Anand vs. Gelfand world chess championship 2012 oldest pair of contenders since 1886 - Matthew van Eerde's web log - Site Home

In 2012, World Chess Champion Viswanathan Anand will attempt to defend his title aqainst challenger Boris Gelfand. This is a very unusual match in that both players are fairly old by World Chess Champion contender standards. I decided to see just how unusual it was, and do so with some degree of rigor.

One tricky bit is that chess championships (usually) have (at least) two players, so we have to define an age metric for pairs of people. Creating a well-ordering on tuples is sometimes controversial. I chose to have the comparison routine be:
age(contenders) = min(age(contender) : contender ∈ contenders)
which is to say, the age of the youngest contender.

Another tricky bit was deciding which matches were definitively "world chess championship matches." I pulled the list of world chess championship matches from chessgames.com. For time periods where the organizational ownership of the title is in question, this includes matches sponsored by all contending organizations.

As a naïve first pass, I looked up the birth years for all the contenders and subtracted that from the year of the championship to get an estimated age. This could be off by a year if the youngest contender's birthday comes after (or during?) the match. Nevertheless, this was accurate enough to give me a short list of matches to investigate further:.

Year	Player 1	Estimated Age	Player 2	Estimated Age	Minimum
2012	Viswanathan Anand	43	Boris Gelfand	44	43
2010	Viswanathan Anand	41	Veselin Topalov	35	35
2008	Viswanathan Anand	39	Vladimir Kramnik	33	33
2006	Vladimir Kramnik	31	Veselin Topalov	31	31
2005	Veselin Topalov	30	Many	N/A¹	30
2004	Vladimir Kramnik	29	Peter Leko	25	25
2004	Rustam Kasimdzhanov	25	Michael Adams	33	25
2001	Ruslan Ponomariov	18	Vassily Ivanchuk	32	18
2000	Vladimir Kramnik	25	Garry Kasparov	37	25
2000	Viswanathan Anand	31	Alexey Shirov	28	28
1999	Alexander Khalifman	33	Vladimir Akopian	28	28
1998	Anatoly Karpov	47	Viswanathan Anand	29	29
1996	Anatoly Karpov	45	Gata Kamsky	22	22
1995	Garry Kasparov	32	Viswanathan Anand	26	26
1993	Garry Kasparov	30	Nigel Short	28	28
1993	Anatoly Karpov	42	Jan Timman	42	42
1990	Garry Kasparov	27	Anatoly Karpov	39	27
1987	Garry Kasparov	24	Anatoly Karpov	36	24
1986	Garry Kasparov	23	Anatoly Karpov	35	23
1985	Garry Kasparov	22	Anatoly Karpov	34	22
1984	Anatoly Karpov	33	Garry Kasparov	21	21
1981	Anatoly Karpov	30	Viktor Korchnoi	50	30
1978	Anatoly Karpov	27	Viktor Korchnoi	47	27
1972	Bobby Fischer	29	Boris Spassky	35	29
1969	Boris Spassky	32	Tigran Petrosian	40	32
1966	Tigran Petrosian	37	Boris Spassky	29	29
1963	Tigran Petrosian	34	Mikhail Botvinnik	52	34
1961	Mikhail Botvinnik	50	Mikhail Tal	25	25
1960	Mikhail Tal	24	Mikhail Botvinnik	49	24
1958	Mikhail Botvinnik	47	Vasily Smyslov	37	37
1957	Vasily Smyslov	36	Mikhail Botvinnik	46	36
1954	Mikhail Botvinnik	43	Vasily Smyslov	33	33
1951	Mikhail Botvinnik	40	David Bronstein	27	27
1948	Mikhail Botvinnik	37	Vasily Smyslov	27	27
1937	Alexander Alekhine	45	Max Euwe	36	36
1935	Max Euwe	34	Alexander Alekhine	43	34
1934	Alexander Alekhine	42	Efim Bogolyubov	45	42
1929	Alexander Alekhine	37	Efim Bogolyubov	40	37
1927	Alexander Alekhine	35	José Raúl Capablanca	39	35
1921	José Raúl Capablanca	33	Emanuel Lasker	53	33
1910	Emanuel Lasker	42	Dawid Janowski	42	42
1910	Emanuel Lasker	42	Carl Schlecter	36	36
1908	Emanuel Lasker	40	Siegbert Tarrasch	46	40
1907	Emanuel Lasker	39	Frank Marshall	30	30
1896	Emanuel Lasker	28	Wilhelm Steinitz	60	28
1894	Emanuel Lasker	26	Wilhelm Steinitz	58	26
1892	Wilhelm Steinitz	56	Mikhail Chigorin	42	42
1890	Wilhelm Steinitz	54	Isidor Gunsberg	36	36
1889	Wilhelm Steinitz	53	Mikhail Chigorin	39	39
1886	Wilhelm Steinitz	50	Johannes Zukertort	44	44

Closer investigation of each of the highlighted matches revealed that, astonishingly, in every case the youngest contender's birthday came after the match:

2012 Viswanathan Anand (43?) vs. Boris Gelfand: Anand's birthday (December 11) comes after the match (starts in May) so he will still be 42.
1993 Anatoly Karpov (42?) vs. Jan Timman (42?): Timman's birthday (December 14) came after the match (finished November 1) so he was still 41.
1934 Alexander Alekhine (42?) vs. Efim Bogolyubov: Alekhine's birthday (October 31) came after the match (April to June) so he was still 41.
1910 Emanuel Lasker (42?) vs. Dawid Janowski (42?): Janowski was born May 25; Lasker December 24. Lasker's birthday came after the match (finished December 8) so he was still 41.
1892 Wilhelm Steinitz vs. Mikhail Chigorin (42?): Chigorin's birthday November 12 (October 31 old style) came after the match (finished February 28) so he was still 41.
1886 Wilhelm Steinitz vs. Johannes Zukertort (44?): Zukertort's birthday (September 7) came after the match (finished March 29) so he was still 43.

We conclude that Anand vs. Gelfand (2012) features the oldest contenders since the very first World Chess Championship Steinitz vs. Zukertort (1886) - and is within a year of even that! If the 2014 championship is a rematch, it will set the record.

¹ Topalov was the clear winner of the 2005 FIDE World Championship Tournament so there was no need for a runoff.