This is a list of notable chess games sorted chronologically.
Anatoly Yevgenyevich Karpov is a Russian and former Soviet chess grandmaster, former World Chess Champion, and politician. He was the 12th World Chess Champion from 1975 to 1985, a three-time FIDE World Champion, twice World Chess champion as a member of the USSR team, and a six-time winner of Chess Olympiads as a member of the USSR team. The International Association of Chess Press awarded him nine Chess Oscars.
Judit Polgár is a Hungarian chess grandmaster, widely regarded as the strongest female chess player of all time. In 1991, Polgár achieved the title of Grandmaster at the age of 15 years and 4 months, at the time the youngest to have done so, breaking the record previously held by former world champion Bobby Fischer. She was the youngest player ever to break into the FIDE top 100 players rating list, ranking No. 55 in the January 1989 rating list, at the age of 12.
Vladimir Borisovich Kramnik is a Russian chess grandmaster. He was the Classical World Chess Champion from 2000 to 2006, and the 14th undisputed World Chess Champion from 2006 to 2007.
Tigran Vardani Petrosian was a Soviet-Armenian chess grandmaster and the ninth World Chess Champion from 1963 to 1969. He was nicknamed "Iron Tigran" due to his almost-impenetrable defensive playing style, which emphasized safety above all else. Petrosian is often credited with popularizing chess in Armenia.
The World Chess Championship is played to determine the world champion in chess. The current world champion is Ding Liren, who defeated his opponent Ian Nepomniachtchi in the 2023 World Chess Championship. Magnus Carlsen, the previous world champion, had declined to defend his title.
Viswanathan "Vishy" Anand is an Indian chess grandmaster, a former five-time World Chess Champion and a record two-time Chess World Cup Champion. He became the first grandmaster from India in 1988, and he has the eighth-highest peak FIDE rating of all time. In 2022, he was elected the deputy president of FIDE.
The Ruy Lopez, also called the Spanish Opening or Spanish Game, is a chess opening characterised by the moves:
Veselin Aleksandrov Topalov is a Bulgarian chess grandmaster and former FIDE World Chess Champion.
The Grünfeld Defence is a chess opening characterised by the moves:
Peter Leko is a Hungarian chess grandmaster and commentator. He became the world's youngest grandmaster in 1994. He narrowly missed winning the Classical World Chess Championship 2004: the match was drawn 7–7 and so Vladimir Kramnik retained the title. He also came fifth in the FIDE World Chess Championship 2005 and fourth in the World Chess Championship 2007.
This is a timeline of chess.
In chess, the threefold repetition rule states that a player may claim a draw if the same position occurs three times during the game. The rule is also known as repetition of position and, in the USCF rules, as triple occurrence of position. Two positions are by definition "the same" if the same types of pieces occupy the same squares, the same player has the move, the remaining castling rights are the same and the possibility to capture en passant is the same. The repeated positions need not occur in succession. The reasoning behind the rule is that if the position occurs three times, no real progress is being made and the game could hypothetically continue indefinitely.
The zwischenzug is a chess tactic in which a player, instead of playing the expected move, first interposes another move posing an immediate threat that the opponent must answer, and only then plays the expected move. It is a move that has a high degree of "initiative". Ideally, the zwischenzug changes the situation to the player's advantage, such as by gaining material or avoiding what would otherwise be a strong continuation for the opponent.
The Catalan Opening is a chess opening where White plays d4 and c4 and fianchettoes the white bishop on g2. A common opening sequence is 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3, although various other openings can transpose into the Catalan. The Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings (ECO) lists codes E01–E09 for lines with 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3 d5 4.Bg2; other lines are part of E00.
Several methods have been suggested for comparing the greatest chess players in history. There is agreement on a statistical system to rate the strengths of current players, called the Elo system, but disagreement about methods used to compare players from different generations who never competed against each other.
Joël Lautier is a French chess grandmaster and one of the world's leading chess players in the 1990s and early 2000s. In 1986, he won the U-14 World Youth Chess Championship in Puerto Rico, Argentina. In 1988, he won the World Junior Chess Championship, ahead of stars such as Vasily Ivanchuk, Boris Gelfand and Gregory Serper. He is the youngest player ever to win the World Junior Championship at the age of 15. He is one of the few players who has a lifetime positive score against Garry Kasparov. He was one of the people instrumental in Kramnik winning the Classical World Chess Championship 2000 against Kasparov by preparing the infamous 'Berlin Wall'. He also won the French Chess Championship twice in 2004 and 2005. He was the first president of the Association of Chess Professionals when it was founded in June 2003. In 2006, Lautier gave up competitive chess to pursue a career in investment banking. Since 2009 he has been CEO of the Moscow-based investment banking firm RGG Capital.
In chess, the exchange is the material difference of a rook for a minor piece. Having a rook for a minor piece is generally advantageous, since the rook is usually more valuable. A player who has a rook for a minor piece is said to be up the exchange, and the other player is down the exchange. A player who wins a rook for a minor piece is said to have won the exchange, while the other player has lost the exchange. The opposing captures often happen on consecutive moves, but this is not strictly necessary. Although it is generally detrimental to lose the exchange, one may occasionally find reason to purposely do so; the result is an exchange sacrifice.
In a chess endgame of a king, bishop, and pawn versus king, a wrong rook pawn is a rook pawn whose promotion square is the opposite color from the bishop's square color. Since a side's rook pawns promote on opposite-colored squares, one of them may be the "wrong rook pawn". This situation is also known as having the wrong-colored bishop or wrong bishop. In many cases, the wrong rook pawn will only draw, when any other pawn would win. This is because the defending side can sometimes get their king to the corner in front of the pawn, after which the attacking side cannot chase the king away to enable promotion. A fairly common defensive tactic is to reach one of these drawn endgames, often through a sacrifice.
The Karpov–Kasparov rivalry was a chess rivalry that existed between grandmasters Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov, who were the 12th and 13th World Chess Champions respectively. The rivalry started in the mid-1980s and culminated in Karpov and Kasparov playing five world championship matches. It has been called not only the greatest rivalry in chess, but, in the words of Leontxo García, in all of sports. The rivalry involved controversy like the 1984 meeting, which ended without a winner, with Karpov leading, political elements, and extremely close matches like the 1987 meeting, where Kasparov had to win the last game to retain the title.
Garry Kasparov defeated Veselin Topalov in what is now known as his 'immortal game'
Kasparov has a long list of brilliancies to his credit, but this game is his virtually undisputed masterpiece.
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