Best chess players in history

If you’re an avid chess player, or perhaps a hobby trivia buff, you might be interested to know who the best chess players in history are. While this isn’t a highly debated list, some of the results may still surprise you. The list begins in the most surprising place, with Deep Blue, IBM’s famous supercomputer of the late 1980’s.

Designed specifically to play chess, it was the first successful model of artificial intelligence, and did indeed beat then World Champion Garry Kasparov, proving that AI was no longer stuff of science fiction. Paul Morphy has been argued to be the greatest chess player in history, despite the fact that he did not actually pursue a career in chess. Teaching himself the game at the very young age of nine, he went on to defeat every chess master in the world at the time. The way he played and the theories he employed are still considered to be far ahead of his time. From 1948 to 1963, Mikhail Botvinnik was an on-again off-again World Champion.

Along with his memorable matches he also contributed to the development of the World Chess Championship, as well as coaching future champions Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov, and Vladimir Kramnik. At the tender age of 16, Alexander Alekhine was already one of the strongest players in Russia, and by 22 had already earned a global reputation. He won his first championship by defeating another historic great, Jose Capablanca. Perhaps one of the most famous all-time chess greats is America’s Bobby Fischer. Maybe it’s his retention of the only perfect score in US Championships tournament history or the political notoriety of his later years, but his fame has never been surpassed.

Jose Capablanca’s biggest claim to fame, aside from his championship rankings, is perhaps his undisputed title of Blitz Chess master. By the age of 4 he already learned the game and at 13 defeated the current Cuban champion. Not only recognized for his championship wins, Wilhelm Steinitz is perhaps more important because of his contribution to positional play in modern chess philosophy.

Arguably the best, or one of the best players in history, Anatoly Karpov is currently ranked 98th in the world, despite his World Champion status from 1975-1985 and 1993-1999. Garry Kasparov is synonymous with world class chess. The youngest undisputed World Champion in history, Kasparov held the title from 1985 to 1993, beginning at the age of 22. He continued to reign at the top for the whole of his twenty year career.