brankat: Besides. in relative terms. they have all been weak.Anderssen was weak because he couldn't beat P.Morphy.
Zuckertort was weak because he lost to W.Steinitz. The same goes for M. Chigorin.
Steinitz, in turn, was weak because he failed to defend the title vs Dr.Lasker.
Rubinstein was not much of a player either. He never succeeded in playing the title match in the first place.
Nimzowitch committed a blunder by wasting too much of his time and energy on Openings Theory.
Spielmann got stuck in the out of vogue romanticism.
Dr.Vidmar preferred electrical engineering to Chess.
Dr.Euwe lost at the first opportunity, and was an amateur anyway.
Capablanca lost when everyone expected him to win, and then wasn't even able to find ten grand for a re-match.
Reshevsky didn't study openings, but instead wasted his life in dusty accounting departments.
Najdorf was never not good enough to begin with.
M.M.Botvinnik was winning for thirty years thanks to the help from his political patrons.
P.Keres always preferred to be second.
Smyslov didn't sustain his lead in 1954, and also, lost the third match in '57. Gligoric and Geller's class was below par.
Bronstein wasted his life complaining about 1951.
Petrosian was not aggressive enough.
V.Korchnoi could not even beat a twenty years younger kid.
Misha Tal drank and smoked too much, so it affected his brain lobes.
Boris Spassky was too lazy. B.Larsen couldn't have possibly been serious with all those dubious openings' system he had insisted on using.
Fischer messed up in 1963 and again in Intz '67. There was also something wrong with his brain. Karpov was just lucky. An opportunist, too.
Ljubojevic couldn't even make the Candidates.
Kasparov played Karpov when the latter was beyond his prime.
Anand won the title in a tournament, and held it because all the opposition had been worn out. Vladimir Kramnik defeated Kasparov because Garry was getting ready to retire. Ivanchuck's nerves have never been in good shape.
M.Carlsen is from Norway and they don't have much of a chess tradition. Also, he relies too much on computer engines.
A.Giri? I predict he'll get nowhere either.
Kibitzing
