List of World Chess Champions

World Chess Champions are players who have won a match or tournament for the World Championship at chess. Both men and women can become champion, but no woman has ever been a challenger for the title. There is, however, a separate championship for women. There are also separate championships for specific age groups.
Before 1886, there was no official championship held, but some players were thought to be pre-eminent. From 1948 on, the World Chess Federation FIDE held the championships. Between 1993 and 2006 there were two world champion titles, the FIDE one and the classical one.
The 2013 World Championship match took place between Anand and Magnus Carlsen (challenger) in Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu, where Anand grew up. Usually, world championships had been played on neutral ground. Fischer played Spassky in Iceland; Alekhine played Capablanca in Buenos Aires. The Soviets always played in Moscow. However, sponsorship is needed for these matches, and the decision to accept the Chennai bid was taken by FIDE. The Challenger was victorious winning 3 games and achieving the necessary 6.5 points to win the title at the end of game 10. Magnus Carlsen, 22 and from Norway is therefore the current World Chess Champion.


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

World Champions pre-FIDE

These players are included on the basis of their winning matches against credible opponents. Champions are numbered from Steinitz onwards, because his match against Zukertort was publicly declared as a world championship and generally accepted.^[3][4]

Name	Year	Country
Louis-Charles Mahé de La Bourdonnais	1821–1840	France
Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint-Amant	1840–1843	France
Howard Staunton	1843–1851	England
Adolf Anderssen	1851–1858 1862–1866	Prussia
Paul Morphy	1858–1862	United States
1. Wilhelm Steinitz	1886–1894	Austria-Hungary  England  United States
2. Emanuel Lasker	1894–1921	Germany
3. José Raúl Capablanca	1921–1927	Cuba
4. Alexander Alekhine	1927–1935 1937–1946	Russia  France
5. Max Euwe	1935–1937	Netherlands

FIDE world champions 1948–1993

Long matches, initially best of 24 games.

#	Name	Year	Country
6	Mikhail Botvinnik	1948–1957 1958–1960 1961–1963	Soviet Union (Russia)
7	Vasily Smyslov	1957–1958	Soviet Union (Russia)
8	Mikhail Tal	1960–1961	Soviet Union (Latvia)
9	Tigran Petrosian	1963–1969	Soviet Union (Armenia)
10	Boris Spassky	1969–1972	Soviet Union (Russia)
11	Robert J. Fischer	1972–1975	United States
12	Anatoly Karpov	1975–1985	Soviet Union (Russia)
13	Garry Kasparov	1985–1993	Soviet Union (Azerbaijan)

FIDE world champions 1993–2006 These knock-out events are separately numbered. # Name Year Country 1 Anatoly Karpov 1993–1999  Russia 2 Alexander Khalifman 1999–2000  Russia 3 Viswanathan Anand 2000–2002  India 4 Ruslan Ponomariov 2002–2004  Ukraine 5 Rustam Kasimdzhanov 2004–2005  Uzbekistan 6 Veselin Topalov 2005–2006  Bulgaria Classical world champions 1993–2006 These are matches of the traditional kind, and of 15 or 20 games. Undisputed world champions 2006–present Variously, 12-game classical match format and double-round all-play-all tournament. # Name Year Country 14 Vladimir Kramnik 2006–2007  Russia 15 Viswanathan Anand 2007–2013  India 16 Magnus Carlsen 2013–present  Norway # Name Year Country 13 Garry Kasparov 1993–2000  Russia 14 Vladimir Kramnik 2000–2006  Russia