World Chess Championship 1963
| Portraits |
 |
 |
|---|---|---|
| Mikhail Botvinnik | Tigran Petrosian | |
| nation |
.svg){kind=small}
|
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| status | Defending champion | challenger |
| Age | 51 years | 33 years |
In the 1963 world chess championship , Tigran Petrosyan replaced him as world chess champion by winning a competition against Mikhail Botvinnik .
Candidates tournament
Petrosjan had qualified by winning the 1962 Curaçao Candidates Tournament to challenge the world champions in a match. The candidates tournament was held with eight participants, of whom Tal and Keres were seeded and Fischer , Geller , Petrosjan , Kortschnoi , Filip , Benkő had qualified at the Stockholm 1962 interzonal tournament . Each participant had to compete against each other four times. Petrosjan won with 17.5 points from 28 games ahead of Keres and Geller with 17 points each. The top three winners all led to draws among themselves relatively quickly, which was sharply criticized by Fischer after the tournament as an “unfair agreement”.
World championship fight
The competition for the world championship was scheduled for 24 games. If there was a tie after 24 games, Botvinnik would have kept his world title. The match took place in Moscow from March 23, 1963 to May 20, 1963 . Referees were Gideon Ståhlberg and Harry Golombek . Isaak Boleslawski and Alexei Suetin acted as Petrosjan's seconds .
Botvinnik won the first game with Black, because Petrosjan, being white in the Karlovy Vary structure, played too passively and got into an attack. Petrosyan equalized in game five and took the lead in game seven. Six draws followed before Botvinnik equalized in the fourteenth game. Immediately afterwards, however, Petrosyan won the fifteenth game and then the eighteenth and nineteenth, after which Botvinnik made no more attempt to turn the match around.
World Chess Championship 1963 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14th 15th 16 17th 18th 19th 20th 21st 22nd total Mikhail Botvinnik (USSR) 1 ½ ½ ½ 0 ½ 0 ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ 1 0 ½ ½ 0 0 ½ ½ ½ 9½ Tigran Petrosyan (USSR) 0 ½ ½ ½ 1 ½ 1 ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ 0 1 ½ ½ 1 1 ½ ½ ½ 12½