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.
Raymond Dennis Keene is an English chess grandmaster, a FIDE International Arbiter, a chess organiser, and a journalist and author. He won the British Chess Championship in 1971 and was the first player from England to earn a Grandmaster norm, in 1974. In 1976, he became the second Englishman to be awarded the Grandmaster title, and he was the second British chess player to beat an incumbent World Chess Champion. He represented England in eight Chess Olympiads.
Nigel David Short is an English chess grandmaster, columnist, coach and commentator who has been the FIDE Director for Chess Development since September 2022. Short earned the title of grandmaster at the age of 19 and was ranked third in the world by FIDE from July 1988 to July 1989. In 1993, he became the first English player to play a World Chess Championship match, when he qualified to play Garry Kasparov in the PCA world championship in London, where Kasparov won 12½ to 7½.
Anthony Jacklin CBE is an English golfer. He was the most successful British player of his generation, winning two major championships, the 1969 Open Championship and the 1970 U.S. Open. He was also Ryder Cup captain from 1983 to 1989; Europe winning two and tying another of these four events.
Evgeny Ilgizovich Bareev is a Russian-Canadian chess player, trainer, and writer. Awarded the FIDE Grandmaster title in 1989, he was ranked fourth in the world in the international rankings in 1992 and again in 2003, with an Elo rating of 2739.
Peter Arthur Oosterhuis was an English professional golfer and broadcaster. He played on the European circuit from 1969 to 1974, winning 10 tournaments and taking the Harry Vardon Trophy for heading the Order of Merit for four consecutive seasons from 1971 to 1974. From 1975 he played on the PGA Tour, winning the Canadian Open in 1981. Oosterhuis was twice runner-up in the Open Championship, in 1974 and 1982. Later he became a golf analyst on TV, initially in Europe and then in the United States. In 2015, he announced that he had Alzheimer's disease.
Duncan Suttles is a chess grandmaster. Canada's second grandmaster after Abe Yanofsky, Suttles was recognized internationally for the originality of his strategic play in the mid-1960s and 70s. He retired from competitive chess in 1985.
Alan Fraser Truscott was a British-American bridge player, writer, and editor. He wrote the daily bridge column for The New York Times for 41 years, from 1964 to 2005, and served as Executive Editor for the first six editions of The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge from 1964 to 2002.
Alexey Stepanovich Suetin was a Soviet and Russian chess grandmaster and author. He was the World Senior Chess Champion from 1996 to 1997.
Albéric Joseph Rodolphe Marie Robert Ghislain O'Kelly de Galway was a Belgian chess Grandmaster (1956), an International Correspondence Chess Grandmaster (1962), and the third ICCF World Champion in correspondence chess (1959–1962). He was also a chess writer.
Clive Anthony Clark is an English professional golfer and more recently a broadcaster and golf course architect.
Andrew Jonathan Mestel is a British mathematician and chess grandmaster. He holds the position of Professor of Applied Mathematics at Imperial College London. He worked on magnetohydrodynamics and biological fluid dynamics. He obtained his PhD with the thesis "Magnetic Levitation of Liquid Metals" at University of Cambridge.
China is a major chess power, with the women's team winning silver medals at the Olympiad in 2010, 2012, and 2014; the men's team winning gold at the 2014 Olympiad, and the average rating for the country's top ten players third in the FIDE rankings as of April 2023.
Kevin Spraggett is a Canadian chess grandmaster. He was the first Canadian-born player and fourth Canadian overall to earn the grandmaster title, after Abe Yanofsky, Duncan Suttles and Peter Biyiasas.
Boris Schapiro was a British international bridge player. He was a Grandmaster of the World Bridge Federation, and the only player to have won both the Bermuda Bowl and the World Senior Pairs championship. He won the European teams championship on four occasions as part of the British team.
William Albert Fairhurst was a British bridge designer and international chess master. He was highly accomplished in both disciplines and for many years successfully divided his time between two careers. He was appointed a CBE for his services to engineering, and in chess he was several times champion of Scotland, gaining the title of International Master in 1951.
Viktor Lvovich Korchnoi was a Soviet and Swiss chess grandmaster (GM) and chess writer. He is considered one of the strongest players never to have become World Chess Champion.
Peter Michael Paul Townsend is an English professional golfer. After a very successful amateur career he turned professional in 1966. He had a number of wins in the early part of his professional career including the Piccadilly PGA Close Championship in 1968. He represented Great Britain twice in the Ryder Cup, in 1969 and 1971.
Maxwell Leonard Fuller was an Australian chess FIDE Master (FM). He was born and died in Sydney, and represented Australia in nine Chess Olympiads between 1964 and 1990.
Bodhana Sivanandan is an English chess player from Harrow, London. She holds the title of Woman FIDE Master.
