly depends on training tools available to you. Doesn’t seem to me that there’s any objective metric to name a GOAT. Maybe there are advanced chess analytics I’m not aware of, like expected wins over replacement or something like that?
Based on interviews I’ve seen I feel like Kasparov is the choice like 50% of the time, Carlsen 45% of the time, Fisher 4.9%, and 0.1% people trolling.
Magnus Carlsen has won his seventh tournament of the year, this time the Tata Steel Rapid/Blitz tournament. If you enjoy chess and want to see a brain-bending finish, watch this endgame he voluntarily enters (and wins) against Vincent Keymer. It also has some crazy midgame tactics.
Stockfish? 
Ding Liren wins the first match of the World Championship from the black side, which is quite a feat. Ding played the French Defense, pretty rare from him, particularly because the last time he sprung it as a surprise in a match (against Nepomniachtchi) he lost.
Looks like chess is back on the menu, boys!
FIDE World Chess Championship 2024 - All the Information - Chess.com
Interesting. I saw some interviews witha bunch of GMs a couple weeks ago and everyone predicted Gukesh winning easily. Nobody even entertained Ding defending. Perhaps overconfident predictions.
The thing is that Ding has been having a horrendous run of form for the past while. Based on his recent performances, he would be a huge underdog in the match. But if he’s recovered something around his top form, then it’s a different story.
For reference, here are Ding’s positions on the world ranking list for the last few Novembers:
Nov. 2018: 4th
Nov. 2019: 3rd
Nov. 2020: 3rd
Nov. 2021: 2nd
Nov. 2022: 2nd
Nov. 2023: 3rd
Nov. 2024: 23rd
I don’t get up early to watch these (they start at 3 AM my local time), but whenever I wake up I turn on the TV to see what I find, and today I found them in a repetition of moves in a solid position, i.e. they unofficially agreed to a draw.
1.5 Liren - 0.5 Gukesh, 12 games to go.
Gukesh ties it up with a win, 1.5 - 1.5. Ding didn’t look great.
I should add, Ding lost on time, but he was losing anyway.
It’s 3.5 - 3.5 now. You might think a match with two wins and five draws would be boring, but it’s been tense, and today’s draw was hair-raising. Gukesh had the advantage twice, but Ding kept complicating the position, and eventually the match swung from Ding in time trouble to Gukesh in time trouble.
It’s turning out to be a fun match!
game…
Apparently implied betting odds were like 80% Gukesh before the match started. Some rumors that Ding’s performance over the past ~year was part of a strategy of appearing weak. I think that’s pretty unlikely, but would be hilarious/awesome if true.
Something a bit like it happened when he initially won the world championship.
I don’t mean pretending to be bad, but I think due to COVID, he had not played enough to qualify for the candidates iirc. So what followed was a pretty epic suggestion of matches and tournaments followed by the candidates itself.
As I say, not the same thing, but the point is, he has form when it comes to rolling up his sleeves and delivering when it really matters.