Vladimir Kramnik

World Champion 2000 – 2007, winner of three title matches (2000, 2004, 2006)

Highest Elo rating: 2817

Ranking: Was world number one for a total of 9 months in the years 1996 and 2008

Tournament career: Winner of 27 super-tournaments:

Chess World Cup 2013

10-time winner of Dortmund Chess Meeting

2-time winner of Tal Memorial, Linares Chess Tournament

Winner of Tata Steel Masters 1998, London Chess Classic 2011 and shared 2014

Chess Olympiads: three team and two individual gold medals

Why he deserved it:

The fourteenth world champion Vladimir Kramnik has already retired and is unfortunately in the spotlight today for completely different reasons. We will not delve into these matters here and will focus solely on his playing career.

Kramnik reached the world elite as a very young player in the 1990s. Several tournament titles elevated him to the position of world number one in 1996 for a few months, momentarily interrupting Kasparov’s reign. However, he did not fare well in the World Championship cycles, losing the Candidates’ quarterfinals to Kamsky in 1994 and struggling in the FIDE World Championships (during the chess schism when there were two titles).

In 1998, a very controversial path began, which eventually led him to the chess throne and for which some still do not consider him a legitimate world champion. Kasparov announced that he would defend the title against the winner of a single match between the two candidates ranked second and third behind him. These were Kramnik and Shirov. A full Candidates Tournament could not be organized due to financial constraints, as the chess world was not attracting much investment due to the confusing situation with two world champions. Kramnik lost the match to Shirov and thus should not have advanced to the title match. Kasparov tried for two years to organize a match with Shirov, but it did not materialize. The match fell through, but the world champion needed to defend his title. Eventually, a match between Kasparov and Kramnik was organized based on Kramnik being the world number two at the time. He was the first challenger since the 1930s who did not qualify for the match in any way.

Despite the odds, Kramnik won the match quite convincingly and became the world champion. He won two games with white and completely neutralized his opponent’s Spanish with the Berlin Defense as black. Kramnik defended the title twice under very dramatic circumstances. In 2004, against Leko, he was trailing by a point before the last game and managed to win under great pressure to level the match. According to the match rules, the title remained with him. In 2006, he played a unification match with FIDE World Champion Topalov, which also ended in a draw. However, since a decision was necessary for the unification match to make sense, this match became the first in history to be decided by a rapid tie-break. This rule has persisted to this day. Kramnik won the tie-break, and for the first time since 1993, chess had only one king again.

FIDE then experimented a bit with World Championship formats and held it as an eight-player tournament in 2007. Anand won the tournament and became the fifteenth world champion, but Kramnik was guaranteed the right to a match with the winner. In 2008, Kramnik lost the title match to Anand, and that was the last time he reached this stage. In the same year, he briefly and for the first time since 1996 became world number one. He participated in four more Candidates and was particularly close to winning in 2013, finishing with the same score as winner Carlsen but with fewer wins.

Outside the World Championship cycles, he was one of the best tournament players of his time. He won his favorite super-tournament in Dortmund ten times, and also claimed titles in Linares, Wijk aan Zee, and London Chess Classic. He is also the winner of the 2013 World Cup, where he defeated big names like Ivanchuk, Vachier-Lagrave, and Andreikin on his way to the title. He retired in 2019.

Best games:

Vladimir Kramnik vs Peter Leko

World Championship Match 2004, Brissago, Round 14