Chessbase news wrote about popularity contest for the 4th Individual Chess
Championship. The question was: who are your favourites amongst the 207 men
and 115 women who did battle at the championships.
The results of the contest was somewhat expected. 1. Lahno Kateryna
2.Ivanchuk Vassily 3. Pokorna Regina
But the comments of the readers who voted were still more interesting.
The result showed the triumph of the youth and beauty (and partly charm).

D. Ebrahim Al Mannai, Manama, Bahrain wrote about his favourite players:
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1. GM Alexander Grischuk of Russia: modern-day Alekhine, future world champ
(my prediction) and easily the coolest, hippest top-tenner out there (even
without the Rastafarian hair-do).
2. GM Vassily Ivanchuk of the Ukraine: The pride and sorrow of modern chess.
Although he was the tournament's top seed and is currently ranked 13th on
the ratings list, when I think of Ivanchuk, a sad sense of unfulfilled
promise comes to me (along with the melancholy sounds of an imaginary
violin). A chessboard poet with the soul of a true artist- a condition which
has probably been the major factor preventing him from attaining the top
spot in these hard-edged, money-minded, shark-infested chess waters of today
's world. In the tradition of Zuckertort, Rubinstein, Keres, and Korchnoi,
Vassily Ivanchuk is history's latest incarnation of the "greatest player
never to have become world champion".
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Obviously he forget some great chess players. By the way, he has not
mentioned Bronstein. I could remember another little questionnaire managed
by Graham "Mad Aussie" Clayton on Artful Dodger's ChessChat.
The question was the same: Who is the best chess player who never became
World Champion?

There were offered followed chess players:
Harry Pillsbury, Aron Nimzovich, Akiba Rubinstein, Paul Keres, Johannes
Zukertort, Mikhail Chigorin, Isidor Gunsberg, Siegbert Tarrasch, Frank
Marshall, David Janowski, Carl Schlechter, Efim Bogulyubov, Samuel
Reshevsky, David Bronstein, Viktor Korchnoi, Vassily Ivanchuk, Alexei
Shirov, Efim Geller, Jan Timman, Nigel Short, Geza Maroczy Miguel Najdorf,
Bent Larsen, Marc Taimanov, Lajos Portisch

15 members of that chess mailing list voted. As you can suppose, the
"winner" was Paul Keres (7 votes). The second was David Bronstein (4 votes).
The third was Viktor Korchnoi (3 votes). The fourth was Harry Pillsbury with
one vote.

The interesting question is - If all of them participated in similar
popularity contest, could they win? Great person, Keres, maybe.

But, if you look back in chess history, which World chess champion could win
in popularity contest? Gentlemen Capablanca? Noble Spassky? Fabulous
Fischer? Where are the other world chess champions? Were they with some evil
attribute? Does it exist some connection between some bad attributes and
each of the World chess champions? Or, is it necessary to have some nasty
attribute to become the World chess champion? Or, could we consider it
generally and ask ourselves-have all chess players got some bad qualities?

I'll cite Irving Chernev:

All chess players (and that includes you and me) must have a sadistic streak
or we would not enjoy seeing a fellow chessplayer being methodically
crushed. - Irving Chernev

Goran Tomic