These first profiles list the events which led to the crowning of a World Champion, usually matches plus an occasional tournament, and are also linked from the register entry for each player. They are missing tournament references, bibliographic references, and perhaps most importantly, the best known games of these great players. For fuller, offsite descriptions on the complete careers of these champions, as well as those champs who have not yet been covered, see 'World Champions - Links' (link box again).

While we were working on the World Champions, we expanded the pool of names under consideration for inclusion in the register. The new names include players who have competed in a World Championship qualifier, starting from an Interzonal tournament or its equivalent. These are from our own offsite 'World Championship - Roster of players' (link box), where we maintain alphabetical lists of all players who have ever participated in a World Chess Championship event.

From those new names, we gave an additional vote to all players who competed in a Candidates tournament or match. This gave the required second vote to 19 players, who we then added to the register. If you're not sure what this means, see 'Introducing the register' (link box) where we described how the register was developed.

The 19 players include well-known GMs like former Soviet Champion Yuri Averbakh, former Yugoslav Champion Svetozar Gligoric, and four-time United States (co-)Champion Yasser Seirawan. We also added Vera Menchik, the first official Women's World Champion, who joins Judit Polgar as the second woman on the register. We will add other Women's World Champions and their unsuccessful challengers to a future edition of the list.