History of the world chess championship

The first match proclaimed by the players as for the world championship was the match that Wilhelm Steinitz won against Johannes Zukertort in 1886. However, a line of players regarded as the strongest (or at least the most famous) in the world extends back hundreds of years beyond them, and these players are sometimes considered the world champions of their time. They include Ruy López de Segura around 1560, Paolo Boi and Leonardo da Cutri around 1575, Alessandro Salvio around 1600, and Gioachino Greco around 1620.
In the 18th and early 19th century, French players dominated, with Legall de Kermeur (1730–1747), Francois-André Philidor (1747–1795), Alexandre Deschapelles (1800–1820) and Louis de la Bourdonnais (1820–1840) all widely regarded as the strongest players of their time. La Bourdonnais played a series of six matches — and 85 games — against the Irishman Alexander McDonnell, with many of the encounters later being annotated by the American Paul Morphy.
The Englishman Howard Staunton's match victory over another Frenchman, Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint-Amant, in 1843 is considered to have established him as the world's strongest player.[1] In 1851 Staunton organised the first international tournament in London. He finished fourth, with the decisive winner, the German Adolf Anderssen establishing himself as the leading player in the world.[2]

Adolf Anderssen
Anderssen was a brilliant attacking player, with two of his best games known as the Immortal Game and the Evergreen Game respectively. He has been described as the first modern chess master.[3]

Paul Morphy
Anderssen was himself decisively defeated in an 1858 match against the American Paul Morphy, after which Morphy was toasted across the chess-playing world as the world chess champion. A fast player (he took only minutes to decide on his moves, compared with some others who "were notorious not for out-thinking their opponents but out-sitting them", as Steinitz once said), and possessing fearsome talent, he played matches against several leading players, crushing them all.[4] Soon after, he offered pawn and move odds to anyone who played him. Finding no takers, Morphy abruptly retired from chess the following year, but many considered him the world champion until his death in 1884. His sudden withdrawal from chess at his peak and subsequent mental illness led to his being known as "the pride and sorrow of chess".
This left Anderssen again as possibly the world's strongest active player, a reputation he reinforced by winning the strong London tournament of 1862.
Wilhelm Steinitz narrowly defeated Anderssen in an 1866 match, which some commentators consider the first "official" world championship match.[5] The match was not declared to be a world championship at the time, and it was only after Morphy's death in 1884 that such a match was declared, a testament to Morphy's dominance of the game (even though he had not played publicly for 25 years).[6] The use of the term "World Chess Champion" in this era is varied, but it appears that Steinitz, at least in later life, dated his reign from this 1866 match.[7]
In 1883, Johannes Zukertort won a major international tournament in London, ahead of nearly every leading player in the world, including Steinitz.[8][9] This tournament established Steinitz and Zukertort as the best two players in the world, and led to the inaugural World Championship match between these two, the World Chess Championship 1886.[10][11][12] This match, won by Steinitz, though not held under the aegis of any official body, is generally recognized as the first official World Chess Championship match, with Steinitz the game's first official World Champion.
Graham Burgess lists Philidor, de la Bourdonnais, Staunton, and Morphy as players who were acclaimed as the greatest players of their time (Burgess 2000:495).