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60 free World Chess Championship trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This World Chess Championship trivia quiz walks the whole line of champions, from the 1886 Steinitz–Zukertort match through Lasker's 27-year reign, Capablanca and Alekhine, the FIDE era of Botvinnik, Tal and Petrosian, and on to Fischer, Karpov, Kasparov, Anand, Carlsen, Ding Liren and Gukesh Dommaraju. Along the way it stops at the strange moments: the forfeited game 2 in Reykjavík, the blueberry yogurt in Baguio, the 48-game match that FIDE simply called off, and the twelve straight draws in London in 2018. It also covers how the title actually works: the Candidates, the 1993 split and 2006 reunification, the return-match clause, prize funds, and the Women's World Championship from Vera Menchik to Ju Wenjun. Roughly a third of the questions are warm-ups any chess fan can get; the rest are for people who know their Timman from their Janowski. If you want the wider game, try our general chess trivia page too. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia's championship pages and the match reports they cite, and each explanation adds one more thing worth knowing.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Whom did Wilhelm Steinitz beat in the 1886 match recognised as the first world championship?
Johannes Zukertort
Steinitz won and became the first official champion; the two had already met in an 1872 match that Steinitz took 7–1.
Q 02For how many years did the longest-serving world champion hold the title?
27
Emanuel Lasker reigned from 1894 to 1921 and once went ten years without defending the title at all.
Q 03Which reigning champion died in 1946, leaving the title vacant and prompting FIDE to take over?
Alexander Alekhine
He is still the only champion to die while holding the title, which is why a 1948 tournament rather than a match chose his successor.
Q 04How many players actually competed in the 1948 championship tournament that ended the interregnum?
5
Six were invited from the 1938 AVRO field, but Reuben Fine dropped out to finish a psychology degree, and Botvinnik won convincingly.
Q 05Under which new body did Kasparov and Short play their 1993 match after breaking from FIDE?
Professional Chess Association
FIDE responded by stripping Kasparov of its title, and for the first time there were two world champions at once.
Q 06In which year were the rival FIDE and Classical titles finally reunified in a single match?
2006
The reunification match ended a 13-year split that began when Kasparov walked out on FIDE.
Q 07Since 2014, on what cycle has the championship match been held?
Every two years
Qualification happens in the odd year, the Candidates early in the even year and the match late in the even year; COVID pushed the 2020 match to 2021.
Q 08Who defeated Ding Liren in the 2024 match to become world chess champion?
Gukesh Dommaraju
He had been the surprise winner of the Candidates in Toronto earlier that year.
Q 09How old was the winner of the 2024 championship match, the youngest undisputed champion ever?
18
He clinched it with the black pieces in game 14 after his opponent blundered into a lost king-and-pawn ending.
Q 10Where was the 2024 championship match played?
Singapore
FIDE received two rival bids from India, Chennai and New Delhi, but chose the city-state instead.
Q 11Ding Liren's win in the 2023 championship made him the first world champion from which country?
China
The match was played in Astana, Kazakhstan, and was settled only in rapid tiebreaks.
Q 12Why was the 2023 world championship contested by the top two Candidates finishers?
The title-holder declined to defend it
Magnus Carlsen said soon after his 2021 defence that he was not motivated to play another match, and FIDE confirmed it in July 2022.
Q 13In which year did Magnus Carlsen first win the world title?
2013
He won the Candidates that year and then beat the defending champion convincingly in Chennai.
Q 21In which city did Bobby Fischer beat Boris Spassky in the 1972 'Match of the Century'?
Reykjavík
Fischer had agreed to Yugoslavia first, then raised objection after objection until Iceland became the venue.
Q 22A phone call from which US official helped persuade Fischer to play the 1972 match?
Henry Kissinger
The Cold War framing meant the White House cared: the Soviets had held the title without interruption since 1948.
Q 23Which British financier doubled the prize fund to get Fischer to the board in 1972?
Jim Slater
Fischer's objections were mainly about money, and the doubled purse plus diplomatic pressure finally got him on a plane.
Q 14Who won the eight-player double round-robin tournament in Mexico in 2007 to become world champion?
Viswanathan Anand
Because it was won in a tournament rather than a match, a minority of commentators questioned the title, so a match followed in 2008 which he also won.
Q 15What was unprecedented about the classical portion of the 2018 championship match in London?
All twelve games were drawn
Carlsen then won three consecutive rapid tiebreak games to keep the title.
Q 16Which American challenged Carlsen for the title in London in 2018?
Fabiano Caruana
He qualified by winning the Candidates in Berlin, and had lost only 5 of 33 previous classical games to Carlsen.
Q 17Who won the eighth game of the 2016 match in New York to take a lead over Carlsen?
Sergey Karjakin
Carlsen levelled in game ten and won the rapid tiebreak, finishing with a queen sacrifice on his 26th birthday.
Q 18Game 6 of the 2021 Carlsen–Nepomniachtchi match, the longest title game ever, lasted how many moves?
136
It took nearly eight hours, and the challenger's play collapsed afterwards with one-move blunders in games 8, 9 and 11.
Q 19The 2021 championship match was staged inside which international event?
Expo 2020 in Dubai
That made it the first sporting event at a world's fair since the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis.
Q 20After the all-drawn 2018 match, the 2021 title match was lengthened to a best of how many games?
14
Best-of-12 had been the standard for every match since 2006.
Q 24Which encounter of the 1972 match did Fischer forfeit by refusing to appear, in a dispute over cameras?
The second
Karpov later speculated the forfeit was a masterstroke designed to unsettle Spassky, who then agreed to play the next game backstage.
Q 25What was the final score of the 1972 Fischer–Spassky match?
12½–8½
Fischer won seven games, Spassky three (one by forfeit) and there were eleven draws; Spassky resigned the last game by phone without resuming.
Q 26Which of Fischer's seconds talked him out of flying home from Iceland after he fell 2–0 behind in 1972?
William Lombardy
A priest and grandmaster, he was the man in Fischer's corner throughout the match.
Q 27Fischer refused to defend in 1975 unless the match went to the first player to win how many games?
10
He also wanted to keep the title if the score reached 9–9; FIDE refused and crowned Karpov by default.
Q 28Karpov's 1978 title defence against stateless challenger Korchnoi was held in which city?
Baguio
The match went to the first to six wins and Karpov clinched it 6–5 after 32 games and 21 draws.
Q 29Which defector from the USSR twice challenged Karpov for the title, in 1978 and 1981?
Viktor Korchnoi
He was stateless during the 1978 cycle and played under the FIDE flag; the Mitrokhin Archive alleges the KGB assembled a team to ensure his defeat.
Q 30What did Karpov's team send him mid-game in 1978 that rivals called a possible coded message?
A blueberry yogurt
The complaint was later described as a parody of earlier protests, which had included X-raying chairs and a row over a hypnotherapist in the front row.