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Defending champion |
Challenger | |||||
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 Mikhail Botvinnik |
David Bronstein | |||||
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Born 17 August 1911 39 years old |
Born 19 February 1924 27 years old | |||||
| Winner of the 1948 World Chess Championship | Winner of the 1950 Candidates Tournament | |||||
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The 1951 World Chess Championship was played between Mikhail Botvinnik and David Bronstein in Moscow from March 15 to May 11, 1951. It was the first match played under the supervision of FIDE; and the first to use a qualifying system of an Interzonal and Candidates Tournament to choose a challenger - a system which stayed in place until 1993.
Botvinnik was the defending champion: he was 39 years old, had been a world leading player in the 1930s and World Champion since 1948. The challenger, David Bronstein, was 27 years old and relatively new to top-level competition.
The match ended in a 12–12 tie (5 wins each, and 14 draws), meaning Botvinnik retained the title of World Champion. Writing in 1973, Israel Horowitz described the match as "perhaps the most interesting match ever played for the world championship".[1]