Tigran Petrosian

World Champion 1963 – 1969, winner of two title matches (1963, 1966)

Ranking: World Number One according to Chessmetrics 1961-1964, according to FIDE in the seventies ranked as high as world number three

Highest FIDE Elo rating: 2645

Tournament career: Winner of 14 super-tournaments:

Candidates Tournament 1962

4-time winner of the USSR Championship

Winner of the Piatorsky Cup in Los Angeles, international tournament in Las Palmas, and several others…

Chess Olympiads: nine gold team medals and one silver, six gold individual medals. Throughout his career, he lost only one game in chess Olympiads.

What earned him this:

Tigran Petrosian was an Armenian-Soviet chess player renowned as the best defender of his time and a player who was almost impossible to defeat. Between 1953 and 1980, he participated in eight Candidates Tournaments and won the fourth one in 1962 ahead of Keres, Geller, Fischer, Korchnoi, Benko, Tal, and Filip. In 1963, he became the third player to defeat the great Botvinnik, and since FIDE abolished the automatic right of the world champion to a rematch, he became the definitive conqueror. In the sixties, Petrosian was at the peak of his career, being the world champion, world number one, and collecting successes. Along with Keres, he shared first place at the prestigious Piatorsky Cup in Los Angeles, ahead of Najdorf, Reshevsky, and others. Petrosian was an active world champion who frequently won tournaments. He was also very successful at chess Olympiads, where he collected a total of 16 medals – just one less than record-holder Smyslov.

Petrosian defended his title in 1966 against Spassky and lost it in 1969 to the same opponent. Both matches with Spassky were very competitive and evenly matched. After losing the title, Petrosian remained a consistent member of the world elite for another twenty years. In the following cycle, he defeated Hubner and Korchnoi in the quarterfinals and semifinals of the Candidates matches before facing the unstoppable Fischer in the final. In the next three cycles, he always lost a match to his great rival Korchnoi, with whom he had a long-standing mutual dislike.

Petrosian was a participant in the USSR vs World match in 1970 – on the second board, he clearly fell short against Fischer.

Best games:

Tigran Petrosian vs Boris Spassky

World Championship Match 1966, Moscow, Round 10