Géza Maróczy (Szeged, 3 March 1870 - Budapest, 29 May 1951) was a Hungarian chess player, Grandmaster, and Chess Olympiad Champion. He was one of the best in the world at the peak of his career.

He started playing chess when he was a secondary school student and soon became the best Hungarian chess player. He won the Hastings Tournament in 1895 and won several prestigious international tournaments in the next 10 years. He participated in 13 tournaments between 1902 and 1908, won on five occasions and was second five times. He could challenge the World Champion Emmanuel Lasker in 1906 but the match could not be played because of the political situation in Cuba.

According to Chessmetrics historical rating system, he was ranked first in 30 different months between October 1904 and March 1907 and his highest Elo rating is 2820. 

He resigned from international chess in 1908 as he wanted to devote more time to his profession as a Clerk. When the communist regime strengthened he got a position at the Ministry of Education. After the fall of the regime he became unemployed. After the first world war he returned to chess and achieved further successes.

At his 1927/28 return he beat Geza Nagy, the 1924 Hungarian Champion (+5-0=3). Under his leadership the Hungarian team won the Chess Olympiad in London in 1927 then in Hague in 1928.

FIDE awarded him with the Grandmaster title in 1950 that he received for his victory in Hastings in 1895.

His style was very defensive. He successfully applied the Danish Gambit against Jacques Mieses and Karl Helling. Aron Nimzowitsch used Maróczy’s win against Hugo Süchting in his book My System as a model, in which you can restrain your opponent before breaking through.

His Elo rating is remarkable comparing it to the best players’ of his era. However, he achieved bad results against the Candidates: Wilhelm Steinitz (+1−2=1), Emanuel Lasker (+1−4=2), Jose Raul Capablanca (+0−3=5) and Alexander Alekhine (+0−6=5), the only exception was Max Euwe, who was defeated by Maróczy (+4−3=15). On the other hand, his defensive style was usually effective to defeat the best attacking players of his era, like Joseph Henry Blackburne (+5−0=3), Mikhail Chigorin (+6−4=7), Frank Marshall (+11−6=8), David Janowski (+10−5=5), Efim Bogoljubov (+7−4=4) és Frederick Yates (+8−0=1).

Capablanca respected Maróczy. During a performance in the beginning of the 40s he referred to him as “extremely respectful and fair”, and “a kind fellow”, what is more, “one of the greatest masters of the era”.

Sources: https://hu.wikipedia.org; https://en.wikipedia.org; 

http://www.chessmetrics.com