World Chess Championship

The World Chess Championship is played to determine the World Champion in the board game, chess. As of early 2004, there was no consensus on who owns the title. Vladimir Kramnik is considered by many to be World Champion, but Ruslan Ponomariov is the official FIDE World Champion, having won a knockout tournament in 2003. Some still consider Garry Kasparov to be the world champion, despite having lost to Kramnik, as he remains the highest-ranked player on the ELO list. Bobby Fischer, who hasn't played a competitive game of chess since 1992, is the still, theoretically, 'undefeated world champion'.

While there has never been a female World Champion, women are eligible to hold the title. In addition, there is a separate world championship for women only, for the title of "Woman's World Champion", and separate competitions and titles for, juniors, seniors and computers.

History of the World Chess Championship

The first match universally regarded as officially for the world championship was the match that Wilhelm Steinitz won against Johannes Zukertort in 1886. However, a line of players regarded as the strongest (or at least the most famous) in the world extends back hundreds of years beyond them, and these players are sometimes considered "unofficial" world champions. They include in1560s Ruy Lopez, in 1575s Boi and Leonardo da Cutri, in 1600s Alessandro Salvio, and in 1620s Gioacchino Greco.

In the 18th and early 19th century, French players dominated, with Legall de Kermeur (1730-1747), Francois-André Philidor (1747-1795), Alexandre Deschapelles (1800-1820) and Louis de la Bourdonnais (1820-1840) all widely regarded as the strongest players of their time. La Bourdonnais played a series of six matches - and 85 games - against the Irishman Alexander McDonnell, with many of the encounters having been annotated by the American Paul Morphy.

The Englishman Howard Staunton's match victory over another Frenchman, Pierre-Charles Fournier de Saint-Amant, in 1843 is considered to have established him as the world's strongest player (1840-1850). When he only finished third in the 1851 London tournament, he is considered to have relinquished the role to the tournament's winner, Adolf Anderssen (1851-1858). About the same time (1850), von der Lasa was considered Anderssen's equal.

Anderssen was himself decisively defeated in an 1858 match against the American Paul Morphy, after which Morphy was toasted as the World Chess Champion all over (1858-1860), from Paris to London to New York. Morphy retired from chess the following year.

This left Anderssen as possibly the world's strongest active player, a reputation he re-enforced by winning the strong London tournament of 1862. He was narrowly defeated in an 1866 match against Wilhelm Steinitz, and some commentators regard this to be the first "official" world championship match. The match was not declared to be a world championship at the time, however. It was only after Morphy's death in 1884 that such a match was declared. The 1886 match between Steinitz and Johannes Zukertort, won by Steinitz, though not held under the aegis of any official body, is widely regarded as the first official World Chess Championship match, with Steinitz the game's first official World Champion.

The championship was conducted on a fairly informal basis through the remainder of the nineteenth century and in the first half of the twentieth: if a player thought he was strong enough, he would challenge the reigning world champion to a match. If he won, he would become the new champion. There was no formal system of qualification. However, it is generally regarded that the system did on the whole produce champions who were the strongest players of their day. The players who held the title up until World War II were Steinitz, Emanuel Lasker, Jose Raul Capablanca, Alexander Alekhine and Max Euwe, each of them defeating the previous incumbent in a match.

This informal system suffered a setback when reigning champion Alekhine died in 1946, in a Portuguese hotel room. There is some confusion over his death, with some claiming he had suffered a heart attack, whilst others insist he choked on a pieve of meat. Either way, this left the championship vacant for the first time. FIDE stepped in to organise a match tournament in 1948 between five of the world's strongest players: Mikhail Botvinnik, Max Euwe, Paul Keres, Samuel Reshevsky and Vasily Smyslov (Reuben Fine was also invited, but declined to take part). Botvinnik won the tournament and thus the championship, and FIDE continued to organise the championship thereafter.

In place of the previous informal system, a new system of qualifying tournaments and matches was arranged. The world's strongest players were seeded into "Interzonal tournaments", where they were joined by players who had qualified from "Zonal tournaments". The leading finishers in these Interzonals would go on the "Candidates" stage, which was initially a tounrment, later a series of knock-out matches. The winner of the Candidates would then play a match against the reigning champion (who did not have to qualify through this process) for the championship. This system worked on a three-year cycle.

The winner of the 1948 tournament, Mikhail Botvinnik, successfully defended his title twice over the next six years, beating off both David Bronstein and Vasily Smyslov. The latter, however, won the title in 1957 by a score of 12.5 - 9.5, only to lose it once more to Botvinnik in 1958. At the time, Smyslov had the dubious pleasure of being the shortest-reigning world champion; but this 'honour' soon switched hands, to the 'Magician from Riga', Mikhail Tal.

Tal's daring, sacrificial style had brought him success in 1960, overcoming Botvinnik by a score of 12.5 - 8.5. But once more, Botvinnik was not content, and won back his title the following year in a rematch, which he won by a crushing 13 - 8. Tal remains to this day the shortest-lived champion.

Botvinnik, having dominated the game for more than ten years, would play just one more world championship match, against the Armenian Tigran Petrosian. (FIDE have, coincidentally, announced that 2004 is to be the year of Petrosian.) The next 'pairing' for the world championship would ultimately produce Bobby Fischer's opponent in the famed Match of the Century: Petrosian defeated Boris Spassky by the narrowest of margins (12.5 - 11.5) in Moscow in 1966, but collapsed three years later (once more in Moscow) to the same challenger. The next championship, to be held in Rekjavik was to see the first non-Soviet finalist for a long time (and indeed the first under FIDE), a geeky young American by the name of Robert J. Fischer.

This system ran smoothly until 1975, because the first FIDE champion, Botvinnik, and all his challengers and successors, were from the Soviet Union, and subject to control by the Soviet state. But when in 1975, reigning World Champion Bobby Fischer, who had won the title from Soviet Boris Spassky three years previously in one of the most famous chess matches in history, refused to defend his title against Soviet Anatoly Karpov, things got a little messy. Fischer abandoned his FIDE title, but maintained that he was still World Champion. However, he went into seclusion, and did not play chess in public again until 1992, when he offered Spassky a rematch, again for the World Championship. However, the general public did not take his claim seriously, as Karpov, after Fischer went into hiding, racked up an incredible string of tournament successes, demonstrating that he was definately stronger than anyone else who played. Karpov defended his title against ex-Soviet Viktor Korchnoi, then eventually lost it to a player who was equally convincing as to his strength: Garry Kasparov.

Not long after Kasparov became champion, the Soviet Union collapsed, freeing Kasparov from the grip of the Soviet state. This set the stage for a more lasting set-back to FIDE's system when in 1993, Kasparov and challenger Nigel Short complained of corruption and a lack of professionalism within FIDE and split from FIDE to set up the Professional Chess Association, under whose auspices they held their match (it was won by Kasparov). FIDE held a championship match between Karpov (who had been champion before Kasparov) and Jan Timman (who had been defeated by Short in the Candidates final). Ever since then there have been two simultaneous World Champions and World Championships.

Kasparov went on to defend his title against Viswanathan Anand, who had qualified through a series of events similar to those in the old FIDE system. He lost his title to Vladimir Kramnik in 2000.

FIDE, meanwhile, after one more traditional championship cycle which resulted in Karpov successfully defending his title against Gata Kamsky in 1996, largely scrapped the old system, instead having a large knock-out event in which a large number of players contested short matches against each other over just a few weeks. In the first of these events, champion Karpov was seeded straight into the final (as in previous championships), but subsequently the champion had to qualify like other players. Karpov defended his title in the first of these championships in 1998 before Alexander Khalifman won in 1999, Anand in 2000 and Ruslan Ponomariov in 2002.

This left a chess world with two distinct championships: one extending the Steinitzian lineage in which the current champion plays a challenger in match format (a series of many games); the other following FIDE's new format of a tennis-style elimination--or "Knockout"--tournament with dozens of players competing.

In May 2002, under the terms of the so-called "Prague Agreement" masterminded by Yasser Seirawan, several leaders in the chess world met in Prague and signed a unity agreement which intended to ensure the crowning of an undisputed world champion before the end of 2003, and restore the traditional cycle of qualifying matches by 2005.

The semifinalists for the 2003 championship were to be Ruslan Ponomariov vs. Gary Kasparov, and Vladimir Kramnik vs. Peter Leko. The former match, organised by FIDE, had been scheduled to take place in Yalta beginning on September 18, 2003, but was called off on August 29 after Ponomariov refused to sign his contract for it.

There is a proposal that Kasparov will instead play a match in 2004 or 2005 against the winner of the next FIDE knock-out world championship. In an interview with the Russian paper Sport Express on February 16, 2004, FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov indicated there were plans to hold this knock-out championship in Tripoli with the Libyan government as sponsor.

The Kramnik-Leko match was originally to be held in Budapest, but funding collapsed and it was called off. In January 2004, plans were announced to hold this match in September-October 2004.

Undisputed World Champions

• Paul Morphy, 1858-1859
• Wilhelm Steinitz, 1886 (or 1866)-1894
• Emanuel Lasker, 1894-1921
• José Raúl Capablanca, 1921-1927
• Alexander Alekhine, 1927-1935 and 1937-1946
• Max Euwe, 1935-1937
• Mikhail Botvinnik, 1948-1957, 1958-1960 and 1961-1963
• Vasily Smyslov, 1957-1958
• Mikhail Tal, 1960-61
• Tigran Petrosian, 1963-1969
• Boris Spassky, 1969-1972
• Bobby Fischer, 1972-1975
• Anatoly Karpov, 1975-1985
• Garry Kasparov, 1985-1993

PCA and other World Champions

• Garry Kasparov, 1993-2000
• Vladimir Kramnik, 2000-date

FIDE World Champions since 1993

• Anatoly Karpov, 1993-99
• Alexander Khalifman, 1999-2000
• Viswanathan Anand, 2000-2002
• Ruslan Ponomariov, 2002-date

See also List of chess world championship matches.

Women's World Championship

The Women's World Championship was established by FIDE in 1927 as a single tournament held alongside the Chess Olympiad. The winner of that tournament, Vera Menchik, did not have any special rights as the men's champion did - instead she had to defend her title by playing as many games as all the challengers. She did this successfully in every other championship in her lifetime (1930, 1931, 1933, 1935, 1937 and 1939).

Menchik died as champion in 1944. The next championship was another round-robin tournament in 1949-50 and was won by Ludmilla Rudenko. Thereafter a system similar to that of the men's championship was established, with a cycle of Candidates events (and later Interzonals) to pick a challenger to face the reigning champion.

This system remained in place until 2000 when a knock-out event, won by reigning champion Xie Jun, was held alongside the men's championship. In 2001 a similar event determined the champion, Zhu Chen. As of Feburary 2004, there has been no women's championship since.

List of Women's World Champions

• Vera Menchik, 1927-1944
• Ludmilla Rudenko, 1950-1953
• Elisabeth Bikova, 1953-1956 and 1958-1962
• Olga Rubzowa, 1956-1958
• Nona Gaprindashvili, 1962-1978
• Maya Chiburdanidze, 1978-1991
• Xie Jun, 1991-1996 and 1999-2001
• Zsuzsa Polgar, 1996-1999
• Zhu Chen, 2001-date

Junior and Senior World Champions

The Junior and Senior Champions have always been determined by a single tournament each year (initially every other year in the case of the Juniors). See World Junior Chess Championship.

External links

• Mark Weeks' pages on the championships