  We study the relationship between transfinite diameter, Chebyshev constant
and Wiener energy in the abstract linear potential analytic setting pioneered
by Choquet, Fuglede and Ohtsuka. It turns out that, whenever the potential
theoretic kernel has the maximum principle, then all these quantities are equal
for all compact sets. For continuous kernels even the converse statement is
true: if the Chebyshev constant of any compact set coincides with its
transfinite diameter, the kernel must satisfy the maximum principle. An
abundance of examples is provided to show the sharpness of the results.
