World Champions By World Title Reigns
The number of world championship wins, or world championship reigns, can be considered as a guide to player greatness. The table below organises the world champions in order of championship wins. (For the purpose of this table, a successful defence counts as a win, even if the match was drawn.) The table is made more complicated by the split between the "Classical" and FIDE world titles between 1993 and 2006.
| Champion | Total | Undisputed | FIDE | Classical | Years as Undisputed Champion | Years as FIDE/Classical Champion | Total Reign |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Emanuel Lasker | 6 | 6 | 27 | 27 | |||
| Garry Kasparov | 6 | 4 | 2 | 8 | 7 | 15 | |
| Anatoly Karpov | 6 | 3 | 3 | 10 | 6 | 16 | |
| Mikhail Botvinnik | 5 | 5 | 13 | 13 | |||
| Viswanathan Anand | 5 | 4 | 1 | 5 | 2 | 7 | |
| Alexander Alekhine | 4 | 4 | 17 | 17 | |||
| Wilhelm Steinitz | 4 | 4 | 8 | 8 | |||
| Vladimir Kramnik | 3 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 6 | 7 | |
| Tigran Petrosian | 2 | 2 | 6 | 6 | |||
| José Raúl Capablanca | 1 | 1 | 6 | 6 | |||
| Boris Spassky | 1 | 1 | 3 | 3 | |||
| Bobby Fischer | 1 | 1 | 3 | 3 | |||
| Max Euwe | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | |||
| Vasily Smyslov | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||
| Mikhail Tal | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||
| Ruslan Ponomariov | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | |||
| Alexander Khalifman | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||
| Rustam Kasimdzhanov | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||
| Veselin Topalov | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Read more about this topic: Comparison Of Top Chess Players Throughout History
Famous quotes containing the words world, champions, title and/or reigns:
“The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
“Did all the lets and bars appear
To every just or larger end,
Whence should come the trust and cheer?
Youth must its ignorant impulse lend—
Age finds place in the rear.
All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys,
The champions and enthusiasts of the state:”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Down the road, on the right hand, on Brister’s Hill, lived Brister Freeman, “a handy Negro,” slave of Squire Cummings once.... Not long since I read his epitaph in the old Lincoln burying-ground, a little on one side, near the unmarked graves of some British grenadiers who fell in the retreat from Concord,—where he is styled “Sippio Brister,”MScipio Africanus he had some title to be called,—”a man of color,” as if he were discolored.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In the whole vast dome of living nature there reigns an open violence, a kind of prescriptive fury which arms all the creatures to their common doom: as soon as you leave the inanimate kingdom you find the decree of violent death inscribed on the very frontiers of life.”
—Joseph De Maistre (1753–1821)