If we were forced to summarise Fischer's achievement and personality in an economical 6 lines then it could hardly be done any better than this.

Take a look at this link:

Link <<< Click Here

Its in French but it shows the youngest Grandmasters of all time.

Notice that Fischer did it 30 years ahead of Polgar (who was a top 5-10 player for much of the 90's), and about 40 to 45 years ahead of everyone else on that list.

The thing to be mindful of, however, is that today its not particularly hard to find events where you can score a GM norm. In the 50's when Fischer did it, those events were few and far between. And when they did come, they tended to be dominated by Soviet Grandmasters (today's equivilent of Super GM's).

That makes Fischer's achievment all the more impressive.

Chess players ARE unstable.

One thing should be mentioned about today's current greats if they are to be compared to the greats of yore, and that is that they have access to vast computing and database resources that were lacking for previous generations. In my opinion, all of today's top-tier GMs should be playing flawless chess, and this is because I believe classical chess for humans is "solved". What I mean by that is that for a full-time chess player who is at the very top tier of talent, and who accesses and uses all the available computer resources s/he can, there is no position they should ever encounter over the board that is of such foreign complexity that s/he cannot find either the very best move or a move that is so close to being the best move that making it will not change the outcome of the game. Thus I believe that every game between today's super GM's *SHOULD* end drawn.

However, as we know, this is not the case, and I believe there are 3 possible reasons for this:

(1) today's greats are not so great after all and despite having the advantage of vast computer resources, still make judgemental mistakes not caused by pressure or stress, or

(2) today's greats collectively suffer from psychological problems that cause them to break at some level of stress that can occur under GM tournament or match conditions, or

(3) today's greats either consciously or subconsciously decide at some point during their games to recognize chess as a solution looking for a problem (rather than vice-versa) and play what I've defined in previous threads on this board as "the most interesting move" rather than the best move. They may do this altruistically (to send the game into the most interesting direction), or they may do it believing their opponent might lose due to reason (1) or reason (2), but in any event they diverge from what they know is the best move.

If reason (1) is primarily to blame for most of today's super GM wins / losses, then none of today's greats compare favorably to their predecessors. If it's mostly reason (2), then classical chess is indeed solved as I've defined above and any top-level match or tournament is only a psychological test (sorry, not a sport). However, if it's mainly (as I hope and believe) reason (3), then chess is on the cusp of a revolution which will eventually result in rule changes, perhaps beginning with chess960 (or Fisher Random chess) as the new basis for determining the World Champion.

And btw, any discussion of how great Fisher was or was not should include a mention of Fisher Random chess, his invention. I'm not sure when he invented it, but it seems that he arguably (perhaps refutable by someone who knows more chess history than I) foresaw the solving of classical chess before anyone else?