World Chess Championship: History and past winners before D Gukesh faces Ding Liren

It’s almost time for the 2024 World Chess Championship match between India’s D Gukesh and Ding Liren of China. The match, a best-of-14 contest, will be played in Singapore from 25 November to 13 December, with tiebreaks if needed. Simply put, the player who scores 7.5 or more points during the contest is declared the winner of the World Chess Championship.

Liren is the defending champion of the World Chess Championship, having beaten Ian Nepomniachtchi in the 2023 final. Gukesh, meanwhile, is the challenger, after he won the 2024 Candidates tournament in Toronto earlier this year.

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The history of the World Chess Championship goes back to centuries ago, and it was only in 1886 when the first-ever official World Chess Championship was held.

William Steinitz, an Austrian-American chess player, was crowned the first official champion of the World Chess Championship in 1886. He defeated British-Polish chess master Johannes Zukertort to clinch the title.

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Steinitz would win three more titles in 1889, 1890 and 1892 before losing to German chess legend Emanuel Lasker in 1894. The 1948 World Chess Championship was the first edition that was organised by the FIDE following the passing away of Alexander Alekhine, a Russian chess master who won the title four times between 1927 and 1937.

Until 1993, the FIDE had conducted tournaments every three years to determine a new challenger. Russian grandmaster Garry Kasparov had dominated the tournament, winning five titles between 1985 and 1993. In 1993, however, Kasparov, the defending champion, and Nigel Short, the challenger, left the FIDE and formed the Professional Chess Association (PCA). The FIDE, as a result, stripped Kasparov of his World Championship titles and then conducted a title match between Anatoly Karpov and Jan Timman, with the former regaining the title in 1993.

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Between 1993 and 2006, there were two World Championship tournaments — one organised by the FIDE and the other by the PCA, and this went on till 2006, when the titles were unified, and have been conducted by the FIDE ever since.

In 2000, Viswanathan Anand became India’s first-ever World Chess Champion and would go onto win four more titles in 2007, 2008, 2010 and 2012. Should Gukesh beat Liren, he will become only the second Indian after Anand to win the World Chess Championship title.

Let’s now take a look at the complete list of winners of the Chess World Championship:

List of classical chess world champions

Before FIDE took over

1886-1894: Wilhelm Steinitz (Four titles)

1894-1921: Emanuel Lasker (Six titles)

1921-27: Jose Raul Capablanca (One title)

1927-35, 1937-46: Alexander Alekhine (Four titles)

1935-37: Max Euwe (One title)

After FIDE took over

1948-57, 1958-60, 1961-63: Mikhail Botvinnik (Five titles)

1957-58: Vasily Smyslov (One title)

1960-61: Mikhail Tal (One title)

1963-69: Tigran V. Petrosian (Two titles)

1969-72: Boris Spassky (One title)

1972-75: Bobby Fischer (One title)

1975-85: Anatoly Karpov (Three titles)

1985-93: Garry Kasparov (Five titles)

1993-99: Anatoly Karpov (Three titles)

1999-2000: Alexander Khalifman (One title)

2000-02: Viswanathan Anand (One title)

2002-04: Ruslan Ponomariov (One title)

2004-05: Rustam Kasimdzhanov (One title)

2005-06: Veselin Topalov (One title)

2006-07: Vladimir Kramnik (One title)

2007-13: Viswanathan Anand (Four titles)

2013-23: Magnus Carlsen (Five titles)

2023: Ding Liren (One title, defending champion)

PCA World Chess Championship winners

1993-2000: Garry Kasparov

2000-06: Vladimir Kramnik