The World Chess Championship 1993 was held from 1990 to 1993. It was one of the most controversial in history, with incumbent World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov

Garry Kasparov

Garry Kimovich Kasparov is a Russian chess grandmaster, a former World Chess Champion, writer, political activist, and one of the greatest chess players of all time....

, and official challenger Nigel Short

Nigel Short

Nigel David Short MBE is an English chess grandmaster earning the title at the age of 19. Short is often regarded as the strongest English player of the 20th century as he was ranked third in the world, from January 1988 – July 1989 and in 1993, he challenged Garry Kasparov for the World Chess...

, splitting from FIDE, the official world governing body of chess, and playing their title match under the auspices of the Professional Chess Association

Professional Chess Association

The Professional Chess Association , which existed between 1993 and 1996, was a rival organisation to FIDE, the international chess organization...

. In response, FIDE stripped Kasparov of his title, and instead held a title match between Anatoly Karpov

Anatoly Karpov

Anatoly Yevgenyevich Karpov is a Russian chess grandmaster and former World Champion. He was the official world champion from 1975 to 1985 when he was defeated by Garry Kasparov. He played three matches against Kasparov for the title from 1986 to 1990, before becoming FIDE World Champion once...

 and Jan Timman

Jan Timman

Jan Timman is a Dutch chess Grandmaster who was one of the world's leading players from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. At the peak of his career he was considered to be the best non-Soviet player and was known as "The Best of the West"...

.

The matches were won by Kasparov and Karpov respectively. For the first time in history, there were two rival World Chess Champions, a situation which persisted until the World Chess Championship 2006.

Qualification

The final four players from the 1988-90 Candidates tournament - Karpov, Timman, Yusupov and Speelman - were seeded directly into the Candidates. They were joined by the top 11 finishers from the Interzonal

Interzonal

Interzonal chess tournaments were tournaments organized by FIDE, the World Chess Federation, and were a stage in the triennial World Chess Championship cycle.- Zonal tournaments :...

, which was held as a 64-player Swiss system tournament

Swiss system tournament

A Swiss-system tournament is a commonly used type of tournament where players or teams need to be paired to face each other for several rounds of competition. This type of tournament was first used in a Zurich chess tournament in 1895, hence the name "Swiss system". The Swiss system is used when...

.

These 15 players played a series of Candidates matches

Candidates Tournament

The Candidates Tournament is a chess tournament organized by the world chess federation FIDE since 1950, as the final contest to determine the challenger for the World Chess Championship...

. If matches were tied after the allotted games, extra pairs of rapid chess games were played until one player had the lead.

PCA match

The Kasparov–Short final was a best of 24, played in London between September and October 1993

1993 in chess

-Top players:FIDE top 10 by Elo rating - January 1993# Garry Kasparov 2805# Anatoly Karpov 2725# Vassily Ivanchuk 2710# Viswanathan Anand 2710# Boris Gelfand 2690# Vladimir Kramnik 2685# Alexei Shirov 2670# Evgeny Bareev 2670# Kiril Georgiev 2660...

.

Player	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	Total
Garry Kasparov Garry Kasparov Garry Kimovich Kasparov is a Russian chess grandmaster, a former World Chess Champion, writer, political activist, and one of the greatest chess players of all time....	1	½	1	1	½	½	1	½	1	½	½	½	½	½	1	0	½	½	½	½	12½
Nigel Short Nigel Short Nigel David Short MBE is an English chess grandmaster earning the title at the age of 19. Short is often regarded as the strongest English player of the 20th century as he was ranked third in the world, from January 1988 – July 1989 and in 1993, he challenged Garry Kasparov for the World Chess...	0	½	0	0	½	½	0	½	0	½	½	½	½	½	0	1	½	½	½	½	7½

FIDE match

Karpov won the best-of-24 match 12½ to 8½ (six wins to two, with thirteen draws). He defeated Timman, the loser of the Candidates final against Nigel Short.