All Time Greats: H2H Win Percentages

Chess numbers rankings type post.

So this project began more complexly and I’m now rewriting. But the core idea is this: what are the h2h records of the best players in history vs the other bests? So I take ~35 of the best ever and aggregate their h2h’s against the others in the group to compare win %s. Then in future posts I’ll do new iterations where I adjust based on the competition faced (i.e. if you were 55% but against 40% opposition you now get adjusted downwards as opposed to someone that went 55% against 50% opposition).

I began with Steinitz, so apologies to Morphy et al, and didn’t include the following greats among others Maroczy, Zukertort, Morozevich, Chigorin, Polugaevsky, Schlechter, Salov. I did include Steinitz, Tarrasch, Rubinstein, Bogoljubov, Pillsbury, Nimzowitsch, Capablanca, Alekhine, Euwe, Najdorf, Fine, Reshevsky, Keres, Botvinnik, Bronstein, Smyslov, Tal, Petrosian, Geller, Spassky, Fischer, Karpov, Korchnoi, Kasparov, Timman, Beliavsky, Ivanchuk, Short, Anand, Gelfand, Kramnik, Topalov, Shirov, Leko, Kamsky, Aronian, Carlsen, Karjakin, Caruana.

Oh one more caveat before the first version which is just raw win %, some players happened not to play much vs others in the set, so, for instance, Fine comes out better than expected. I want to give results after each iteration so you can get some sense of movement. One other thing, Karpov and Kasparov played too many games vs each other. This hurts both pre-iterations as their results are close to 50% and both are well above that vs others, we’ll see how it looks after iterations.

Initial Results (raw win % vs others included) Top 10

61.9% Lasker

59.9% Kasparov

56.6% Capablanca

56.1% Carlsen

55.4% Karpov

54.9% Alekhine

54.7% Fischer

53.2% Anand

53.1% Kramnik

52.3% Fine

Others in the 50%+ Club = Caruana, Botvinnik, Rubinstein, Keres, Petrosian, Ivanchuk, Aronian

I’d order them differently, but that’s, I think, a very compelling top 9 list (and then Fine for some reason). The most usual inclusions not there are Morphy (who I excluded from the start), Botvinnik who is fantastic but I think a bit overrated and is rightly put in the 10-12 range and Tal who is delightful but substantially overrated due to said delightfulness.

Steinitz and Tarrasch were the only two under 40% and they were way under at 34% and 33% respectively (if I had included more late 19th century players this would have bolstered their win percentages a bit). Otherwise these results are pretty unsurprising except the small sample Fine result. Spassky, Smyslov, Topalov, Tal and Geller were narrow misses to the 50% club, will they gain entry with our next iteration?! Spassky was a goofy one, he won a huge number of matchups, but ended up sub-50% due to being absolutely destroyed by… Karpov. Fischer beat him too, but Karpov beat him worse. Also props to Korchnoi who sits at 47% despite playing forever and getting absolutely whomped by the 90s generation.

Hmm that leads me to an idea. Here’s each player’s most impressive result as determined by me:

Steinitz = none were good in this sample

Tarrasch = 3-1-0 vs Steinitz

Lasker = 18-8-4 vs Tarrasch

Rubinstein = 8-12-0 vs Tarrasch, man tarrasch getting wrecked

Bogoljubov = 7-3-3 vs… Tarrasch

Pillsbury = 4-4-5 vs Lasker is very respectable!

Nimzowitsch = 5-5-2 vs… Tarrasch

Capablanca = 6-12-2 vs Lasker

Alekhine = 36-40-16 vs Bogoljubov or 9-9-3 vs Nimzowitsch

Euwe = no plus scores except very narrowly vs Bogoljubov

Najdorf = no plus scores

Fine = 3-4-2 vs Alekhine

Reshevsky = 6-6-2 vs Euwe or 6-9-4 vs Keres

Keres = 8-17-5 vs Tal or 4-12-1 vs Korchnoi or 4-5-0 vs Bogoljubov

Botvinnik = 8-9-3 vs Keres or 29-52-24 vs Smyslov

Bronstein = 7-19-4 vs Keres or 9-15-6 vs Korchnoi

Smyslov = 7-0-1 vs Euwe

Tal = 4-5-2 vs Fischer

Petrosian = 7-20-4 vs Botvinnik

Geller = 5-2-3 vs Fischer or 4-7-1 vs Botvinnik

Spassky = 9-27-6 vs Tal or 10-22-6 vs Geller

Fischer = 9-13-4 vs Reshevsky or 17-28-11 vs Spassky or 8-15-4 vs Petrosian

Karpov = 14-22-1 vs Spassky or 31-63-14 vs Korchnoi or 30-64-8 vs Timman

or you know what? 21-121-28 vs Kasparov is pretty damn good, wait til you see Kasparov’s matchups

Korchnoi = 13-27-4 vs Tal

Kasparov = 15-14-0 vs Shirov or 14-17-1 vs Korchnoi or 19-19-2 vs Timman or 12-16-2 vs Beliavsky or 16-31-4 vs Anand or 9-8-0 vs Gelfand or 10-14-3 vs Topalov or 6-11-1 vs Smyslov or 28-121-21 vs Karpov what the hell Kasparov was too good, way too good

Timman = 1-0-0 vs child Carlsen is kinda goofy

Beliavsky = 5-0-1 vs Bronstein or 14-15-4 vs Timman

Ivanchuk = 11-10-1 vs Beliavsky or 15-29-8 vs Shirov

Anand = 11-28-5 vs Karpov or 13-47-7 vs Ivanchuk or 17-29-2 vs Shirov or 10-29-3 vs Leko

Gelfand = 5-27-4 vs Leko

Kramnik = 5-40-4 vs Kasparov or 18-31-11 vs Topalov or 9-27-4 vs Aronian

Topalov = 16-27-10 vs Ivanchuk or 13-27-8 vs Leko

Shirov = 13-21-6 vs Topalov

Leko = 3-10-3 vs Carlsen

Aronian = 9-38-5 vs Anand or 13-21-5 vs Karjakin

Carlsen = 17-40-7 vs Aronian or 10-36-5 vs Caruana or 12-50-8 vs Anand

Karjakin = 6-13-1 vs Kramnik

 

Another fun thing is that Anand and Kramnik are exactly 50% against each other over 93 games. Every historical thing I do they come out neck and neck (usually with Anand a hair ahead) and it’s nice to see their h2h is too. You may have noticed they were 0.1% apart in the previous chart too. Incredible parity across whatever metric you like.

So we have our initial top 10 with Lasker and Kasparov at the top, Capablanca, Carlsen, Karpov, Alekhine and Fischer in range and Anand/Kramnik next to each other a touch out of the top 5 right where they should be.

This took forever to spreadsheet so the next iteration will be a separate post. Lasker takes an early lead! Can he be surpassed? Find out next time on, uh, whatever I call the next blog post.