Games - FIDE World Chess Championship 2004

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	Games - FIDE World Chess Championship 2004

The FIDE World Chess Championship, 2004 was held at the Almahary Hotel in Tripoli, Libya, from June 18 to July 13.

It was won by Rustam Kasimdzhanov, who beat Michael Adams in the final by a score of 4.5-3.5. He takes prize money of around US$100,000 (US$80,000 after organiser FIDE has taken its cut) and the right to a match against world number one Garry Kasparov in a step towards the reunification of the World Chess Championship.

Reunification of the title

Ever since 1993, when Garry Kasparov and Nigel Short broke away from chess governing body FIDE to play their world championship match under the auspices of the newly-formed Professional Chess Association, there have been two chess world championships: one organised by FIDE (which lately have been in a knock-out format) and one by a variety of other bodies (in the form of a long match between champion and challenger). Various attempts have been made to reunify the title; the 2004 FIDE Championship is a part of the latest plan, the so-called Prague Agreement.

The plan under this agreement when it was drawn up in 2002 was that reigning FIDE world champion Ruslan Ponomariov and world number one on the FIDE Elo rating list Garry Kasparov would play a match, and that the so-called "classical" world champion Vladimir Kramnik and winner of the 2002 Dortmund tournament (which turned out to be Péter Lékó) would play each other. The winners of these two matches would then play one another to produce a unified champion.

The match between Ponomariov and Kasparov, however, fell through after FIDE refused to alter various things in the contract on Ponomariov's request, and he refused to sign. FIDE announced that instead the winner of the next FIDE knock-out championship would play against Kasparov in a match to be held not later than July 2005 (Kramnik and Lékó were to play their match in September-October 2004). Therefore, as well as the championship determining who was to be the next FIDE world champion, it would also determine who would play Kasparov in what was effectively a semifinal match for the unified championship.

Controversies

The event has attracted a good deal of controversy in a number of areas.

Format

One source of criticism, in common with when it has been used for previous FIDE championships, has been the event's format. In particular, the relatively quick time controls have been controversial. (90 minutes for the first 40 moves, followed by 15 minutes till the end of the game and an incremental time of 30 seconds per move from move one.) Zhang Zhong, for example, was quoted as saying "the time limit is too fast for such a world championship. We should call it a World Cup … a world championship needs more classic time controls" and Nigel Short claimed that "If you took the top 100 players and survey their opinion you would probably find around 75% are against this time control" .

Another criticism centered around the knockout format of the tournament. Although knockout matches had been used prior to the introduction of this tournament format, the brevity of these matches (Best of 2 elimination matches with a Best of 6 Championship Match, as opposed to the Best of 10 elimination matches and Best of 24 Championship Match seem in earlier cycles) led many to consider them to be of little value in determining the better player.

Location

Perhaps the greatest criticism has concerned the choice of Libya as venue. Claims of human rights abuses, and state sponsored terrorism have caused some consternation, but on a more practical level the country's history of not allowing entry to citizens of Israel has been of some concern, as three Israeli players (Boris Gelfand, Emil Sutovsky and Ilya Smirin) had either qualified for the championships or were high on the list of reserves (in the event of qualifiers choosing not to play). Additionally, a number of players have joint Israeli and American citizenship, and so were also expected to be disallowed entry.

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