World Chess Championship

FIDE conducted its own tournament, which was won by Anatoly Karpov, and led to a rival claimant to the title of World Champion for the next thirteen years until 2006.

Emanuel Lasker was the longest serving World Champion, having held the title for 27 years, and holds the record for the most Championship wins with six along with Kasparov and Karpov.

[2] Richard Lambe, in his 1764 book The History of Chess, wrote that the 18th-century French player François-André Danican Philidor was "supposed to be the best Chess-player in the world".

[7] After Deschapelles and Lewis withdrew from play, the strongest players from France and England respectively were recognised as Louis de la Bourdonnais and Alexander McDonnell.

La Bourdonnais visited England in 1825, where he played many games against Lewis and won most of them, and defeated all the other English masters despite offering handicaps.

[14] In 1840, a columnist in Fraser's Magazine (who was probably Walker) wrote, "Will Gaul continue the dynasty by placing a fourth Frenchman on the throne of the world?

It was played as a series of matches, and was won convincingly by the German Adolf Anderssen, including a 4–1 semi-final win over Staunton.

[22] In 1893, Henry Bird retrospectively awarded the title of first world chess champion to Anderssen for his victory,[24] but there is no evidence that he was widely acclaimed as such at the time, and no mention of such a status afterwards in the tournament book by Staunton.

[28][29] This prompted some commentators at the time to call him the world champion:[30] Gabriel-Éloy Doazan, who knew Morphy, wrote that "one can and...must place [him] in the same bracket" as Deschapelles and La Bourdonnais, who he had played years before, and that "his superiority is as obvious as theirs".

During that time, Zukertort emerged as the world's leading active player, winning the Paris 1878 chess tournament.

Zukertort then won the London 1883 chess tournament by a convincing 3-point margin, ahead of nearly every leading player in the world, with Steinitz finishing second.

[30] However, later in his career, at least from 1887, Steinitz dated his reign from this 1866 match,[30] and early sources such as the New York Times in 1894,[44] Emanuel Lasker in 1908,[30] and Reuben Fine in 1952[45] all do the same.

In 1887, the American Chess Congress started work on drawing up regulations for the future conduct of world championship contests.

[55] Lasker later agreed to play a match against Capablanca in 1921, announcing that, if he won, he would resign the title so that younger masters could compete for it.

[56] The only match played under those rules was Capablanca vs Alekhine in 1927, although there has been speculation that the actual contract might have included a "two-game lead" clause.

In 1935, Alekhine was unexpectedly defeated by the Dutch Max Euwe, an amateur player who worked as a mathematics teacher.

[60] Lasker introduced the practice of demanding that the challenger should provide the whole of the purse,[citation needed] and his successors followed his example up to World War II.

While they were debating procedures in 1937 and Alekhine and Euwe were preparing for their rematch later that year, the Royal Dutch Chess Federation proposed that a super-tournament (AVRO) of ex-champions and rising stars should be held to select the next challenger.

Most chess writers and players strongly supported the Dutch super-tournament proposal and opposed the committee processes favored by FIDE.

FIDE found it very difficult to organize the early discussions on how to resolve the interregnum because problems with money and travel so soon after the end of World War II prevented many countries from sending representatives.

The shortage of clear information resulted in otherwise responsible magazines publishing rumors and speculation, which only made the situation more confusing.

These players were: Max Euwe, from the Netherlands; Botvinnik, Paul Keres and Salo Flohr from the Soviet Union; and Reuben Fine and Samuel Reshevsky from the United States.

However, FIDE soon accepted a Soviet request to substitute Vasily Smyslov for Flohr, and Fine dropped out in order to continue his degree studies in psychology, so only five players competed.

Averbakh claimed that this was to Botvinnik's advantage as it reduced the number of Soviet players he might have to meet in the title match.

He claimed that Petrosian, Efim Geller and Paul Keres had prearranged to draw all their games, and that Viktor Korchnoi had been instructed to lose to them.

Fischer objected to the "best of 24 games" championship match format that had been used from 1951 onwards, claiming that it would encourage whoever got an early lead to play for draws.

After becoming world champion by default, Karpov confirmed his worthiness for the title with a string of tournament successes from the mid 70s to the early 80s.

Rapid and blitz games were used to resolve ties at the end of each round, a format which some felt did not necessarily recognize the highest-quality play: Kasparov refused to participate in these events, as did Kramnik after he won the Classical title in 2000.

In May 2002, American grandmaster Yasser Seirawan led the organisation of the so-called "Prague Agreement" to reunite the world championship.

This and the next two cycles resulted in Carlsen successfully defending his title: against Anand in 2014;[97] against Sergey Karjakin in 2016;[98] and against Fabiano Caruana in 2018.