In top-class chess it is rare for a player to complete a tournament or match with a 100 percent score. This outstanding result was however achieved in tournaments by:

 

Perfect scores were achieved in matches by:

• Howard Staunton over Daniel Harrwitz in 1846 (7/7)
• Wilhelm Steinitz over Joseph Henry Blackburne in 1876 (7/7)
• Capablanca over Kostić in 1919 (5/5)
• Fischer over Mark Taimanov in 1971 (6/6) (quarter-final Candidates Match)
• Fischer over Bent Larsen in 1971 (6/6) (semi-final Candidates Match)

Future grandmaster William Lombardy is the only player ever to achieve a perfect score in the World Junior Chess Championship, open to players under the age of 20 as of January 1 in the year of competition. He scored 11-0 at Toronto 1957.

Vera Menchik won four consecutive Women's World Chess Championship tournaments with perfect scores, a total of 45 games (8-0 at Prague 1931, 14-0 at Folkestone 1933, 9-0 at Warsaw 1935, and 14-0 at Stockholm 1937). She only played 43 of the 45 games, since Harum, the Austrian contestant, was unable to reach Folkestone and thus forfeited all of her games in that double round robin event.

Alekhine scored 9-0 on first board for France at the 3rd Chess Olympiad (Hamburg, 1930), and Dragoljub Čirić scored 8-0 as second reserve (the sixth player on his team) for Yugoslavia at the 17th Olympiad (Havana, 1966), but each played only about half of the possible games. Paul Keres scored 13.5 points out of 14 games (96.4%) playing fourth board for the USSR at the 11th Olympiad (Amsterdam, 1954).