Karpov was born into a Russian family on May 23, 1951, in Zlatoust, in the Ural region of the former Soviet Union, and learned to play chess at the age of four. His early rise in chess was rapid, as he became a candidate master by the age of 11. A...
He was the first and so far only American chess player to be able to boast the title of World Champion. He won the title, beating the great Soviet master Boris Spassky in the 1972 match, in an era, between 1946 and 1991, in which he was the prerog...
Grande maestro, è stato campione del mondo dal 1969 al 1972 e otto volte medaglia d'oro alle Olimpiadi degli scacchi. È noto per aver dato vita alla cosiddetta sfida del secolo con l'americano Robert James Fischer nella partita per il titolo mondi...
Grandmaster, he was world champion from 1969 to 1972 and eight-time gold medalist at the chess Olympics. He is known for having created the so-called challen...
He was nicknamed Tigran of Iron and the Rock because of his style characterized by an almost impenetrable defense, which emphasized safety ...
Known in the chess world as "the wizard of Riga", Tal' is still considered by many to be the greatest attacker in the history of chess. His natural ...
Vasily Vasilyevich Smyslov won two Soviet championships (1949 and 1955) and earned a total of 17 medals at the Chess Olympiad. He also won ten gold medals in his five participations in the European team championships. He passed away from cardiac ...
Mikhail Moiseevič Botvinnik was the sixth world champion (from 1948 to 1957, from 1958 to 1960 and from 1961 to 1963). For his methodology in competitive preparat...
Max Euwe was a Dutch chess player and mathematician. He was the fifth world champion (1935-1937) and the third president of FIDE (1970-1978). He played for the Netherlands in seven Chess Olympiads from 1927 to 1962, in which he won a silver medal ...
Alexander Alekhine was a French-born Russian chess player, fourth world champion, considered one of the greatest chess players ever and was among the strongest players in the world already at the age of 21. Alekhine participated in many correspond...
José Raúl Capablanca became interested in chess at the age of four, watching his father play and also having glimpsed the great Russian player Michail Čigorin in the streets of the city, engaged in a match with the reigning world champion Wilhelm ...
Emanuel Lasker was a German chess player, mathematician and chess player, world chess champion from 1894 to 1921. Emanuel learned the game from his brother in 1889 and soon revealed enough talent to allow him to increase his income by playing card...
Wilhelm Steinitz (Prague, 18 May 1836 – New York, 12 August 1900) was an Austrian chess player who became a naturalized American from 1888, the first world chess champion. Steinitz is considered the "father of modern chess" for having introduced t...
The arrival of the two world wars and subsequently of the Cold War gave the game a different connotation: chess stopped being a simple intellectual sport to transform itself into a real political battle. The 1950s and 1960s saw absolute domination...
Up until the 15th century, chess was basically a pastime for the upper classes. Games tended to be very long also because the queen and bishops tended to have moments limited to a few squares. When a change in this sense was introduced, chess took...
The Arabs adopted many Persian customs - including chess, which became popular at the court of the Sasanian Empire - and spread them throughout Europe and Asia. Even the expression shah mat comes from Persian and means "the king is finished", or o...
“A king in India died and left an only son named Gav, still an infant. Then the citizens wanted a king who was already old, wise and vigorous, and they elected the brother of the dead man, named May. As soon as he was made king, May married the do...
“A king in India died and left an only son named Gav, still an infant. Then the citizens wanted a king who was already old, wise and vigorous, and they elected the brother of the dead man, named May. As soon as he was made king, May married the do...
