World Chess Championship 1951

World Chess Championship 1951
 
Defending champion
Challenger
 
Mikhail Botvinnik
Mikhail Botvinnik
David Bronstein
David Bronstein
  Soviet Union Mikhail Botvinnik Soviet Union David Bronstein
 
12Scores12
  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
← 1948
1954 →

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]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Horowitz was invoked but never defined (see the help page).