2/20/2026 – Who is your favourite chess player – we asked you recently. Whose games do you enjoy the most? We got a lot of feedback, and will show you the choices that human chess players make – and compare them with what a chess AI chooses, after it has played through and evaluated millions of games.
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The question we asked our readers was: Who are the most intersting chess players in history, focusing on style, rather than just strength? Who do you count as your favourites? We listed a number of candidates: Paul Morphy, Wilhelm Steinitz, Emanuel Lasker, José Raúl Capablanca, Alexander Alekhine, Mikhail Botvinnik, Mikhail Tal, Bobby Fischer, Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov, Vladimir Kramnik, Viswanathan Anand, Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura, Fabiano Caruana, Gukesh Dommaraju, R Praggnanandhaa, Arjun Erigaisi, Alireza Firouzja.
This is the list we got from the feedback of our readers:
Ed Schröder, the Dutch software developer, used his program Best of Chess, which we described in an earlier report, to extract the most spectacular games from chess history, evaluating them by three features:
King Attack
Material Sacrifice
Length of the game (the smaller the number of moves in a game the higher the bonus).
Ed ran his algorithms on the many million of high-quality games contained in Mega Database, and it identified the players it considered most attractive. This is the top 50 list generated by Best of Chess:
Here's a page that lists the results with all the individual factors that contributed to the final evaluation. Here's an explanation on how Best of Chess conducts its evaluation. And here you can directly compare the rankings of both groups:
Humans
AI
01. Fischer
02. Carlsen
03. Kasparov
04. Aljechine
05. Karpov
06. Tal
07. Capablanca
08. Keres
09. Spassky
10. Polgar
11. Smyslov
12. Rubinstein
13. Petrosian
14. Morphy
15. Lasker
16. Kramnik
17. Korchnoi
18. Botvinnik
19. Topalov
20. Shirov
21. Anderssen
22. Anand
23. Steinitz
24. Bronstein
25. Timman
26. Nezhmetdinov
27. Ivanchuk
28. Zukertort
29. Vachier-Lagrave
30. Tartakower
31. Svidler
32. Rapport
33. Planinc
34. Niemann
35. Miles
36. Lasker
37. Hou Yifan
38. Geller
39. Firouzja
40. Euwe
41. Chigorin
42. Boleslavsky
43. Bohatirchuk
01. Morphy
02. Nimzowitsch
03. Anderssen
04. Reti
05. Zukertort
06. Steinitz
07. Chigorin
08. Lasker
09. Alekhine
10. Euwe
11. Tarrasch
12. Rubinstein
13. Tal
14. Fischer
15. Shirov
16. Spassky
17. Polgar
18. Capablanca
19. Kasparov
20. Wei
21. Bronstein
22. Geller
23. Anand
24. Botvinnik
25. Van Foreest
26. Keres
27. Erigaisi
28. Reshevsky
29. Kramnik
30. Petrosian
31. Aronian
32. Ding
33. Gukesh
34. Keymer
35. Carlsen
36. Kortschnoj
37. Svidler
38. Topalov
39. Niemann
40. Adams
41. Praggnanandhaa
42. Giri
43. Firouzja
Ed created a page with games of four top scorers. The values for each of the three criteria are quoted in the games, which you can replay it on the page. "BTW, the first Morphy game is hilarious, I did not know it," Ed writes.
Finally, here's an animation of a list, based solely on their ratings, that was independantly generated by Chess.com five years ago:
Frederic FriedelEditor-in-Chief emeritus of the ChessBase News page. Studied Philosophy and Linguistics at the University of Hamburg and Oxford, graduating with a thesis on speech act theory and moral language. He started a university career but switched to science journalism, producing documentaries for German TV. In 1986 he co-founded ChessBase.
2/14/2026 – If you've only been using ChessBase for a short time and want to benefit from as many of its unique functions as possible, our series offers you valuable, short and easy-to-digest tips for a successful start with ChessBase´26. In the third part of our new tutorial series, we show you how easily and conveniently you can insert variations from the engine analysis and the references into the notation (see the first two tutorial episodes) with ChessBase´26.
2/13/2026 – From its early beginnings in Kanjiza and the Chess Classic in Mainz to the officially recognised FIDE championships of 2019 and 2022, the World Chess960 title has followed an uneven but traceable path. Published ahead of the upcoming Freestyle Chess World Championship in Weissenhaus, this overview revisits the main editions of the event, outlining formats, qualification systems and key matches that shaped the development of Freestyle Chess at world championship level. | Pictured: Peter Svidler dealing with a Freestyle Chess starting position (note that the bishops are on the a-file) at the Chess Classic in Mainz | Photo: Frederic Friedel
King’s Indian fans who choose the Mar del Plata attack (7...Nc6) against White’s classical system (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 d6 5.Nf3 0-0 6.Be2 e5 7.0-0) usually aim for a complex position with mutual attacks on open wings, requiring long-term strategic planning and tactical sharpness in critical moments. Computers often do not know how to handle the arising complex strategic positions, which suits players who like to think on their own instead of memorizing long variations. However, the fashionable Bayonet Attack (9.b4) interferes with Black’s ideas. After Black’s main move 9...Nh5 the positions opens, the lines get forced and computer analysis is important again. But this DVD offers an antidote against White’s Bayonet Attack, namely 9...a5! This move leads to sound positions with very few concrete lines, in which the focus is on strategy not on tactics. Objectively chances are equal but if Black knows what to do things might quickly become dangerous for White.
Sorry, Masquer. A couple of votes for Capablanca were submitted with the misspelling, and our sorting program did not notice. Same with the editor. It did not change the order of the rankings. I have corrected the error -- Sam played it again!
Masquer 2/22/2026 06:03
I'm confused - who is Casablanca (??) on the first list?!?
Definitely not Capablanca, since he's also on the list!
BKnight2003 2/22/2026 03:10
Who is 28. Casablanca??
Raymond Labelle 2/20/2026 11:26
I do not resist the temptation to indicate that this is what I wrote on February 10 when the readers were consulted (whch can be verified):
"With these criteria:
King Attack
Material Sacrifice
Length of the game (the smaller the number of moves in a game the higher the bonus).
I would try Morphy for the first place - he was so much more advanced than his contemporary players that he could try with success sacrifices and quickly go to the King attack. I will not guess for the other players but I am certain that, even among the best ones, the gap with their contemporaries as a whole was not as big as in the case of Morphy."
PhishMaster 2/20/2026 08:34
Not surprising since in the old days, the competition was much weaker. There just were not as many peers as there are in modern times. We all look brilliant against competition that is a lot weaker, on average.
Davidx1 2/20/2026 06:02
Today, a little boy studying at the academy can do a better Raphael than Raphael, but he doesn't live in the artist's time.
So context is crucial; you can't say Philidor wasn't a great player...
Tata Steel 2026 with analyses by Bluebaum, Giri, L'Ami, Woodward and many more. Opening videos by Kasimdzhanov, Marin and Zwirs. 10 exciting opening articles with new repertoire ideas and much more.
In this course, Dutch Grandmaster Jan Werle presents a modern and practical repertoire in the French Advance Variation, focusing on the critical line 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 Nc6 5.Nf3.
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In almost every chess game there comes a moment when you just can’t go on without tactics. You must strike to not giving away the advantage you have worked for the whole game.
Opening videos: Daniel King presents new ideas against Caro-Kann with 3.Nc3 dxe4 4.Nxe4 Nf6 5.Nxf6+. ‘Mikhalchishin's Miniatures’: Najdorf, Petroff and Scotch. ‘Move by Move’ with Robert Ris. ‘Lucky bag’ with 37 analyses by Ganguly, Illingworth et al.
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