FIDE World Chess Championship 1996

Did You Know?

• The Interzonal tournament in Biel in July 1993 was a 73-player, 13-round Swiss system event.
• Players in the Interzonal were ranked by the sum of their opponents' Elo ratings, excluding the lowest, in case of tie breaks.
• Esam Aly Ahmed forfeited his first-round game against Pigusov and was dropped from the Interzonal.

Background

The world chess championship title was divided at this time. In 1993, Nigel Short earned the right to face champion Garry Kasparov, but they left FIDE to form the Professional Chess Association, where Kasparov kept his title. FIDE then matched Anatoly Karpov against Jan Timman, both of whom Short had beaten earlier, and Karpov won to become FIDE champion. The 1996 match was FIDE’s first after the split. The PCA held its own championship in 1995, with Kasparov beating Viswanathan Anand. Many players took part in both organizations’ qualifiers, but Kasparov and Short skipped the FIDE event.

1994–96 Championship tournament

The 1996 FIDE World Chess Championship saw Anatoly Karpov, the 1993 champion, join the competition alongside Jan Timman and Artur Yusupov, who had been the runner-up and a semi-finalist in 1993. The top ten from the Interzonal also participated. First-round games took place in Wijk aan Zee in January 1994, with the second and third rounds held in Sanghi Nagar later that year and in early 1995. The only tied match, between Kamsky and Anand, was decided by rapid chess tie breaks. Unlike previous cycles, the reigning champion did not get a direct pass to the final; Karpov entered at the third round instead.