16th World Chess Champion/ Current Champion
Magnus Carlsen is the World Chess Champion. He became World Champion on 22 November 2013, by defeating Viswanathan Anand by 6½ to 3½. Carlsen also won the return match in 2014 by 6½–4½.
15th World Chess Champion
Viswanathan Anand, known as Vishy, is a former World Chess Champion. He comes from India. Vishy is the oldest player in modern times to become classical World Champion for the first time: he was 37 when he won in 2007.
14th World Chess Champion
Vladimir Kramnik, born 25 June 1975, is a Russian chess grandmaster. He was Classical World Chess Champion from 2000 to 2006, and undisputed World Chess Champion from 2006 to 2007. In October 2000, he defeated Garry Kasparov in a match played in London, and became the Classical World Chess Champion.
13th World Chess Champion
Garry Kasparov is a Russian chess grandmaster and political activist. He was born with the name Garry Weinstein, and is partly of Jewish descent. He was the World Chess Champion from 1985 to 2000.
12th World Chess Champion
Anatoly Karpov is a Soviet and Russian chess grandmaster and former World Champion. He was official world champion from 1975 to 1985, played three more matches for the title from 1986 to 1990, then was FIDE World Champion from 1993 to 1999.
11th World Chess Champion
Robert James "Bobby" Fischer was an American-Icelandic chess Grandmaster and the eleventh World Chess Champion. As a teenager, Fischer became well-known worldwide because of his skill at chess.
10th World Chess Champion
Boris Spassky , is a Soviet–French chess grandmaster. He was the tenth World Chess Champion, holding the title from late 1969 to 1972.p381 Spassky won the USSR Chess Championship twice outright, and twice more lost in playoffs.
9th World Chess Champion
Tigran Petrosian was World Chess Champion from 1963 to 1969. He was born to Armenian parents, and brought up in the capital of Armenia, Yerevan.p103 Before his chess career, he was a street cleaner.
8th World Chess Champion
Mikhail Tal, known as Mischa, was a Soviet–Latvian chess player, a Grandmaster, and the eighth World Chess Champion. Tal played in 21 Soviet championships, winning it six times, a record only equalled by Botvinnik.
7th World Chess Champion
Vasily Smyslov was a Russian chess grandmaster, and World Chess Champion from 1957 to 1958.p376 Smyslov was a candidate for the World Chess Championship on eight occasions.
6th World Chess Champion
Mikhail Botvinnik was a Soviet Russian grandmaster and three-time World Chess Champion. He was an electrical engineer, one of the few chess masters who achieved distinction in another career while playing top-class competitive chess.
5th World Chess Champion
Max Euwe was the 5th World Chess Champion, from 1935 to 1937. He was a Dutch chess grandmaster, mathematician, and author. He was not a full-time professional player; he got his PhD in pure mathematics in 1926, and worked as a school and college teacher.
4th World Chess Champion
Alexander Alekhine was the fourth World Chess Champion, and the only one to die holding the title
3rd World Chess Champion
José Raúl Capablanca y Graupera was a Cuban chess player who was World Chess Champion from 1921 to 1927. Capablanca was a child prodigy with an astonishing natural talent for the game. He grew up into a cultured and charming man,
2nd World Chess Champion
Emanuel Lasker was a German chess player, mathematician, and philosopher who was World Chess Champion for 27 years. In his prime Lasker was one of the most dominant champions, and he is generally regarded as one of the strongest players ever. He finally lost the title to Capablanca.
Emanuel was born in the Prussian province of Brandenburg into a Jewish family. His mother was Rosalie Israelssohn while his father was Adolf Lasker, a cantor in the synagogue whose role there was to lead the liturgical prayers and chanting. Emanuel had an older brother Berthold and, when sent to attend school in Berlin when he was eleven years old, Emanuel was taught to play chess by Berthold who was a student in the medical faculty there. He made some money playing chess in the local cafés, but he did not become a serious chess player until about the age of fifteen.
In fact Emanuel's parents were so worried that he was devoting too much time to chess and not enough to his school work that they told Berthold to find another school for Emanuel. However, the head of this new school was president of the local chess club and the mathematics master was the local chess champion, so in his new secondary school Emanuel continued to show remarkable talents at both mathematics and at chess. In 1888 he obtained his abitur in Landsberg an der Warthe, now a Polish town named Gorzow Wielkopolski.
Lasker studied mathematics and philosophy at the universities in Berlin, Göttingen and Heidelberg but he combined his studies with playing chess. In 1889 he won his first chess tournament in Berlin and, a month later, he won the Hauptturnier in Breslau which earned him the German title of Master of Chess.
1st World Chess Champion
Wilhelm Steinitz was an Austrian chess grandmaster who emigrated first to London, then to the USA. He was the first undisputed World Chess Champion and held it from 1886 to 1894. Steinitz won the title by beating Johannes Zukertort in a match in 1886. He lost it to Emanuel Lasker in 1894.
1st World Chess Challenger
He was a leading Polish chess master. He was one of the leading world players for most of the 1870s and 1880s, and lost to Wilhelm Steinitz in the World Chess Championship 1886, generally regarded as the first World Chess Championship match. He was also defeated by Steinitz in 1872