The FIDE World Chess Championship 1996 was a

chess Chess is a board game for two players. It is an abstract strategy game that involves Perfect information, no hidden information and no elements of game of chance, chance. It is played on a square chessboard, board consisting of 64 squares arran ...

tournament held by

FIDE The International Chess Federation or World Chess Federation, commonly referred to by its French acronym FIDE ( , ), is an international organization based in Switzerland that connects the various national chess federations and acts as the Spor ...

to determine the

World Chess Champion The World Chess Championship is played to determine the world champion in chess. The current world champion is Gukesh Dommaraju, who defeated the previous champion Ding Liren in the World Chess Championship 2024, 2024 World Chess Championship. ...

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 Grandmaster (chess), chess grandmaster, columnist, coach and commentator who has been the FIDE Director for Chess Development since September 2022. Short earned the title of grandmaster at the ...

had qualified via FIDE's usual format to meet champion

Garry Kasparov Garry Kimovich Kasparov (born Garik Kimovich Weinstein on 13 April 1963) is a Russian Grandmaster (chess), chess grandmaster, former World Chess Champion (1985–2000), political activist and writer. His peak FIDE chess Elo rating system, ra ...

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 Federation. The PCA was created in 1993 by Garry Kasparov and Nigel Short for the marketing and organization of ...

(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 With its two top players withdrawn, FIDE awarded the two slots in its 1993 championship match to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 (, ; born May 23, 1951) is a Russian and former Soviet Grandmaster (chess), chess grandmaster, former World Chess Championship, World Chess Champion, ⁣and politician. He was the 12th World Chess Champion from 1975 ...

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 a ...

, 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, in which Kasparov defeated Viswanathan Anand 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 Ca ...

tournament in

Biel Biel/Bienne (official bilingual wording; German language, German: ''Biel'' ; French language, French: ''Bienne'' ; Bernese German, locally ; ; ; ) is a bilingual city in the canton of Bern in Switzerland. With over 55,000 residents, it is the ...

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 (; ) 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 Corus chess tournament or the Hoogove ...

in January 1994, and the second round matches and third round matches in Sanghi Nagar 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 than classical chess time controls allow. Fast chess is subdivided, by decreasing time controls, into rapid chess, blitz chess, and bullet chess. A ...

games were played as tie breaks.WCh 08 g6: Anand Won, Kramnik Done
Mig Greengard 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 third round (Candidates final).

1996 Championship match

The final was held in Elista, 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 match

References

Further reading