Famous Chess Players Everyone Should Know

Chess history is really a chain of ideas, each World Champion (or near-champion) reshaping how the game is understood and played. Here are the figures whose games and ideas still influence how chess is taught and played today.

The early World Champions

Wilhelm Steinitz

Steinitz became the first officially recognised World Chess Champion in 1886. Before him, chess was largely a game of romantic, all-out attack; Steinitz argued that a position should be built up methodically, accumulating small advantages before attacking, and that attacking without a sound basis should fail against correct defence. This "positional" or "scientific" approach to chess became the foundation that every subsequent generation of theory built on.

José Raúl Capablanca

The Cuban World Champion from 1921 to 1927, Capablanca was renowned for a clarity and simplicity of style that made difficult positions look effortless — opponents and commentators alike described his play as almost machine-like in its accuracy, especially in the endgame. He lost remarkably few games across his career, and his endgame technique is still used to teach the fundamentals of that phase of the game.

Alexander Alekhine

A World Champion known for combinational, attacking chess, Alekhine combined deep calculation with a willingness to take on sharp complications that many of his contemporaries avoided. He is remembered for spectacular, deeply calculated combinations and for a fierce competitive will that made him one of the most feared attacking players of his era.

Mikhail Botvinnik

A Soviet World Champion and one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century chess, Botvinnik is often called the father of the Soviet school of chess — a rigorous, deeply prepared approach to opening theory and training that dominated world chess for decades. He was also an important mentor, training a line of future champions including Garry Kasparov.

The modern era

Bobby Fischer

The American who became World Champion in 1972, Fischer is best remembered for his Cold War-era World Championship match against Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland — a match that drew mainstream global attention to chess in a way it had never had before. Widely regarded as one of the greatest natural talents the game has produced, Fischer combined ferocious opening preparation with relentless technical precision.

Garry Kasparov

Kasparov held the World Championship title for fifteen years, from 1985 to 2000, and for a long time was considered by many to be the greatest player of all time. He is also remembered for his high-profile 1997 matches against IBM's chess computer Deep Blue, a landmark moment in the history of chess and of artificial intelligence. See Chess Openings for some of the opening systems associated with his aggressive, deeply prepared style.

Judit Polgár

Widely regarded as the strongest female chess player in history, Polgár is the only woman ever to break into the world's top ten rankings. She competed exclusively in the open (mixed) category rather than women's events throughout her career, which is why she never held the Women's World Championship title — she was instead competing directly against, and defeating, the world's strongest open players.

Viswanathan Anand

A five-time World Champion, Anand was the first great chess superstar to emerge from Asia and is widely credited with sparking the enormous growth of chess in India. Known for exceptionally fast, intuitive calculation earlier in his career, he later became just as respected for deep opening preparation.

Magnus Carlsen

The dominant player of the current era, Carlsen held the World Championship title from 2013 to 2023 before choosing not to defend it further, preferring to focus on other formats. He holds the highest FIDE rating ever recorded, and is known for a versatile, technically relentless style that grinds down opponents in positions many players would assess as equal. See Chess Ratings and ELO Explained for more on how that rating record is measured.

Frequently asked questions

Who is considered the greatest chess player of all time?

There's no single settled answer — it's genuinely debated. Garry Kasparov, Magnus Carlsen and Bobby Fischer are the players most commonly cited, each dominant in a different era and each with strong arguments made in their favour by fans and historians alike.

Who was the first World Chess Champion?

Wilhelm Steinitz, who became the first officially recognised World Chess Champion in 1886. He's also considered the father of modern positional chess theory.

Has a woman ever been World Chess Champion?

Several women have held the separate Women's World Chess Championship title. No woman has yet won the (open) World Chess Championship contested by Steinitz, Fischer, Kasparov and Carlsen among others, though Judit Polgár competed in the open category throughout her career and reached the world's top ten.

What made Bobby Fischer's 1972 match so famous?

His World Championship match against Boris Spassky in Reykjavik took place during the Cold War and was widely framed as a US-versus-USSR contest, bringing an unprecedented level of mainstream global attention to chess.