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, 2004.
It was won by Rustam Kasimdzhanov, who beat Michael Adams in the final by a score of 4½–3½. He won about US$100,000 and the title of FIDE World Chess Champion.
The intention was that the tournament winner would play the world's top-ranked player at the time, Garry Kasparov, in a step towards the reunification of the World Chess Championship ; that match, however, never took place.

Reunification of the title

Pre-tournament

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 had been two chess world championships: one organised by FIDE and one by a variety of other bodies. The 2004 FIDE Championship was a part of what was, at the time, the most serious attempt yet to reunify the title, the Prague Agreement.
The plan under this 2002 agreement was that reigning FIDE World Champion Ruslan Ponomariov and FIDE World #1 Garry Kasparov would play a match, and that the Classical World Champion Vladimir Kramnik and winner of Dortmund 2002 would play a match. The winners of these two matches would then play one another to produce a unified champion.
The match between Ponomariov and Kasparov 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 Knockout Championship played against Kasparov in a match to be held not later than July 2005. Therefore, as well as the championship determining who was to be the next FIDE world champion, it would also determine who played Kasparov in what was effectively a semifinal match for the unified championship.

Post-tournament

After Kasimdzhanov's victory, FIDE opened the bidding for the Kasimdzhanov-Kasparov match in August 2004, with bids to be received by September 15. This deadline was later extended to September 25. The organizer was to be chosen at the FIDE Presidential Board meeting in October 2004, but in fact, FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov announced ahead of this time that the match had been awarded to the United Arab Emirates.
The plan did not come to fruition: the promised funding for the match never arrived, and plans to hold the match instead in Turkey also came to nothing. The whole question of how and when the Kasparov-Kasimdzhanov match would take place, or what would occur in its stead, was made irrelevant by Kasparov's announcement in March 2005 that he was retiring from serious chess.
Kasimdzhanov's victory earned him an invitation to the FIDE World Chess Championship 2005. Kasimdzhanov also gained automatic entry to the Candidates Tournament for the FIDE World Chess Championship 2007.
The World Championship was eventually reunified in 2006, when classical champion Kramnik defeated the winner of the FIDE World Chess Championship 2005, Veselin Topalov.

Controversies

The event attracted many controversies.

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. Zhang Zhong, for example, said that "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 on 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 led many to consider them to be of little value in determining the better player.

Location

Perhaps the greatest criticism concerned the choice of Libya as venue. Claims of human rights abuses, and state-sponsored terrorism 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 had either qualified for the championships or were high on the list of reserves. Additionally, a number of players had joint Israeli and American citizenship, and so were also expected to be disallowed entry.
With this in mind, FIDE originally announced that a parallel event in Malta would be held alongside the one in Tripoli to ensure that Israeli players could take part—Sutovsky sent his entry form back on the condition he played in Malta. This parallel event was cancelled, however, following a press release from the Libyan authorities that "The Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya will pleasantly provide entry visas to all the qualified participants of this great Championship", which was taken by most to mean that all players, including Israelis, would be welcome to take part. This appeared to be contradicted by a statement from Mohammed Qadhafi, chairman of the Libyan Olympic Committee and son of Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi, that "We did not and will not invite the Zionist enemy to this championship."
Several prominent figures criticized FIDE over this matter, with both Grandmaster Boris Gulko, a Jew with joint American and Israeli citizenship, and Beatriz Marinello, president of the United States Chess Federation writing open letters to FIDE criticizing their handling of the issue.
On May 13, the Anti-Defamation League wrote to FIDE, saying it was "troubling" that Libya should be hosting the championships, and urging FIDE to ensure that Israeli players were treated equally. The letter raised concerns over the Libyans not allowing the coaches and families of Israeli players into the country. Similar concerns were expressed in an Association of Chess Professionals open letter of May 26.
FIDE maintained throughout that Israeli players would have been issued with visas upon their arrival in Libya. This assurance was never put to the test, however: none of the qualified players took part in the championship and Boris Gulko, who has joint American and Israeli citizenship, withdrew from the event after initially indicating he would play. The only player in the final list of participants with an Israeli passport—Vadim Milov, representing Switzerland—never travelled to Libya: he complained that his official invitation to the event had arrived so late that it was physically impossible for him to get to Libya with it in time. Milov claims that this constituted a deliberate attempt by FIDE to exclude him. In response, FIDE said that the delay in sending Milov's invitation was due to Milov not sending them his passport details until a deadline had passed, and that even with this delay, Milov could still have arrived in Tripoli in time for his first game, which they had offered to postpone if necessary. Milov took his case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne which found that FIDE "undertook extraordinary efforts to make sure that Claimant could participate in the WCC 2004 although such efforts could and should have been made earlier" and ultimately cleared FIDE of any ill-intentioned effort to exclude Milov, concluding "there is no ground for Claimant to claim damages from Respondent." Milov later responded to this decision in an open letter.
It was also reported that the Israeli chess federation was considering suing FIDE "for compensation for the damages incurred by our exclusion from this tournament".

Strength

As a result of these and other factors, many of the players who were invited to take part in the tournament – including world number two Viswanathan Anand, and number six Peter Svidler – declined. In addition, Kasparov, Kramnik and Lékó did not take part owing to them being involved at a later stage of the reunification process. This led to a somewhat weaker lineup than previous championships, with only three of the world's top ten accepting the invitation to play, and only two of those actually turning up to the event. This weakness has itself been a cause of controversy, with claims that any tournament with so many top players missing should not be considered a World Championship at all.

List of participants

On May 28, FIDE published a list of participants in the championship which was billed as "final". However, changes were made following the withdrawal of Gulko, Shabalov and Onischuk. A later "final" list included players of a range of skills from Veselin Topalov down to Tarik Abulhul. It included only three of the world's top ten.
The following are the 128 players included in this list in order of seeding, with the country they represent and their FIDE Elo rating on the April 2004 list:
  1. 2737
  2. 2732
  3. 2731
  4. 2719
  5. 2716
  6. 2712
  7. 2695
  8. 2692
  9. 2690
  10. 2689
  11. 2689
  12. 2681
  13. 2680
  14. 2679
  15. 2675
  16. 2672
  17. 2671
  18. 2670
  19. 2668
  20. 2667
  21. 2666
  22. 2665
  23. 2665
  24. 2659
  25. 2657
  26. 2656
  27. 2654
  28. 2652
  29. 2651
  30. 2649
  31. 2648
  32. 2648
  33. 2647
  34. 2645
  35. 2640
  36. 2639
  37. 2639
  38. 2637
  39. 2635
  40. 2634
  41. 2633
  42. 2633
  43. 2631
  44. 2631
  45. 2630
  46. 2629
  47. 2628
  48. 2627
  49. 2627
  50. 2626
  51. 2622
  52. 2621
  53. 2621
  54. 2616
  55. 2616
  56. 2616
  57. 2614
  58. 2612
  59. 2609
  60. 2608
  61. 2607
  62. 2605
  63. 2602
  64. 2602
  65. 2602
  66. 2601
  67. 2601
  68. 2600
  69. 2599
  70. 2599
  71. 2595
  72. 2593
  73. 2593
  74. 2592
  75. 2591
  76. 2587
  77. 2587
  78. 2586
  79. 2586
  80. 2583
  81. 2583
  82. 2582
  83. 2580
  84. 2580
  85. 2579
  86. 2573
  87. 2570
  88. 2564
  89. 2562
  90. 2559
  91. 2559
  92. 2558
  93. 2557
  94. 2557
  95. 2552
  96. 2550
  97. 2548
  98. 2548
  99. 2544
  100. 2544
  101. 2542
  102. 2542
  103. 2539
  104. 2537
  105. 2534
  106. 2533
  107. 2529
  108. 2523
  109. 2507
  110. 2507
  111. 2501
  112. 2490
  113. 2489
  114. 2484
  115. 2478
  116. 2457
  117. 2444
  118. 2443
  119. 2442
  120. 2442
  121. 2426
  122. 2395
  123. 2379
  124. 2374
  125. 2352
  126. 2277
  127. 2257
  128. 2076
Four players — Morozevich, Milov, Shulman and Hjartarson — did not appear for their first round matches and were defaulted.