They include the record for the number of international tournaments won - 76.
Hall of Fame | The 50 Greatest Chess Players of All Time Jan GustafssonĪlekhine’s great achievements speak for themselves. That record still hasn’t been beaten, but due to World War I no matches were held for nine years, and in 1921 he lost to Capablanca - one of the most talented and mysterious chess players in history, from a country where chess wasn’t highly developed. Perhaps someone will be surprised by the absence of Lasker, who held the chess crown over the course of 27 years. I haven’t ranked them, but put them in chronological order. But, as you ask, I’ll name Capablanca, Alekhine, Fischer, Karpov and Kasparov. What do you think the Top 5 should look like?Īnatoly Karpov: It’s hard to single out five - we’ve got a lot of great champions. On the internet you find various, extremely controversial lists of the strongest chess players of all time.
In the run-up to his birthday he gave a long interview to Alexander Kruzhkov for Sport Express, and below we’ve translated the most interesting first section, where the floor was given to five well-known chess grandmasters to ask Anatoly questions. He may have lost that fight, but unlike his great rival he’s remained active in chess, and would have played a strong classical round-robin event this year if the pandemic hadn’t forced the TePe Sigeman Chess Tournament in Sweden to be postponed.
The Russian 12th World Chess Champion Anatoly Karpov emerged to fill the void left by Bobby Fischer quitting chess and dominated the chess scene for a decade, before six years of intense battle with Garry Kasparov.