A Resource of World Champions

"Study the games of the World Champions". It's advice you hear quite often in the chess improvement world (shoutout to my mentor David Arutinian https://lichess.org/@/Davjan). As a new player, accomplishing that task can be quite a chore. There are numerous problems, for example, 'descriptive or algebraic notation?', 'do I need annotations?', 'is this World Championship match analysis out of date?', 'how many books do I have to buy to study all the World Championships?'. Thankfully there's a great solution to making all this much, much easier: Lichess.

I decided to use Lichess to make a study for each of the the World Championship matches and tournaments since 1886. It may not wholly solve the annotation problem, but the analysis can't be beat, and with a little practice it isn't too tough to understand the computer's ideas. It's also easy enough to use books in conjunction with a study, if you want to compare an author's analysis with Stockfish. It's not a perfect resource, but it's not bad for free!

Some technical notes: the Championship tournaments only include the games of the winner of that particular tournament. For example, the 1948 FIDE Championship study is the 20 games Botvinnik played which won him the title. Furthermore, the Championship match study titles indicate the current champion at the time of the tournament, for example '2018 WC Carlsen - Caruana' indicates that Magnus was reigning champion. The 1886 and 2023 Championships are the exception to that. Some sources indicate that the Lasker - Janowski match in 1909 was a World Championship, but most do not, so I have not included it. The 1910 Lasker - Schlechter match is similarly disputed but I didn't find conclusive contradictory evidence, so I included that one.

Feel free to clone any of these studies for your own use, there are no annotations, so it's public information. You may also press the analysis button for the many games that haven't yet been analyzed yet. Eventually I will do so myself, as I go through them, but I thought it would be of service to share the wealth of this archive immediately with those who read my blogs.

1886 WC Steinitz - Zuckertort
1889 WC Steinitz - Chigorin
1890 WC Steinitz - Gunsberg
1892 WC Steinitz - Chigorin
1894 WC Steinitz - Lasker
1896 WC Lasker - Steinitz
1907 WC Lasker - Marshall
1908 WC Lasker - Tarrasch
1910 WC Lasker - Schlechter
1910 WC Lasker - Janowski
1921 WC Lasker - Capablanca
1927 WC Capablanca - Alekhine
1929 WC Alekhine - Bogoljubow
1934 WC Alekhine - Bogoljubow
1935 WC Alekhine - Euwe
1937 WC Euwe - Alekhine
1948 WC Tournament (Botvinnik)
1951 WC Botvinnik - Bronstein
1954 WC Botvinnik - Smyslov
1957 WC Botvinnik - Smyslov
1958 WC Smyslov - Botvinnik
1960 WC Botvinnik - Tal
1961 WC Tal - Botvinnik
1963 WC Botvinnik - Petrosian
1966 WC Petrosian - Spassky
1969 WC Petrosian - Spassky
1972 WC Spassky - Fischer
1978 WC Karpov - Korchnoi
1981 WC Karpov - Korchnoi
1984 WC Karpov - Kasparov
1985 WC Karpov - Kasparov
1986 WC Kasparov - Karpov
1987 WC Kasparov - Karpov
1990 WC Kasparov - Karpov
1993 PCA WC Kasparov - Short
1993 FIDE WC Karpov - Timman
1995 PCA WC Kasparov - Anand
1996 FIDE WC Karpov - Kamsky
1998 FIDE WC Karpov - Anand
1999 FIDE WC Tournament (Khalifman)
2000 WC Kasparov - Kramnik
2000 FIDE WC Tournament (Anand)
2002 FIDE WC Tournament (Ponomariov)
2004 WC Kramnik - Leko
2004 FIDE WC Tournament (Kasimdzhanov)
2005 FIDE WC Tournament (Topalov)
2006 WC Kramnik - Topalov
2007 WC Tournament (Anand)
2008 WC Anand - Kramnik
2010 WC Anand - Topalov
2012 WC Anand - Gelfand
2013 WC Anand - Carlsen
2014 WC Carlsen - Anand
2016 WC Carlsen - Karjakin
2018 WC Carlsen - Caruana
2021 WC Carlsen - Nepomniachtchi
2023 WC Ding - Nepomniachtchi
2024 WC Ding - Gukesh

Let me know if anything is amiss, and thanks for reading. I appreciate each like and follow, since we all love those fake internet points :)

Good luck!
Mega