# Top 14 Tournament Players in Chess History

> Match play makes champions; tournament play tells you who could do it week after week against everybody at once. The two lists are not the same list.

*By YPB Team · Published September 16, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/top-14-tournament-players-in-chess-history*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Garry Kasparov** — score 1000/1000
   Won almost every elite event he entered between 1986 and his retirement.
2. **Fabiano Caruana** — score 943/1000
   Scored seven wins from seven games against the elite at the 2014 Sinquefield Cup.
3. **Anatoly Karpov** — score 927/1000
   More than 160 first places, the largest tournament haul the game has recorded.
4. **Bobby Fischer** — score 709/1000
   Won the 1963-64 US Championship with eleven wins from eleven games.
5. **Viktor Korchnoi** — score 600/1000
   Kept winning open tournaments into his seventies.
6. **José Raúl Capablanca** — score 600/1000
   Went eight years without losing a single tournament game.
7. **Mikhail Botvinnik** — score 466/1000
   Shared first at Nottingham 1936 and won Groningen 1946.
8. **Emanuel Lasker** — score 466/1000
   Won St Petersburg 1914 and New York 1924, a decade apart.
9. **Vladimir Kramnik** — score 466/1000
   A fixture on the Dortmund winners board through the 1990s and 2000s.
10. **Mikhail Tal** — score 466/1000
   Six-time Soviet champion and winner of two interzonal tournaments.
11. **Alexander Alekhine** — score 0/1000
   Left the field behind at San Remo 1930 and Bled 1931.
12. **Magnus Carlsen** — score 0/1000
   Has won Wijk aan Zee and the Sinquefield Cup more often than anyone else.
13. **Viswanathan Anand** — score 0/1000
   Won Linares, Corus and Dortmund across three decades of elite play.
14. **Levon Aronian** — score 0/1000
   Won the Amber tournament and the Sinquefield Cup at his peak.

Tags: sports, chess, players, all-time, tournaments