The world records in chess listed here are achieved in organized tournament, match, or simultaneous exhibition play.
The longest decisive FIDE-rated game is Billy Fellowes vs Peter Lalić, London 2024, which lasted for 272 moves, at the Third Kingston Invitational.
The former rule was used at the 2009 Chinese Championship to forfeit Hou Yifan for arriving five seconds late for the beginning of a round.
[10] The latter rule was used to forfeit Aleksander Delchev against Stuart Conquest after the move 1.d4 in the 2009 European Team Championship.
A game between Fischer and Oscar Panno, played at the Palma de Mallorca Interzonal 1970, went: 1.c4 Black resigns.
The shortest game ever lost by a grandmaster because of the position on the board was by future world champion Viswanathan Anand, who resigned on move 6 against Alonso Zapata in 1988 (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nxe5 d6 4.Nf3 Nxe4 5.Nc3 Bf5??
Traditionally, it has been common for players to agree to a "grandmaster draw" after playing about 10–15 moves of known opening theory and making no serious effort to win.
There has been some debate over the ethics of the practice, and recently there has been a trend away from such games, with many tournaments adopting measures to discourage short draws.
[24] If the tournament officials (unlike those at Graz and Lishui) do not object, a game may even be agreed drawn without a single move being played.
Tony Miles and Stewart Reuben did the same thing in the last round of the Luton 1975 tournament, "with the blessing of the controller", in order to assure themselves of first and second places respectively.
The shortest known route to a position where both players are stalemated, discovered by Enzo Minerva and published in the Italian newspaper l'Unità on August 14, 2007, is 1.c4 d5 2.Qb3 Bh3 3.gxh3 f5 4.Qxb7 Kf7 5.Qxa7 Kg6 6.f3 c5 7.Qxe7 Rxa2 8.Kf2 Rxb2 9.Qxg7+ Kh5 10.Qxg8 Rxb1 11.Rxb1 Kh4 12.Qxh8 h5 13.Qh6 Bxh6 14.Rxb8 Be3+ 15.dxe3 Qxb8 16.Kg2 Qf4 17.exf4 d4 18.Be3 dxe3.
[39][40] The only game to receive a perfect rating from Chess Informant's panel of judges was Miles–Belyavsky, Tilburg 1986, which featured the novelty 18.f4!!
[57][58][59] Vera Menchik won four consecutive Women's World Chess Championship tournaments with perfect scores, a total of 45 games (8–0 at Prague 1931, 14–0 at Folkestone 1933, 9–0 at Warsaw 1935, and 14–0 at Stockholm 1937).
"[90] Perfect scores were achieved in matches by: At the World Chess Championship 2018 between Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana, all 12 classical games ended in draws (100%).
Bobby Fischer won 20 consecutive games, all in competitions at late stages of the world championship cycle.
[91] Wilhelm Steinitz won his last 16 games at Vienna 1873, including a two-game playoff against Joseph Henry Blackburne at the end.
After a long period of inactivity, Steinitz played at Vienna 1882, where he won his first two games before finally ending his winning streak with a draw.
It includes three wins in the Norwegian Chess League against opponents rated more than 500 Elo points lower, which Carlsen prefers not to count.
[96] Carlsen's streak broke the previous record of 100 games by Ding Liren, who went unbeaten from August 2017 to November 2018.
[98] Bogdan Lalić's unbeaten streak of 155 games[99] (against less elite players than those Carlsen faced) is confirmed to have taken place between 2010 and 2011, according to the FIDE ratings website.
[109] Before the list, Emanuel Lasker was the world's highest-rated player for 292 months between June 1890 and December 1926 according to Chessmetrics.
Apart from retrospective awards, a number of players have achieved the title by winning the World Senior Championship.
[112][113] On February 18, 2024, Ashwath Kaushik, aged 8 years, 6 months, and 11 days, beat Grandmaster Jacek Stopa at the 22nd Burgdorfer Stadthaus Open in Switzerland.
The oldest known player to beat a grandmaster in a tournament game at standard time controls is Anthony Saidy.
[116] In 1922, José Raúl Capablanca, the recently crowned World Champion, played 103 opponents simultaneously in Cleveland.
[117][118] The best result in a simultaneous exhibition solely against grandmasters is former World Champion Garry Kasparov's performance against an Israeli team consisting of Boris Alterman, Alexander Huzman, Ilya Smirin, and Emil Sutovsky at Tel Aviv in 1998.
On April 26, 1859, at London's St. James Chess Club, Morphy played "five games simultaneously against a group of masters who could be described as among the top ten players of the day", scoring 3–2.
He defeated Jules Arnous de Rivière and Henry Bird, drew with Samuel Boden and Johann Löwenthal, and lost only to Thomas Wilson Barnes.
[121][122][123][124] The absolute worst result in a simultaneous exhibition was two wins and 18 losses (10%) by Joe Hayden, aged 17, in August 1977.
[127] On February 8–9, 2011, Iranian grandmaster Ehsan Ghaem-Maghami played for 25 hours against 604 players, winning 580 (97.35%) of the games, drawing 16, and losing 8.