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“While I cannot deny the intellectual validity of making comparisons among the … world
champions,” American GM Arnold Denker has written, “I can state that it is more enlightening to argue about who
is the strongest among these distinguished chess minds than about who is the weakest.”
Just so. Our firmament of world champions includes those stars shining most brightly in the chessic
sky — Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov, Alexander Alekhine and Jose Capablanca, Mikhail Botvinnik and Emanuel Lasker,
Morphy and Steinitz — and those with far less Caissic candle power. In the royal portraits of our 21 monarchs, which
appear here in this section, we will noblesse oblige be celebrating the mighty deeds of the strong rather than deprecating
the lesser accomplishments of the comparatively weak.
Here is our list of 21 masters who have, if only for a moment in some cases, prompted significant
segments of the chess community to recognize them as either champions of the chess world or world champions of chess:
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