Comparing The World Champions: Chess & Boxing! Part 1: From Steinitz to Tal...& Johnson To Tyson!
"Chess is above all a fight!" Emanuel Lasker
If you’ve watched boxing (or sports for that matter) one oft repeated line has always been in reference to how an athlete is a “chess player” at his craft or some such variation on it. Was Ali a grandmaster? Or did Michael Jordan play chess while everybody else played checkers is indeed a funny way of thinking about it.
I certainly have during my morning runs in the park and that’s how the idea for this ridiculous article was finally born. What pushed me over the edge with completing it is not a
Video of Mike Tyson jokingly playing chess with Ali (google it) or Wladimir Klitschko getting destroyed inside ten moves by a ten year old future grandmaster in Sergei Karjakin on the Internet (happened in 2000 according to Karjakin’s twitter account). No rather it was finding out that former heavyweight champ Lennox Lewis is a hobby player and has been going at it online and over the board for many years according to his podcast interview with Joe Rogan.
Now I’m not going to tell you Lennox Lewis is a master, or an expert by any stretch, as some sources out there have actually done but as things go in chess, and any other discipline, you will get better as you work at it and Lewis certainly has which is commendable.
In the history of chess there have only been 16 lineal champions. While like boxing the game has had its share of politics, that exclusively small club which has existed since 1886 is a source of pride to me as a fan. While there has been one schism with sanctioning bodies in the 1990s thankfully it did nothing to take away from that number and ultimately died away as I hope the ABC organizations in boxing will one day.
Of course my opinions on this are debatable if you follow chess, or boxing but therein lies the fun as I want to hear what fans of both think. I limited myself to comparing the 16 chess champions to the heavyweight champions in boxing so as not to go completely insane and include the likes of Marvin Hagler (Fischer perhaps) or Willie Pep (Petrosian without a doubt).
Match record refers to a series of games against one player (as little as two as much as 30. I tried to exclude anything called a match but that consisted of one game). In chess a lost game is the same as a lost round so to win a match you have to do best out of some even number of games (even in order for each player to have white and black the same number of times).
Title Defenses refers to matches played once Champion (does not include losses or wins of the title itself but those are included in the match record). Sanctioned ones were recognized as generally being for the title, none sanctioned were exhibitions, training matches, or playoff matches at the end of a tournament. Sometimes the none sanctioned matches were lost or won against someone who was in the sanctioned match too. If they were lost they were not included in the record for title defenses. Some may disagree but these are my thoughts and debate is all part of the fun.
An important note is in the evolution of the game, matches were replaced by tournament play so later champions had fewer matches but more tournaments. I excluded the idea of “super” tournaments when compiling tournament wins since this would open up a can of worms too complicated to dissect one by one.
The data was compiled using chessmetrics, chessgames, and Wikipedia and I admit there could be some discrepancy in the count but in general it comes close to the overall record even if wrong so a person has some idea of what a champion got done during his career, and reign.
Without further ado:
1st Champion Wilhelm “William” Steinitz.
Reign: officially 1886-1894 (possibly 1866. I disagree as I recognized Morphy as the unofficial champion despite his retirement.)
Match record 30W-3L-3D
Title Defenses: 4 sanctioned, 4 none sanctioned
Tournament wins (won or equal first): 10
This first comparison is rather easy in the sense that there is a substantial consensus that modern chess (positional, defensive, material advantage, endgames) truly only began with Steinitz. His ideas were considered boring when compared to traditional romantic era chess which often involved who would sacrifice, dubiously, or otherwise and go on the attack first. Declining sacrifices was considered cowardly, and while that made the game more exciting it didn’t really show the whole of it in a complete way. Steinitz changed everything and because of this became the first universally recognized world chess champion.
In fact in my interview with him, former world #3 ranked contender GM Artur Yusupov called Steinitz “the greatest player of all time” which while perhaps not a popular opinion is one I can certainly respect given Steinitz’s contributions. (the interview with Artur is here:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1lcuAEjhm28&t=2s)
In thinking about it one can say Jack Johnson’s unique use of clinching, defense, as well as attrition (versus just trying to hit first while taking shots) brought him the same type of success as Steinitz which is why both have such striking similarities especially when comparing them against the evolving landscape of their discipline and what they contributed to it. Johnson is just as much responsible for modern boxing as Steinitz for modern chess.
It is ironic that their reigns and contributions were right around the same period in history if yes a few decades apart.
2nd Champion Emanuel Lasker
Reign: 1894-1921
Match record:23 W -3L- 4D
Title Defenses: 5 sanctioned 4 none sanctioned
Tournament wins (won or equal first): 16
Emanuel Lasker defeated Steinitz with some of the same ideas that crowned the first champion, and reigned longer than any other in the history of chess. This was partly because of things like WW1 but mostly because chess did not have an official sanctioning body so these matches, official and not so much, were organized by the player himself. Imagine that being the case in boxing? Finding a venue, purse, etc. Lasker was the real deal given that besides defending his title he also dominated tournament play.
He was very much under appreciated despite his body of work, and accomplishments which to me only screams one name: Larry Holmes who racked up 48 wins and beat everyone who was put in front of him, yet for some reason isn’t as regarded as certain other legendary fighters on the top ten lists. Recently George Foreman gave his list and failed to add Holmes to it as usual. Much as I love big George, and understand that Holmes calling him the “biggest phoney ever” in his hall of fame acceptance speech, was an insult, Holmes deserves credit like Lasker does for defending the title for so long and finding a way to win over and over.
3rd Champion Jose Raúl Capablanca
Reign 1921-1927
Match record 14W-1L-1D
Title Defenses: 0 sanctioned 0 none sanctioned.
Tournament wins (won or equal first): 21
Arguably one of the greatest players of all time Capablanca was a child prodigy who was already playing relatively good chess at the age of four (!). His lack of title Defenses and match play overall was compensated by his utter domination in tournament play. He started winning while Lasker was still Champion and didn’t stop for quite awhile even after losing his title. In that time he had an eight year stretch (1916-1924) where he didn’t lose a single game something completely unheard of at the elite levels of chess. It’s like Floyd Mayweather not losing a round of boxing much less a fight for many many years.
Having once possibly stated “you have to lose hundreds of games before becoming a great player” Capablanca's career concluded with one of the lowest, if not the lowest numbers of tournament games actually lost among any elite player in the history of chess.
For this reason some even dubbed him “the machine” which brings to mind only one heavyweight champion, and one heavyweight championship only, that being the young, and downright scary George Foreman who simply took out everyone in dominant and impressive fashion and looked just as invincible until Zaire, as Capablanca did until Argentina!
4th Champion Alexander Alekhine
Reign 1927-1935, 1937-1946 (his death)
Match record 24W-4L-7D
Title Defenses: 2 sanctioned (not including regaining title), 6 none sanctioned
Tournament wins (won or equal first): 64 (including Mannheim 1914 which he led and which was cancelled due to WW1).
I figured it was fair to throw in my biases, as they fairly influence any person’s arguments. Alekhine is one of my three favorite players (more on the other two later) of all time.
His games, while perhaps not perfect were to me an attempt at something highly original and as close to art as anyone ever came in the history of the game. His combinations left a profound influence on me, and things like Alekhine’s Gun from a game in 1930 against Nimzowitsch, or the Five Queen game (a variation from a 1915 game against Grigoriev),
or the promotion fest against Bogoljubov in 1922, as well as countless games where he managed to come up with versions of combos like Lasker’s double bishop, or Marshall’s gold coin etc. attest to my point. Especially impressive are the dazzling displays like his simultaneous blindfold win against M von Feldt in the hospital in Tarnopol in 1914. This would have been impressive without the blindfold, or simultaneous exhibition aspect which makes it that much more so.
The other thing I love about Alekhine is his dedication to preparation which is what allowed him to ultimately overcome the third world champion Capablanca in 1927 in the longest match in history to that point in time (the match lasted months!) he had never beaten Capablanca until the first
game of the match and his life score in overall games against him was negative at the end of their careers but all that mattered was the match itself where Alekhine won those immortal 6 games including the grueling last one. Some claimed he would not win a single game against Capablanca in 1927 much less 6, but he proved all doubters wrong. When people say chess players think 20 moves ahead I always mention that Alekhine planned to win the championship from Capablanca for what is essentially over a dozen years (Lasker was still Champion!) as he told Peter Romanovsky in Germany in 1914. In other words he didn’t just think in moves but years!
To me all of this screams Muhammad Ali, both from that iconic shuffle, the rope a dope and of course the blinding speed and finish against Brian London. “The Greatest” gave us too many iconic moments to count including “The Rumble in the Jungle” and to me Alekhine is that equivalent when it comes to the chess board.
Lastly, and as relates to both chess and boxing, I just want to add that I don’t believe for a single second the idea that Alekhine was some sort of Nazi sympathizer.
The racist essays he was forced to write to survive and protect his family (and Jewish wife) actually have a precedent as relates to boxing. Max Schmeling was a victim of the same type of propaganda and despite what he did at great personal risk during “The night of broken glass” in 1938 (read below for more on this)to this day some publications, and historians still call Schmeling a Nazi sympathizer for some ridiculous document he signed in order to be allowed to fight Joe Louis the second time.
Judging someone on something they had to do to survive in a brutal time like that is misguided and wrong. It is easy to have moral superiority when not in the midst of such horrors.
None of this matters when it comes to his chess but seeing as the dead can’t defend themselves it is up to us the living to do so.
Fifth Champion- Max Euwe
Reign 1935-1937
Match record: 8 W 6L 3D
Title Defenses: 0 sanctioned, 0 none sanctioned
Tournament wins (won or equal first): 102
Euwe was an unlikely champion. Unquestionably he was a great player but perhaps in retrospect better were Rubinstein, Keres, Bronstein, and Korchnoi. Some would say those guys deserved it more, and yet Euwe was the one who attained immortality on the holy list of the current “sixteen” in 1935.
That year Euwe challenged Alekhine for the championship and despite the odds managed to pull off an incredible upset. Chess unlike boxing isn’t a one bad night type affair. Euwe won 9 games (9 bad days for a champion is not a fluke) and all of this after a terrible start where Euwe was initially behind 4 games to 1.
Some attribute the losses to Alekhine’s alcohol consumption which was a serious issue for the Fourth Champion throughout his life while others claim it was a matter of overconfidence, but at the end of the day it was really Max Euwe, a top contender, and a man at the right place and time, who played like a champion when it counted most.
One perception of Euwe was that of a very timid, and self conscious player. In preparing this article I asked GM Genna Sosonko about his match with Euwe in 1975, and how he could justify his claim that Euwe had what Sosonko described as “a clear biological, and aggressive, masculinity inherent to a natural born warrior. Without that thirst to win, and an inner feeling of superiority and a wish to demonstrate it, no one can win a match for the world championship.”
When pressed Sosonko replied to me, “because during our match in 1975, and even at that advanced age, down beneath his proper exterior I could see how upset he was when he missed the win in our first game.”
That said it all.
In comparing Euwe to heavyweight boxing champions I had a tough time settling on one pick. At first I could see some similarities to Buster Douglas (who I interviewed once) and his impossible upset of Mike Tyson in Tokyo, but also shades of guys like James Braddock, and Hasim Rahman as well.
Ultimately I settled on another Max in Max Schmeling, the comparison to whom spans across a few fights and is also grounded in the quality of their moral character. For one Schmeling
won the title after being fouled(low blow), and was considered unworthy, and a fluke champion in need of having to prove himself like Euwe. I think the proof for Schmeling ultimately came after he lost the title, and in his first fight with Joe Louis, the consensus future champion where Max the boxer exploited the weaknesses of the “Brown Bomber” to get the upset knockout. That fight cemented Schmeling’s legacy, and made Louis a better fighter as well, and while it wasn’t officially for the belt combined with everything I think the comparison is fitting. Considering Louis crushed Schmeling in the rematch, the first fight
showed a true champion like Schmeling can find ways to win against somebody who is ultimately stronger and better, which is exactly what Euwe did in 1935.
Furthermore, Euwe, and Schmeling were similar on another more important and human level as well. GM Sosonko, and others saw only positive human traits in Euwe’s character which in a way always made me think of Schmeling too.
Schmeling showed unimaginable bravery in saving a Jewish boy named Henri Lewin, and his brother during the terrible events of “the night of broken glass” in Nazi Germany in 1938, by hiding them in his hotel room right under the very noses of the Gestapo!
It’s easy for anyone, myself included, to oppose evil when on the other side of it. When surrounded by it people do what they have to to survive. Schmeling never wanted to get recognition for his acts and we only found out because Henri Lewin made a decision to talk about it publicly decades later despite Schmeling asking not to get recognition for it.
Lewin claimed Schmeling told him he was only “doing the duty of a man.”
Both Max S and Max E were the embodiment of such sentiment.
Sixth Champion- Mikhail Botvinnik
Reign 1948-1957, 1958-1960, 1961-1963
Match record: 14 W 3 L (all matches for title) 5 D
Title Defenses: 2 sanctioned, 5 none sanctioned
Tournament wins (won or equal first:) 37 (including 48 world championship tournament)
This was one of the easier comparisons. Mikhail Botvinnik was the only champion in history to not win the title in a match. While he was scheduled to take on Alexander Alekhine after the war, Alekhine’s sudden death in what were perhaps mysterious circumstances left a void only a tournament with the five best players in the world could fill. Botvinnik demonstrated he was worthy of immortality by comfortably outplaying former champion Euwe, future champion Smyslov, and crown princes Keres, and Reshevsky.
What I feel made Botvinnik a strong champion besides natural skill, and the full backing of the Kremlin, was his professional approach to preparation for his toughest opponents. He showed heart to come back and draw Bronstein in the 51 match to retain the title, and despite age turned back the clock to regain his championship from both Smyslov, and the ferocious Tal when he was already closing in on the ripe old age of 50!
Only Evander “The Real Deal” Holyfield could come to mind here. While I do take issue with that third glove he called a head (why do you think Tyson went for the ear?) nobody could ever question Evander’s heart, and longevity as a result of professionalism and hard work.
What sealed this comparison was watching Holyfield-Tyson as a kid, and remembering the stoppage that silenced anyone saying Holyfield was past it. Botvinnik did the same against Tal in 61.
Seventh Champion- Vasily Smyslov
Reign: 1957-1958
Match record: 2 W 5 L 3 D (Lost matches to Kasparov at 63, Bacrot at 75, and Morozevich at 76 years of age!)
Title Defenses: 0 sanctioned, 0 none sanctioned
Tournament wins (won or equal first): 17
Vasily Smyslov was an outstanding positional player who could generate tactical fireworks when needed. He was unquestionably worthy of being champion not only because of the actual title win but beyond it his longevity in challenging for the title for the better part of almost forty years which really justified his previous ascent to the
top in 1957! His last real shot came in 1982 where he reached
the final at age 61(!) but was ultimately vanquished by the once and future king and world champion Garry Kasparov. Smyslov remained one of the top 100 players in the world until he was 70 years old!
When pressed for answers, one of his many foes in those later years, GM Evgeny Bareev put it like this, “I played him once in either rapid, or blitz. He was practically blind at that point and couldn’t really play anymore. If you ask me why, I’ll say that while I didn’t know him personally I can only conclude that it was because he truly loved the game.”
While Smyslov did have his well deserved short reign as champion, I feel that for the average
fan he was destined to forever be in the shadow of Botvinnik, Tal and others, and not necessarily in terms of skill or because of accomplishments. Simply put there were too many shining stars on the stage. After all he even had a plus score against Tal in their head to head games.
This has always made me look at Smyslov like I do at Joe Frazier, who was an accomplished and exciting boxer in his own right but who was overshadowed by the likes of Ali, and Foreman. Stylistically perhaps Frazier was a more exciting fighter than Smyslov a chess player but as mentioned Smyslov had his fireworks filled games as well (Gerasimov-Smyslov 1935 is a personal favorite KO which I show students when discussing Windmills), while Frazier’s technical skill was proven by his Olympic gold medal.
Eighth Champion- Mikhail Tal
Reign: 1960-1961
Match record: 8 w 6L 5 D
Title Defenses: 0 sanctioned, 0 none sanctioned
Tournament wins (won or equal first): 68
The story goes that in 1948 and soon after he won the title the sixth world champion, Mikhail Botvinnik went on vacation to Riga, Latvia. At one point during his stay an 11 year old boy knocked on his door and asked his wife if the new champion could play with him. She sent him away saying she wanted her husband to take a break from chess.
Twelve years later that same boy sat across from that very same aged champion ready to try and take away his title. Upon winning it the 23 year old became the youngest world chess champion in history to that point in time and so the legend of Mikhail “The Magician from Riga” Tal was born.
Tal was always a fan favorite and his attacking, and sacrificial style breathed new life into a game perhaps long thought to be more positional and dare it be said technical and boring. Tal stared his opponent’s down and advanced, and sacrificed when others would have looked away, maneuvered, or retreated.
Until Ding Liren’s 100 game unbeaten streak in 2017- 2018, Tal had the longest streak of 95 unbeaten games (Tal’s win % was closer to half in that streak while Liren’s was a little more than a quarter).
While unquestionably a legendary player, and full disclosure one of my three favorites of all time, Tal’s issues away from the board are what may have objectively hindered him. His health was a constant source of trouble and what exacerbated it were his penchant for smoking and drinking.
Despite this fans clamored to see him and that hypnotic fanatical stare of old. In a video I did with GM Sergei Kudrin (here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zxOHKHv8aVY) he talks about his “GM draw” with the former champion. Tal had offered a draw in a boring equal position, but Kudrin, wanting to play on against his childhood idol, declined. According to Kudrin this lit a fire in the champion’s eyes and he stood up and began pacing back and forth, and after Kudrin went for and seemingly gained a material advantage Tal sacked both rooks to force repetition, which resulted in a standing ovation from the spectators!
My favorite bittersweet story about the champion is the one which occurred one month before his death. Already in the hospital and very sick, Tal escaped to play in a blitz tournament which included then champion Garry Kasparov, as well as GM Evgeny Bareev. In a video about that event Kasparov claims the one game he lost to Tal summarized the “Magician’s” entire career in that Tal’s final great attack of his life and subsequent knight sacrifice which began it was unsound, and wrong, and Kasparov even figured out why, but simply could not deal with the complications over the board in the time allotted for the game.
When I asked GM Bareev about his games with Tal at that blitz tournament in 92 where Bareev finished second behind Kasparov, and ahead of Tal, he mentioned he didn’t remember the specifics just that “I wasn’t that great at blitz but I finished right behind Kasparov. As for Tal all I remember was I just barely got by with 1.5-0.5. Kasparov managed to lose one. Tal was on the way to hospital from there and never came out.”
Tal Died a month later. In the same video mentioned earlier Kasparov concludes that, “ it must have been some kind of higher chess truth in that even with his dying breath he could still
play the same sort of chess which brought him his immortal glory.”
This comparison was simple. Mike Tyson was the youngest heavyweight champion in history, and his attacking come forward style breathed the same type of life into boxing as Tal’s style did into chess. Tyson’s problems outside the ring, like Tal’s were also responsible for his trouble in it and why his true reign as champion was cut short. Tyson’s intimidating stare, and highlight reel KO’s are also one reason why he is still a highly sought after attraction even to this day, and why a trivially short video clip of him supposedly training for a fight is still enough to set the internet on fire in 2020.
Tal’s close friend GM Genna Sosonko phrased it like this, “at their best guys like Mike Tyson, and Mikhail Tal fought as if they were possessed by the devil and I don’t mean that in a bad way at all.”
Before the ear biting, and other nonsense, Mike Tyson, was a once in a lifetime type of fighter, and nothing short of the very same can be said of the eighth world champion Mikhail Tal when it comes to chess.
(P.S.I don’t think Tal bit anybody though.)
Part 2 forthcoming.
About me:
I have written extensively on boxing and interviewed many hall of fame boxers and trainers on my old YouTube channel and for
Various websites and newspapers. (https://m.youtube.com/user/novirasputin2/videos ) These include Angelo Dundee, Oscar De La Hoya, Gennadiy Golovkin, Emanuel Steward, Wladimir Klitschko as well as many others.
As regards chess I have translated books by GM Evgeny Bareev (“Say No To Chess Principles”), and GM Vladimir Tukmakov (“Modern Chess Formula-The Powerful Impact Of Engines” and the forthcoming “A Feast of Chess In Time Of Plague” about the 2020 Candidates Tournament). I’m also working on translating a few books by GM Genna Sosonko, as well as co-authoring my first book based on my coaching experiences with Bulgarian GM Alexander Delchev.
I’m also an avid journey runner and have run straight across seven countries (USA, UK, France, Cuba!, Ireland, Switzerland, and my native Moldova).