The 25 greatest ever according to ChatGPT

I tried various ways of asking for this sort of ranking, but the one with a top 25 ended up like this:

1. Kasparov

2. Carlsen

3. Fischer

4. Karpov

5. Kramnik

6. Botvinnik

7. Capablanca

8. Lasker

9. Alekhine

10. Anand

11. Morphy

12. Smyslov

13. Petrosian

14. Spassky

15. Tal

16. Steinitz

17. Ding Liren

18. Caruana

19. Aronian

20. So

21. Korchnoi

22. Euwe

23. Reti

24. Rubinstein

25. Larsen

Biggest surprises to me: Kramnik gets very high no matter how the question is asked. Top 5 here, always ahead of Lasker and always several places ahead of Anand. So and Aronian ahead of Korchnoi?! Reti and Larsen ahead of Keres?! No Topalov?! I think Steinitz is too low. But the high rankings of So, Reti and Kramnik are the things that stand out most to me, and also the lack of appreciation for Topalov and Keres.

I tried asking for a top 50, and that was even worse for poor Keres. The top 25 didn’t change, but Keres wasn’t even included in the top 50. Topalov was as low as 39th, well below for example Mamedyarov, Svidler, Radjabov and Grischuk. Other surprise inclusions in the top 50 are Bologan, Beliavsky and Adams. Maybe the absent Bogo, Zukertort, Pillsbury, Fine or Leko might have deserved top 50 if Bologan, who at best was number 18 on a rating list, is placed in the top 50.

Wonder if there was actually an algorithm to this or it was just a aggregation of popular opinion

The strange thing is that so much of it is quite reasonable, and then a few really weird things pop up. I mean, Radjabov well ahead of Topalov? The latter was #1 for quite a while, won numerous super tournaments, lost two title matches very narrowly etc. Or Bologan ahead of Leko, who won all the biggest super tournaments including Candidates and drew a title match, while Bologan briefly reached #18… The top 10 is quite good though, only the Kramnik and Lasker positions stand out as difficult to agree with for me.

I asked ChatGPT what it based its ranking on, and it answered ”tournament and match victories, longevity at the top of world rankings, influence on the game, opinions from experts, polls and publications” etc.

Radjabov was famous as the up and coming youngster while bologan was famous for his kid books. Looks like popularity won