Intro:
Between 1993 and 2006, the title of “World Chess Champion” was split, with concurrent PCA (the Professional Chess Association) and FIDE players holding the illustrious crown. While the drama and stories of chess politics in the early 21st century deserve an article unto themselves, today we’ll be looking at an oft-overlooked event; namely, the FIDE World Chess Championship of 2002. While, due to the split, arguably the two best players in the world at the time - Kasparov and Kramnik - didn’t participate, it remains both interesting from a historical and chess perspective.
The format of the tournament was very different from our modern World Chess Championship, and more reminiscent of the World Cup; the 128-person field played a knockout-style event with two classical games per mini-match and shorter time controls as tiebreaks until round 6 (the semifinals), where the length of the matches was increased to four games. Finally, a champion was determined through an eight-game fight for 1st place and $500,000.
Vasyl Ivanchuk:
The runner-up in the match, Vasyl Ivanchuk, had an excellent event leading up to the finals, beating perhaps the favorite to win the event, future World Chess Champion Viswanathan Anand, as well as French grandmaster Joel Lautier, amongst others.
Early in the tournament, he handily defeated lower rated opponents, including in the second game of round one:
Against Emil Sutovsky, the current CEO of FIDE and Israeli Grandmaster, Ivanchuk showed his Magnus-like ability to destroy players from seemingly dry middle-games:
After defeating Ye Jiangchuan and Joel Lautier in rounds 4 and 5, respectively, Ivanchuk was paired against the then-Champion, Anand, whom he convincingly outplayed to qualify for the finals:
Ruslan Ponomariov:
The eighteen year-old’s path to World Champion was marked by interesting opening ideas in classical openings - he played mostly 1.e4, and as Black had complete mastery of the Ruy Lopez. On his run he defeated Morozevich, Bareev, Svidler, and finally Ivanchuck.
In Round 3, against Kiril Georgiev, Ponomariov dispatched his opponent with what was perhaps the best example of his style:
Against one of the most creative players of the early 2000s, Morozevich, Ponomariov plays into the Russian GM’s pet line and defeats him anyway:
The Championship:
After the 128-person field was reduced to just two players - Ivanchuk and Ponomariov - the stage was set for a new World Champion to be crowned. Of the two Ukrainian grandmasters, Ivanchuk was probably a slight favorite, being higher-rated and much more experienced.
And the very first game? A 23-move miniature in which the Ponomariov decimated his countryman’s French defense.
The next three games were draws, although not without intrigue; immediately in Game 2, Ivanchuk was given an opportunity to strike back in a QGA as White, where he was temporarily up a piece - however, he mishandled the position and blundered into a drawn endgame. Game 3 was relatively quiet, but in Game 4 Ponomariov repeated the QGA that got in him some trouble earlier, to some success. In spite of getting a strong kingside attack, Ivanchuk managed to neutralize him just in time to avoid a 2-point deficit going into the second half of the match.
The next, and final, decisive game in the match, featured a dramatic swindle in which Ruslan Ponomariov went from completely losing, to slightly worse, to completely winning, over the course of less than fifteen moves - which, I can only imagine, were made with zeitnot.
Conclusion:
Thank you all for reading my first “real” blog. I apologize in advance for any mistakes I made, and for not annotating the games as much as they deserve - in the future I’ll try to show less games and delve into them more deeply. I hope you all learned something, and I know I did! My next blog will be the second edition of “Miniature of The Week,” and I look forward to seeing you there!
-Ephi
