![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)
He didn't disgrace himself, IIRC.
Mir Sultan Khan has to be up there, if we are considering sheer natural talent alone.....Nick Ivell wrote:The greatest chess genius of all time? Bobby Fischer. The greatest player of all time? Kasparov, who learnt a lot from Fischer. When it comes to sheer talent I reckon Tal is up there too, but his poor health let him down. Misha certainly gave the young Bobby a lesson!
Steinitz died penniless after several breakdowns (although ultimately he died of heart attack). At one time he claimed to have been giving God pawn-odds and playing the game through his telephone, along with various other oddities of belief.Craig Pritchett wrote:that they are the only world champions ever to have ... b) tragically, to have suffered patent mental decline (amounting to possibly serious mental illness). All world champions, of course, (as Stewart Reuben posts above) decline as players of chess at some stage ... that's not my point. The Morphy and Fischer cases go far beyond mere chess and raise vastly different and much wider questions. Why only Americans? Is it only coincidence? I doubt it.
Morphy, universally acknowledged the best player of his day, declared "world champion" by various Europeans, was anStewart Reuben wrote:Concerning Steinitz. To support Craig's hypothesis, he did live out the last 18 years of his life in the US. It seems to me the mental health of strong chessplayers is not worse than that of the general high-flying academics. If that causes somebody to start a list, please do not include living players or academics.
I would suggest that it’s dangerous to generalise about Americans on the basis of the sample offered by Morphy and Fischer. Both ethnic/family background and time-and-place were so different as to render any comparison almost meaningless.Craig Pritchett wrote:The Morphy and Fischer cases go far beyond mere chess and raise vastly different and much wider questions. Why only Americans? Is it only coincidence? I doubt it.