More than half of the rounds of the 2022 Candidates Tournament have passed. Alireza Firouzja, is in last place and it seems unlikely that he could be the winner, something that undoubtedly becomes relevant since in December 2021 Magnus Carlsen said that only against the French prodigy would play a match for the title. If he keeps his word, it would happen again that a champion decides not to defend his title. Here we tell you how many times that happened in history.
First of all, it is convenient to analyze two cases that could present confusion and explain why they cannot be included in this list. The first is the German Emmanuel Lasker, the second champion in history. In 1920 he resigned to defend his title and appointed Jose Raul Capablanca as his successor, something that FIDE did not accept, since he had the right not to defend his title, but not to choose his successor. Lasker is not on this list because in 1921 he finally agreed to play the match that he ultimately lost.
The second case is that of Russian Alexander Alekhine, the fourth world champion in history. He held the title in two periods: between 1927 and 1934 and then between 1937 and 1946. The next champion was the Soviet Mikhail Botvinnik, who won the title in 1948 but never played a title match against Alekhine. Sadly, the Russian passed away in 1946 so he technically did not give up defending the world championship (and in fact, it is known that before he died he wanted to play the match against Botvinnik).
The players who gave up defending their title
In all history only two players refused to defend their title. The first of them was Robert James Fischer, champion in 1972 and who had to defend the championship in 1975. However, he had differences with FIDE and in the way the match was to be played, and that is why he decided not to play, winning Anatoly Karpov by default.
The second was Garry Kasparov, who created a parallel organization to FIDE, the Classical World Chess Championships and in 1993 the first title match was played between its founder Kasparov and Nigel Short, while in parallel, FIDE held its own tournament in which Karpov was champion, having for some years two world champions due to the existence of both organizations.
