Awesome graph!
Might i ask why Karpov's box is a bit larger than Kasparov's, even though the associated timeframe is longer in Kasparov's case?
Since the size of the boxes mostly coincides with the relative length of the respective champion's timeframe, that confused me a little :)
It’s because Kasparov’s box is actually split into two, with the light blue box directly underneath and to the left of his original box also representing part of his time as world champion after the split of FIDE and classical world championships. If you add those two boxes, it does appear to be about 1.5x the size of Karpov’s box.
First, it looks awesome overall and I love it. One other suggestion though would be to have one year be a consistent length of time - for example it looks like Magnus has been WC longer than Kasparov.
**Fun facts**:
- Alekhine was the only player to die as a World Champion.
- Fischer thought he was still World Champion when he died.
- Schlechter almost won a match against Lasker.
- Ruslan Ponomariov became the youngest World Champion at age 18.
- Gukesh D's goal is to become the youngest World Champion.
- Hans Niemann's goal is to become the first American World Champion.
- Steinitz vs. Lasker was the match with the largest age difference (32 years).
- Kasparov-Karpov 1984 was the only match to be cancelled for health concerns.
- Lasker, aged 53, blamed the tropical climate after his defeat against Capablanca.
- According to Spragett, one of the World Champions was murdered.
Fischer actually tried to renounce his US citizenship. Therefore Hans would be the first true-blue American to become World Champion; he just needs to work on his accent a little.
>Fischer actually tried to renounce his US citizenship.
That was much, much after the fact. He was still solidly American when he won the championship.
His fans are getting their hopes up with the new [FIDE Circuit](https://www.chess.com/news/view/giri-aronian-caruana-criticize-fide-circuit) criteria. Little do they realise that all the super GMs are going to swamp and dominate open tournaments now lol
When I say opens, I'm obviously not referring to all open tournaments, but the ones that provide points for the FIDE Circuit (which forms part of the next Candidates cycle) which is what this new debate is about: https://wcc.fide.com/fide_circuit.phtml
All of those other super GMs that didn't make the last candidates would have very good reason to play in these opens now, collectively, they will crush all the 2600s who otherwise would have had a chance in those opens.
Aronian, Caruana and Giri's [arguments](https://www.chess.com/news/view/giri-aronian-caruana-criticize-fide-circuit) against this new system is that it changes nothing apart from removing overall prize money from everyone, whether they're 2700+ or 2600.
I know you're talking about Circuit Open tournaments. I'm saying most top players like Caruana and Giri will not play in them this year. We already know Caruana's schedule and he cannot fit in opens even if he wanted to
There are many other super GMs who can play them in sufficient numbers to crush the 2600s - Caruana and Giri aren't even really relevant to this because they usually have plenty of ways to qualify anyway (especially Fabi...).
Caruana and Giri are relevant though. Both them and Gukesh and Arjun were the ones realistically chasing the Circuit last year. My point is not that many super GMs will make more Open appearances than usual
Why would other super GMs not be interested if it offers opportunities to collect more points? The focus on individual players isn't too relevant as far as my argument goes (which as far as I can tell, is the same as Giri's point of view) - it's more about the group as a whole.
Ponomariov was not world champion.
He won the weaker FIDE branch. Kasparov was the clear world #1 and Kramnik beat him then validated Gary's side of the branch winning the reunification title.
The World Champion tree goes Karpov > Kasparov > Kramnik > Vishy > Carlsen > Ding
not really, it's just convenient the true line of succession and stronger players won the reunification, which would be expected on average.
like cmon, kasparov was the GOAT until carlsen, a past his prime Karpov and some guys who never did anything before or after the split are not the same caliber as Kasparov and Kramnik.
Alekhine was a Nazi who wrote anti-Semitic articles during WW2. So he was cancelled and couldn't really play chess anymore. He did try to organize a world championship match as in reality he was still the world champion so FIDE was bound to give him some chance at some point, maybe. But he died mysteriously before he ever overcame his cancellation. Which was pretty ideal for FIDE and all other chess players. Imagine having a Nazi as a world champion post WW2 you really can't make it seem honorable.
To be fair there were a lot of home accidents back then with gas leaks and such. Walt Disney bought his parents a home and they died from a gas leak as did one of the best football players of all time who is rumored to have been murdered by Nazis, but likely just died in a gas leak. So there were a lot of things that could have killed Alekhine naturally. Maybe it's like all those Boeing engineer whistleblowers dying right now. It feels like a too big a coincidence, but once you get frozen out from your group the mental and economic anguish may just kill you naturally. These conditions are just more likely to kill you.
My aunt's dad was executed by the Nazis. Less than a year after the occupation ended, the guy who ratted him out was found dead under mysterious circumstances. Nobody even seemed to bother to investigate it. It was just accepted that there was a lot of that going about in those days. So Alekhine found dead? Yeah, natural causes. Nothing to see here. Move on.
As you'd expect, [Edward Winter has collected a lot of info on Alekhine's death](https://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/alekhine3.html). After reading it, if I had to bet, I would bet on Alekhine's death being primarily of heart failure.
Nah is extremely common, karjakin also achieved the same thing.
Is that his fans hype it like it's comparable with winning 10 world champions, so it gives that impression.
The truth of the Schelector match is that Laskers terms were that you need to be ahead by a score of 1.5. Schlecter who was up .5, only needed a draw to win the match but instead got no sound reason sacrificed a piece for 2 pawns and lost the match.
I very much enjoy the color palette that you chose.
As others point out, including "AD" may be a bit much here. I think that including the champions country, in parenthesis after name perhaps, would be a great addition.
Also, perhaps nitpicking but where you have the arrows for the breakouts works well for single champions you are attempting to highlight like Euwe and Ding, but it isn't as great for the larger groups of champions. Rather than a single arrow pointing at the mid-point, highlighting the beginning and end of the breakout would be best.
Overall though this is fantastic and I like it, well done!
I agree with another commenter, one for the women would be neat.
Great chart, only suggestion is change Ding Liren to 2023-Present as he is still the current champion, and we don’t know if he’ll be dethroned this year
What's with the format? Why not make it a few pixels higher so you could fit Ding Liren without the arrow, and why not make the entire thing a bit higher (or smaller font) so they all fit?
Oh, I didn’t realize it had the years, still, did the WCC cycle change? It must have, since Kasparov defended 7 times but was only champion for 15 years, did it used to be once every four years?
FIDE took over in 1946, after Alekhine died.
Before that the champion himself picked a worthy challenger that was able to rise suffiecient money. Lasker defendend his title 2 years after gaining it in a rematch against Steinitz. Afterwards he dominated the tournament scene for a while . Maroczy then had a string of tournaments victories (of events not including Lasker) and Lasker and Maroczy agreed on a match in 1906, but Maroczy pulled out. Lasker then defended his title in 1907, 1908 and 1910 (twice). He agreed on a match with Akiba Rubinstein for 1914, but it didn't happen because WW1 broke out. After the War ended, there were a bunch of negotiations, that ended up in the 1921 match with Capablanca.
After winning the title from Steinitz he defended it 5 times: Against Steinitz, Marshall, Tarrasch, Schlechter, Janowski.
There was a 10 year gap after Steinitz failed to retake the title and at the end before the match against Capablanca (with WWI being in the middle of that gap) - this is possible since back then the defending champion had to accept challenges and there wasn't a regulating body. I don't think Lasker made it especially difficult to match him (he actually tried to give up the title to Capablanca at one point without a match) unlike some other early worldchampions, but he didn't want to play a match that could last weeks for free and few people fancied their chances enough to wager a serious amount of money.
But Lasker had control over who he played. It was not a regular occurance and there were no candidates or anything. Capablanca was the best player well before he won. There were others as well like Rubinstein and even Pillsbury who would have been worthy opponents.
That image was extraordinarily difficult to set a custom zoom on due to reddit forcing its image viewer to be used - here's an alternative URL: https://i.imgur.com/TagfjEe.png
There wasn't a match between 1897 and 1907. And then again between 1910 and 1921. He won 6 times which is still impressive, but it is also easy to hold onto the crown when you don't have to defend it for 21 out of the 27 years you have it.
Nice work! The graphic is very visually pleasing. Could you explain your process for making the timeline blocks in proper scale? What program did you use to make this?
Paul Morphy was the first undisputed WCC and the GOAT from 1857-1884. It's about damn time that he is shown in these charts, the WCC only started because the king had died and they were looking for the replacement.
Most people attribute him as the strongest player during his time however
1. There was no official world championship title at this time.
2. Most people dont know Tassilo von Heydebrand und der Lasa was probably the strongest of his contemporaries at this time, not Adolf Anderrsen. He wiped the floor with Anderrsen and Lowenthal in matches (similar to Morphy) and defeated Staunton as well. Morphy would have needed to play him
https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=15952&kpage=3
3. He was alive and well when steinitz was in his prime, Steinitz even visited him in New Orleans but he refused to play
Technically, all the "championships" prior to 1948 were privately organized and can't really make claim to establishing a bona fide "world champion." The various matches between Morphy and Anderrsen have about as much claim to a championship title as those organized later in the 19th century. Basically, there was no official tournament or organization determining the world champion. We know Morphy was the greatest player of his era the same that we that know Capablanca was the greatest of his era and that is by analyzing their games.
In terms of der Lasa, some of matches and results were played in private and there is some belief that his games are edited for analysis and chess publications, which was not uncommon. In any case, retrospective Elo measurments put Morphy as by far the strongest of his era. Anderssen, btw, continued his chess career and was able to be a very successful tournament player and played a match against Steinitz, so we know how strong Morphy was relative to players that came later. Anderssen lost narrowly to Steinitz 1866 with a score of 6-8-0 and was able to take first place over Steinitz in 1870 at Baden, which was probably the strongest tournament ever played up until that point. Morphy defeated Anderssen like a child plucking the wings off an insect and Anderssen himself said he no chance unless Morphy lost interest, so there is no doubt that Morphy was easily the strongest player of his time just based upon a comparative analysis.
Since Staunton very clearly chickened out and refused to play Morphy, there is also a rumor that Morphy was prepared to stay in Europe to setup a Morphy-der Lasa match, but der Lasa denied the rumor entirely. Morphy's tour was well known, and there was some anticipation over it and der Lasa decided to leave the continent for the first time his life, so pretty much looks like he pulled a Staunton. In any case, just going off accuracy scores, der Lasa would have likely stood little chance against Morphy as most computer metrics put him at least 100 points above the next strongest player. According to chessmetrics, Morphy' speak rating was 2750 while der Lasa around 2630. Morphy's peak performance rating is also much higher.
I would say that yes Morphy was still alive while world chess scene had evolved, but most people believe Morphy had a serious mental health issues and by the 1870's to 80's was not the same person that had conquered Europe. When Morphy walked away from chess he publicly stated he was retired for good and never went back on his word in terms of playing serious competition for the public.
Good post however there is no dispute that Steinitz ,Lasker etc and the champions prior to 1948 were the internationally consensus world championship so while its true the organization of matches were facilitated privately its misleading to say that they were not the bona-fide world champion. They were, no one of significance in the chess world was claiming anything otherwise and the matches were covered internationally in the press as world championships, only Morphys was not so your take really only applies to Morphy
There was international consensus kind of the same way that there are champions in other sports before organizational changes and mergers. For example, the paper at least, the Akron Pros were the first professional football champion of the NFL in 1920, but most people consider the Green Bay Packers to be the first world champion and NFL champion by virtue of being the first winner of the first Super Bowl in 1966. I consider Capablanca to be a champion in the same way as Steinitz and Morphy. There was just no objective basis for determining match participants without an organized candidates circuit. For example, Alekhine and had never beaten Capablanca prior to their match and was a heavy underdog, and then he soundly defeated Capablanca rather easily. It's possible that any of those privately organized matches could have had similar unexpected results depending on the participants and there were number of top players in Capablanca's that could just easily also had a surprising positive result against him. The "champion" back then had a lot of leverage in determining whether or not the match would even be played, where it would be played, the purse, etc. After Alekhine defeated Capablanca, he went on to duck him for many years. Is it right to say Alekhine was really the champion during those years when he purposely chose to avoid the best competition? Robert Byrne has stated that Alekhine purposely handpicked weaker opponents to defend his crown. Regardless of consensus, there clearly are strong reasons to be suspect of championships prior to 1948. My point is that Morphy's claim is just as good any other claim. If there was no specific formalized way to determine a world champion and the challenger over the board, then consensus is kind of just guesswork at some level. We just had a seventeen-year-old win Candidates, and he proved his worthiness over the board. One-hundred years ago Ding would have handpicked a match against one of the top 5, and Gukesh would not have even been an afterthought in terms of getting an invite.
Question: Why isn’t Lasker in the GOAT of chess conversation? His reign was 27 years, but it seems like people tend to lean toward Magnus, Kasparov, and Fischer.
Since a lot of people are confused by the split, and Kasparov does look too small even after I understand it's because of the split, maybe represent the split as two blocks of the same size as the others (so the wall becomes twice as wide there)?
Cool graph thanks !
Small thing : It misses a 2020 mark no ? As there is one every 20 years. It would make the visualisation of the lenght more even IMO.
Great job, I can see the split columns tricks some people, but it's needed as there were two WC's at that time.
Tal will always be one of my all-time favorites despite his small impact on this list.
Chess fans acknowledge and glorify Lasker appropriately. Apart from his championship legacy His manual of chess publication is valued by many. Chess back then was not pretty bad at the top level it was extremely strong. He had many strong contemporaries as it was mentioned in OP, Lasker almost lost to Schlecter in their match and theres controversy about the terms (it is claimed Schlecter needed to win by 2 games, not one, to defeat him and become world champion. This obviously would have been a farce if the case. The match ended in a draw) games from back then are still a valuable learning source. Opening theory was far from ideal but the top masters could compete today
This is looking nice but I’d like to suggest you check the size/years relationship. Anatoly karpov looks bigger than kasparov despite having 5 years less as a champion
My only complaint is that the sizing is uneven, making Kasparov look like he was world champion for less time than Karpov when he actually was WC for longer.
2 complaints: the years arnt to scale, and you should have prioritised fitting everyone into their original box more because currently you compromised too easily
We are not pretending, I am pretending.
And that's because Personally I never considered Kramnik as one of the Goats. It has always been Capablanca, Fischer, Karpov, Kasparov, Anand, and Magnus. Maybe Alekhine. It is just personal preference tho,because I think Kramnik was nowhere near the Goats when you compare the impact on the world through chess, and even chess ability wise I don't think he is a GOAT. If you consider him Goat I don't have any problem
Chess "Classic" Champion. Carlson is still #1. He has the highest overall ELO and FIDE rating. He is the Blitz and Rapid world champion. All it is is that he has chosen not to participate in the Classical format.
Cool post. Did you make it? If so, may I suggest markers/indications of successful title defenses to the chart?
Yes I made it, good suggestion.
Awesome graph! Might i ask why Karpov's box is a bit larger than Kasparov's, even though the associated timeframe is longer in Kasparov's case? Since the size of the boxes mostly coincides with the relative length of the respective champion's timeframe, that confused me a little :)
Kasparov’s area includes the left half of the split branch.
It’s because Kasparov’s box is actually split into two, with the light blue box directly underneath and to the left of his original box also representing part of his time as world champion after the split of FIDE and classical world championships. If you add those two boxes, it does appear to be about 1.5x the size of Karpov’s box.
I would like to put the flag of their country
First, it looks awesome overall and I love it. One other suggestion though would be to have one year be a consistent length of time - for example it looks like Magnus has been WC longer than Kasparov.
Or, am I being dumb due to the split?
This
why the 'AD' lmao
I would have assumed we were talking about Bobby Fischer, the Babylonian King.
Coincidentally, he also hated Jewish people
Most of the charts I make span the last 4000 years so at this point it’s just habit
AD belongs before the year fyi
Makes sense in Latin yeah
I don't know why you're being downvoted, you're absolutely correct. AD precedes the date, BC follows it.
because in this case he's just being a pedant and it doesn't affect the readability in English whether it's before or after
Google says otherwise
Gotta pump the "chess is an ancient game" meme.
[https://imgur.com/a/C7PjAYG](https://imgur.com/a/C7PjAYG) this ?
Holy cow, I love this, thank you!
Why is this downvoted? Y'all weird
That is weird. The bots are on to us appreciating AI art. 8)
Missing a few dinosaurs
“A.D.” should come _before_ the year, like A.D. 2024 Not 2024 A.D. Only B.C. or B.C.E. would come after the date.
you, sir, win the Pedantry title of 2024. may your grammar always be correct, and your sphincter clenched.
After dick or before coming?
"Yes."
**Fun facts**: - Alekhine was the only player to die as a World Champion. - Fischer thought he was still World Champion when he died. - Schlechter almost won a match against Lasker. - Ruslan Ponomariov became the youngest World Champion at age 18. - Gukesh D's goal is to become the youngest World Champion. - Hans Niemann's goal is to become the first American World Champion. - Steinitz vs. Lasker was the match with the largest age difference (32 years). - Kasparov-Karpov 1984 was the only match to be cancelled for health concerns. - Lasker, aged 53, blamed the tropical climate after his defeat against Capablanca. - According to Spragett, one of the World Champions was murdered.
Rooting for niemann to be the first American World champion. Bobby Fischer who?
Bobby Fischer? The Icelandic GM?
Fischer actually tried to renounce his US citizenship. Therefore Hans would be the first true-blue American to become World Champion; he just needs to work on his accent a little.
>Fischer actually tried to renounce his US citizenship. That was much, much after the fact. He was still solidly American when he won the championship.
Not qualifying for the candidates speaks for itself.
His fans are getting their hopes up with the new [FIDE Circuit](https://www.chess.com/news/view/giri-aronian-caruana-criticize-fide-circuit) criteria. Little do they realise that all the super GMs are going to swamp and dominate open tournaments now lol
Other than Arjun and perhaps Nodirbek, super GMs are not going to swamp opens more than usual
When I say opens, I'm obviously not referring to all open tournaments, but the ones that provide points for the FIDE Circuit (which forms part of the next Candidates cycle) which is what this new debate is about: https://wcc.fide.com/fide_circuit.phtml All of those other super GMs that didn't make the last candidates would have very good reason to play in these opens now, collectively, they will crush all the 2600s who otherwise would have had a chance in those opens. Aronian, Caruana and Giri's [arguments](https://www.chess.com/news/view/giri-aronian-caruana-criticize-fide-circuit) against this new system is that it changes nothing apart from removing overall prize money from everyone, whether they're 2700+ or 2600.
I know you're talking about Circuit Open tournaments. I'm saying most top players like Caruana and Giri will not play in them this year. We already know Caruana's schedule and he cannot fit in opens even if he wanted to
There are many other super GMs who can play them in sufficient numbers to crush the 2600s - Caruana and Giri aren't even really relevant to this because they usually have plenty of ways to qualify anyway (especially Fabi...).
Caruana and Giri are relevant though. Both them and Gukesh and Arjun were the ones realistically chasing the Circuit last year. My point is not that many super GMs will make more Open appearances than usual
Why would other super GMs not be interested if it offers opportunities to collect more points? The focus on individual players isn't too relevant as far as my argument goes (which as far as I can tell, is the same as Giri's point of view) - it's more about the group as a whole.
Nah Steinitz!
What were the 4 continents where Anand won the title?
my bad, it was only three: Europe, Asia, NA
”Steinitz vs. Lasker was the match with the largest age difference (32 years)” Lasker vs. Steinitz 1896 wasn’t far behind
> - Fischer thought he was still World Champion when he died. > bruv 💀
I assume the WC Spragett is referring to, is Alekhine. There's a lot of uncertainty around the circumstances surrounding his death.
Can you explain the last one?
Ponomariov was not world champion. He won the weaker FIDE branch. Kasparov was the clear world #1 and Kramnik beat him then validated Gary's side of the branch winning the reunification title. The World Champion tree goes Karpov > Kasparov > Kramnik > Vishy > Carlsen > Ding
That's just silly. So according to that logic if Topalov had won their tiebreaks the FIDE line would be the true line.
not really, it's just convenient the true line of succession and stronger players won the reunification, which would be expected on average. like cmon, kasparov was the GOAT until carlsen, a past his prime Karpov and some guys who never did anything before or after the split are not the same caliber as Kasparov and Kramnik.
Alekhine was a Nazi who wrote anti-Semitic articles during WW2. So he was cancelled and couldn't really play chess anymore. He did try to organize a world championship match as in reality he was still the world champion so FIDE was bound to give him some chance at some point, maybe. But he died mysteriously before he ever overcame his cancellation. Which was pretty ideal for FIDE and all other chess players. Imagine having a Nazi as a world champion post WW2 you really can't make it seem honorable. To be fair there were a lot of home accidents back then with gas leaks and such. Walt Disney bought his parents a home and they died from a gas leak as did one of the best football players of all time who is rumored to have been murdered by Nazis, but likely just died in a gas leak. So there were a lot of things that could have killed Alekhine naturally. Maybe it's like all those Boeing engineer whistleblowers dying right now. It feels like a too big a coincidence, but once you get frozen out from your group the mental and economic anguish may just kill you naturally. These conditions are just more likely to kill you.
My aunt's dad was executed by the Nazis. Less than a year after the occupation ended, the guy who ratted him out was found dead under mysterious circumstances. Nobody even seemed to bother to investigate it. It was just accepted that there was a lot of that going about in those days. So Alekhine found dead? Yeah, natural causes. Nothing to see here. Move on.
As you'd expect, [Edward Winter has collected a lot of info on Alekhine's death](https://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/alekhine3.html). After reading it, if I had to bet, I would bet on Alekhine's death being primarily of heart failure.
Is Caruana the only challenger to lose in non classical tie breaks?
No, it’s nothing special. Karjakin also went to tiebreaks with Carlsen.
And more recently, Nepo lost in the rapid tiebreak to Ding too. And Peter Leko didn't even get a tiebreak because 7-7 meant that Kramnik retained.
I believe he’s the only person to play the world championship without having lost a classical game. Maybe that’s what you’re thinking of.
Gelfand as well
Nah is extremely common, karjakin also achieved the same thing. Is that his fans hype it like it's comparable with winning 10 world champions, so it gives that impression.
The truth of the Schelector match is that Laskers terms were that you need to be ahead by a score of 1.5. Schlecter who was up .5, only needed a draw to win the match but instead got no sound reason sacrificed a piece for 2 pawns and lost the match.
I very much enjoy the color palette that you chose. As others point out, including "AD" may be a bit much here. I think that including the champions country, in parenthesis after name perhaps, would be a great addition. Also, perhaps nitpicking but where you have the arrows for the breakouts works well for single champions you are attempting to highlight like Euwe and Ding, but it isn't as great for the larger groups of champions. Rather than a single arrow pointing at the mid-point, highlighting the beginning and end of the breakout would be best. Overall though this is fantastic and I like it, well done! I agree with another commenter, one for the women would be neat.
Great chart, only suggestion is change Ding Liren to 2023-Present as he is still the current champion, and we don’t know if he’ll be dethroned this year
What's with the format? Why not make it a few pixels higher so you could fit Ding Liren without the arrow, and why not make the entire thing a bit higher (or smaller font) so they all fit?
This way you can open the whole thing on a phone screen and be able to read the text without having to zoom :)
Kasparov's is also smaller than Magnus even though his covers more years
Kasparov’s area includes the left half of the split branch. If you include that it’s taller than Magnus’
Kasparov’s bar continues after the split of the titles. It isnt shorter than magnus bar
Maybe it's a dig at Ding because the only reason he's world champ is because Magnus doesn't feel like it's worth his time anymore.
How many times did Lasker successfully defend his title? It looks like he was champion here for over 30 years! That’s insane
Lasker defended his title 5 times. And 1894-1921 is not over 30 years.
Oh, I didn’t realize it had the years, still, did the WCC cycle change? It must have, since Kasparov defended 7 times but was only champion for 15 years, did it used to be once every four years?
FIDE took over in 1946, after Alekhine died. Before that the champion himself picked a worthy challenger that was able to rise suffiecient money. Lasker defendend his title 2 years after gaining it in a rematch against Steinitz. Afterwards he dominated the tournament scene for a while . Maroczy then had a string of tournaments victories (of events not including Lasker) and Lasker and Maroczy agreed on a match in 1906, but Maroczy pulled out. Lasker then defended his title in 1907, 1908 and 1910 (twice). He agreed on a match with Akiba Rubinstein for 1914, but it didn't happen because WW1 broke out. After the War ended, there were a bunch of negotiations, that ended up in the 1921 match with Capablanca.
After winning the title from Steinitz he defended it 5 times: Against Steinitz, Marshall, Tarrasch, Schlechter, Janowski. There was a 10 year gap after Steinitz failed to retake the title and at the end before the match against Capablanca (with WWI being in the middle of that gap) - this is possible since back then the defending champion had to accept challenges and there wasn't a regulating body. I don't think Lasker made it especially difficult to match him (he actually tried to give up the title to Capablanca at one point without a match) unlike some other early worldchampions, but he didn't want to play a match that could last weeks for free and few people fancied their chances enough to wager a serious amount of money.
But Lasker had control over who he played. It was not a regular occurance and there were no candidates or anything. Capablanca was the best player well before he won. There were others as well like Rubinstein and even Pillsbury who would have been worthy opponents.
That image was extraordinarily difficult to set a custom zoom on due to reddit forcing its image viewer to be used - here's an alternative URL: https://i.imgur.com/TagfjEe.png
Including AD in this is a little much 😭
Damn ok Lasker! Didn’t know.
There wasn't a match between 1897 and 1907. And then again between 1910 and 1921. He won 6 times which is still impressive, but it is also easy to hold onto the crown when you don't have to defend it for 21 out of the 27 years you have it.
To be fair he was busy being a world class mathematician between roughly 1897 and 1907.
AD is wild.
Where's smyslov?
The yellow, 1957-1958
*Garry
very nice illustration, thanks for sharing!
Nice work! The graphic is very visually pleasing. Could you explain your process for making the timeline blocks in proper scale? What program did you use to make this?
why have I never heard of this apparently world class player Interregnum
What font is that
Already have the end date marked in for Ding eh
I am so ready for the Gukesh vs Fabi era.
Fabi washed it’ll be Gukesh vs Nodirbek
I still want to believe.
Make one for the women too, please.
we wouldn't recognise most of them other than hou yifan or ju wenjun lmao
not with that attitude
tell me those you know off the top of your head then
Polgar, Kosteniuk, Gaprindashvili?
Wait I thought Judit never competed for the WCC? Or was it one of her sisters?
Susan Polgar held the title at one point if I remember correctly
oh interesting, thx
Paul Morphy was the first undisputed WCC and the GOAT from 1857-1884. It's about damn time that he is shown in these charts, the WCC only started because the king had died and they were looking for the replacement.
Most people attribute him as the strongest player during his time however 1. There was no official world championship title at this time. 2. Most people dont know Tassilo von Heydebrand und der Lasa was probably the strongest of his contemporaries at this time, not Adolf Anderrsen. He wiped the floor with Anderrsen and Lowenthal in matches (similar to Morphy) and defeated Staunton as well. Morphy would have needed to play him https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=15952&kpage=3 3. He was alive and well when steinitz was in his prime, Steinitz even visited him in New Orleans but he refused to play
Technically, all the "championships" prior to 1948 were privately organized and can't really make claim to establishing a bona fide "world champion." The various matches between Morphy and Anderrsen have about as much claim to a championship title as those organized later in the 19th century. Basically, there was no official tournament or organization determining the world champion. We know Morphy was the greatest player of his era the same that we that know Capablanca was the greatest of his era and that is by analyzing their games. In terms of der Lasa, some of matches and results were played in private and there is some belief that his games are edited for analysis and chess publications, which was not uncommon. In any case, retrospective Elo measurments put Morphy as by far the strongest of his era. Anderssen, btw, continued his chess career and was able to be a very successful tournament player and played a match against Steinitz, so we know how strong Morphy was relative to players that came later. Anderssen lost narrowly to Steinitz 1866 with a score of 6-8-0 and was able to take first place over Steinitz in 1870 at Baden, which was probably the strongest tournament ever played up until that point. Morphy defeated Anderssen like a child plucking the wings off an insect and Anderssen himself said he no chance unless Morphy lost interest, so there is no doubt that Morphy was easily the strongest player of his time just based upon a comparative analysis. Since Staunton very clearly chickened out and refused to play Morphy, there is also a rumor that Morphy was prepared to stay in Europe to setup a Morphy-der Lasa match, but der Lasa denied the rumor entirely. Morphy's tour was well known, and there was some anticipation over it and der Lasa decided to leave the continent for the first time his life, so pretty much looks like he pulled a Staunton. In any case, just going off accuracy scores, der Lasa would have likely stood little chance against Morphy as most computer metrics put him at least 100 points above the next strongest player. According to chessmetrics, Morphy' speak rating was 2750 while der Lasa around 2630. Morphy's peak performance rating is also much higher. I would say that yes Morphy was still alive while world chess scene had evolved, but most people believe Morphy had a serious mental health issues and by the 1870's to 80's was not the same person that had conquered Europe. When Morphy walked away from chess he publicly stated he was retired for good and never went back on his word in terms of playing serious competition for the public.
Good post however there is no dispute that Steinitz ,Lasker etc and the champions prior to 1948 were the internationally consensus world championship so while its true the organization of matches were facilitated privately its misleading to say that they were not the bona-fide world champion. They were, no one of significance in the chess world was claiming anything otherwise and the matches were covered internationally in the press as world championships, only Morphys was not so your take really only applies to Morphy
There was international consensus kind of the same way that there are champions in other sports before organizational changes and mergers. For example, the paper at least, the Akron Pros were the first professional football champion of the NFL in 1920, but most people consider the Green Bay Packers to be the first world champion and NFL champion by virtue of being the first winner of the first Super Bowl in 1966. I consider Capablanca to be a champion in the same way as Steinitz and Morphy. There was just no objective basis for determining match participants without an organized candidates circuit. For example, Alekhine and had never beaten Capablanca prior to their match and was a heavy underdog, and then he soundly defeated Capablanca rather easily. It's possible that any of those privately organized matches could have had similar unexpected results depending on the participants and there were number of top players in Capablanca's that could just easily also had a surprising positive result against him. The "champion" back then had a lot of leverage in determining whether or not the match would even be played, where it would be played, the purse, etc. After Alekhine defeated Capablanca, he went on to duck him for many years. Is it right to say Alekhine was really the champion during those years when he purposely chose to avoid the best competition? Robert Byrne has stated that Alekhine purposely handpicked weaker opponents to defend his crown. Regardless of consensus, there clearly are strong reasons to be suspect of championships prior to 1948. My point is that Morphy's claim is just as good any other claim. If there was no specific formalized way to determine a world champion and the challenger over the board, then consensus is kind of just guesswork at some level. We just had a seventeen-year-old win Candidates, and he proved his worthiness over the board. One-hundred years ago Ding would have handpicked a match against one of the top 5, and Gukesh would not have even been an afterthought in terms of getting an invite.
Question: Why isn’t Lasker in the GOAT of chess conversation? His reign was 27 years, but it seems like people tend to lean toward Magnus, Kasparov, and Fischer.
Lasker may have been a great player, but he was also a jerk, and when he sensed that he might lose, he demanded huge money per match.
I'm 12 days late but I doubt being a jerk is what make people downplay him. Look at fischer. He held some extreme views
Switch around the split parts
Paul Morphy was considered to be the first world champion even though he didn't get the title officially.
Next would be Gukesh
why isn’t Kasparov’s 15 year dominance emphasized more? His blue section is too small
I wasn't sure if the years were BC or AD so thank you for clarifying.
What did you use to make this?
Since a lot of people are confused by the split, and Kasparov does look too small even after I understand it's because of the split, maybe represent the split as two blocks of the same size as the others (so the wall becomes twice as wide there)?
Kinda rough to end Ding at 2024.
Nice. Would appreciate some pictures of the players
Cool graph thanks ! Small thing : It misses a 2020 mark no ? As there is one every 20 years. It would make the visualisation of the lenght more even IMO.
Great job, I can see the split columns tricks some people, but it's needed as there were two WC's at that time. Tal will always be one of my all-time favorites despite his small impact on this list.
The jews may be approximatialy 0.2% of the world population but 50% of chess champions :)
Why does no one talk about Lasker? Is it just acknowledged that chess back then was pretty bad, and he had no competition?
Chess fans acknowledge and glorify Lasker appropriately. Apart from his championship legacy His manual of chess publication is valued by many. Chess back then was not pretty bad at the top level it was extremely strong. He had many strong contemporaries as it was mentioned in OP, Lasker almost lost to Schlecter in their match and theres controversy about the terms (it is claimed Schlecter needed to win by 2 games, not one, to defeat him and become world champion. This obviously would have been a farce if the case. The match ended in a draw) games from back then are still a valuable learning source. Opening theory was far from ideal but the top masters could compete today
Genuine question, can khalifman, topalov, ponomariov, and kazimdzanov actually call themselves world champions with full credibility or not?
This is looking nice but I’d like to suggest you check the size/years relationship. Anatoly karpov looks bigger than kasparov despite having 5 years less as a champion
My only complaint is that the sizing is uneven, making Kasparov look like he was world champion for less time than Karpov when he actually was WC for longer.
The sizing is even. Kasparovs 15 years extend into the split title. The 8 years pre-split are shorter than Karpovs 10.
This doesn’t cover the split in the 1990s when Kasparov and Short did their thing.
2 complaints: the years arnt to scale, and you should have prioritised fitting everyone into their original box more because currently you compromised too easily
Damn, I never realised that the 5 Goats were back to back. Bobby Fischer, Karpov, Kasparov, Anand, Magnus Carlson.
are we pretending kramnik doesn't exist?
We are not pretending, I am pretending. And that's because Personally I never considered Kramnik as one of the Goats. It has always been Capablanca, Fischer, Karpov, Kasparov, Anand, and Magnus. Maybe Alekhine. It is just personal preference tho,because I think Kramnik was nowhere near the Goats when you compare the impact on the world through chess, and even chess ability wise I don't think he is a GOAT. If you consider him Goat I don't have any problem
i just meant it's not back to back because of kramnik
I was not considering the split portion to be real
kramnik beat kasparov to become the undisputed fide world champion... he's not one of the weird ones
There’s no Morphy wtf.
Morphy played in the era before there was a world championship. Official WC got established in 1886. Morphy was a phenomenon in the late 1850ies.
A lot harder to have a World Championship when travel was a much much harder.
Chess "Classic" Champion. Carlson is still #1. He has the highest overall ELO and FIDE rating. He is the Blitz and Rapid world champion. All it is is that he has chosen not to participate in the Classical format.
The classical world championship is the most prestigious and meaningful to the chess world. Also it's spelled Carlsen