The FIDE World Chess Championship 1996 was a

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...

tournament held by

FIDE The International Chess Federation or World Chess Federation, commonly referred to by its French acronym FIDE ( Fédération Internationale des Échecs), is an international organization based in Switzerland that connects the various national c ...

to determine the

World Chess Champion The World Chess Championship is played to determine the world champion in chess. The current world champion is Magnus Carlsen of Norway, who has held the title since 2013. The first event recognized as a world championship was the 1886 match ...

Background

At the time the World Chess Champion title was split. In 1993,

Nigel Short Nigel David Short (born 1 June 1965) is an English chess grandmaster, columnist, coach, and commentator, who is the vice-president of FIDE since October 2018. Short earned the Grandmaster title at the age of 19, and was ranked third in the w ...

had qualified via FIDE's usual format to meet champion

Garry Kasparov Garry Kimovich Kasparov (born 13 April 1963) is a Russian chess grandmaster, former World Chess Champion, writer, political activist and commentator. His peak rating of 2851, achieved in 1999, was the highest recorded until being surpassed by ...

in a championship match. However, Kasparov and Short broke with FIDE and played under the auspices of a new organization which they had organized, the

Professional Chess Association The Professional Chess Association (PCA), which existed between 1993 and 1996, was a rival organisation to FIDE, the international chess organization. The PCA was created in 1993 by Garry Kasparov and Nigel Short for the marketing and organization o ...

(PCA). Kasparov won this match to remain champion. With its two top players withdrawn, FIDE awarded the two slots in its 1993 championship match to

Anatoly Karpov Anatoly Yevgenyevich Karpov ( rus, links=no, Анато́лий Евге́ньевич Ка́рпов, p=ɐnɐˈtolʲɪj jɪvˈɡʲenʲjɪvʲɪtɕ ˈkarpəf; born May 23, 1951) is a Russian and former Soviet chess grandmaster, former World Ches ...

and

Jan Timman Jan Timman (born 14 December 1951) is a Dutch chess grandmaster who was one of the world's leading chess players from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. At the peak of his career, he was considered to be the best non-Soviet player and was known as ...

, both of whom had been defeated in earlier qualification rounds by Short. Karpov won the match to become the FIDE World Champion. The FIDE World Chess Championship 1996 was FIDE's first since the 1993 split. Meanwhile, the PCA held its

Classical World Chess Championship 1995 The Classical World Chess Championship 1995, known at the time as the PCA World Chess Championship 1995, was held from September 10, 1995, to October 16, 1995, on the 107th floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. Garry ...

, in which Kasparov defeated

Viswanathan Anand Viswanathan "Vishy" Anand (born 11 December 1969) is an Indian chess grandmaster and a former five-time World Chess Champion. He became the first grandmaster from India in 1988, and is one of the few players to have surpassed an Elo rating of ...

to retain his title. Many of the same players competed in both organization's qualifying events. However, Kasparov and Short did not compete in the FIDE event.

1993 Interzonal tournament

FIDE held an

Interzonal Interzonal chess tournaments were tournaments organized by the World Chess Federation FIDE from the 1950s to the 1990s. They were a stage in the triennial World Chess Championship cycle and were held after the Zonal tournaments, and before the ...

tournament in

Biel , french: Biennois(e) , neighboring_municipalities= Brügg, Ipsach, Leubringen/Magglingen (''Evilard/Macolin''), Nidau, Orpund, Orvin, Pieterlen, Port, Safnern, Tüscherz-Alfermée, Vauffelin , twintowns = Iserlohn (Germany) B ...

in July 1993, run as a 73 player, 13 round

Swiss system tournament A Swiss-system tournament is a non-eliminating tournament format that features a fixed number of rounds of competition, but considerably fewer than for a round-robin tournament; thus each competitor (team or individual) does not play all the other ...

. The top 10 from the Interzonal qualified for a Championship tournament. In the event of a tie break, players were ranked by the sum of their opponents' Elo ratings, excluding the lowest rating. : Esam Aly Ahmed forfeited his first-round game against Pigusov and was dropped from the tournament.

1994–96 Championship tournament

The top 10 from the Interzonal were joined by 1993 FIDE World Champion

, 1993 FIDE runner-up

, and 1993 Candidates semi-finalist Artur Yusupov. (The other 1993 semi-finalist was the excluded Nigel Short). The first round matches were held in

Wijk aan Zee Wijk aan Zee ( literally ''Neighborhood at Sea'') is a village on the coast of the North Sea in the municipality of Beverwijk, the province of North Holland of the Netherlands. The prestigious Tata Steel Chess Tournament (formerly called the Coru ...

in January 1994, and the second round matches and semifinals in

Sanghi Nagar The Sangh Parivar (translation: "Family of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh" or the "RSS family") refers, as an umbrella term, to the collection of Hindu nationalist organisations spawned by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which rem ...

in July–August 1994 and February 1995, respectively. If tied after the specified number of games (which happened only in the Kamsky-Anand match),

rapid chess Fast chess, also known as Speed chess, is a type of chess in which each player is given less time to consider their moves than normal tournament time controls allow. Fast chess is subdivided, by decreasing time controls, into rapid chess, blitz ...

games were played as tie breaks.WCh 08 g6: Anand Won, Kramnik Done

Mig Greengard Michael "Mig" Greengard (born 9 June 1969 in Northern California, USA) is an American chess author and journalist who lives in New York City. Greengard also maintains the official English website of the Russian pro-democracy coalition, The Other R ...

blog, October 20, 2008 (see comments in final paragraph) The format was a departure from all previous world championships, in that the reigning champion (Karpov) was not seeded directly into a championship match. Instead, he joined the competition at the semifinal stage.

1996 Championship final

The final was held in

Elista Elista (russian: Элиста́, (common during the Soviet era) or (most common pronunciation used after 1992 and in Kalmykia itself);"Большой энциклопедический словарь", под ред. А. М. Прохорова. ...

, Russia in June–July 1996 and played as best of 20 games. : Karpov won and retained his title.

Background

1993 Interzonal tournament

1994–96 Championship tournament

1996 Championship final

References

Further reading