Ever since Kasparov and Short broke away from FIDE in 1993, the title of the World Chess Champion has been split.
At the beginning of the 2000s, the unification of the title became the main topic in the chess worlds. After the FIDE World Championship Tournament 2002, negotiations about the unification intensified. In May 2002, Grandmaster Yasser Seirawan led the organization of the so-called „Prague – Agreement“, whose goal was to unite the titles once and for all.
The Prague – Agreement proposed the following:
- Classical World Champion Vladimir Kramnik will play a match against the challenger (the winner of the Dortmund Tournament – Peter Leko)
- FIDE World Champion Ruslan Ponomariov will play the match against the World Number 1, Garry Kasparov
- The winners of these two matches will meet in the final match for the title unification
All the involved sides signed the contract. However, whereas Kramnik DID manage to organize his match against Leko (albeit only in 2004), the negotiations between Kasparov and Ponomariov were stalled and the match never actually took place.
Thus, in 2004, FIDE organized its FIDE World Championship in the form of the Knockout Tournament once again.
In addition to the usual criticism of the tournament format, the 2004 event was even more controversial because of the location venue. The tournament took place from June 19 to July 13, 2004, in Tripoli, Libya, which has been allegedly accused of human rights violation. More importantly, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi enforced some anti-semitic policies. For example, Libya refused to recognize Israeli passports.
As a result, Israeli players refused to participate. But more importantly, they were backed up by many of their colleagues, which resulted with an even weaker line up than in the previous editions. Out of the World Top Ten, only two players (Adams and Topalov) actually turned up and played in the event.
Compared to the previous editions, time controls were once again shortened – 1 hour for 30 minutes, 15 minutes after move 40, with 30 seconds increment after every move.
This merely added to the confusion and made the „luck“ factor even more significant. And indeed, the tournament once again produced an unexpected winner. After beating Ramirez, Ghaem – Maghami, Ivanchuk, Almasi, Grischuk, Topalov, and Michael Adams, Grandmaster from Uzbekistan, Rustan Kasimdzhanov, became the champion.
It was noteworthy that the decisive game of the tournament was game one of the tiebreaks, in which Kasimdzhanov was in trouble for the most of the game, but managed to extricate himself in time scramble and win in the endgame.
After the tournament, negotiations with Kasparov regarding the potential Kasimdzhanov – Kasparov match started. But, similarly as Ponomariov – Kasparov match, it never actually took place.
(For more information about the events off-the-board, we refer the reader to our Kramnik – Leko 2004 report)
Sources:
(Cover photo source: Former World Champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov on Chess)