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101-688: The Free Internet Chess Server (FICS) is a volunteer-run internet chess server . It launched in 1995, in response to the commercialization of the original American Internet Chess Server (ICS). In January 1992, Michael Moore of the University of Utah and Richard Nash started the first online service facilitating live chess games, the American Internet Chess Server (commonly known as the Internet Chess Server or ICS). The initial release, accessible via telnet ,

202-465: A short tied match against Carl Schlechter , although the exact conditions of this match are a mystery. He then defeated Dawid Janowski in the most one-sided title match in history later in 1910 . Lasker's negotiations for title matches from 1911 onwards were extremely controversial. In 1911, he received a challenge for a world title match against José Raúl Capablanca and, in addition to making severe financial demands, proposed some novel conditions:

303-601: A championship match between Karpov and Timman. For the first time in history, there were two World Chess Champions: Kasparov defeated Short and Karpov beat Timman . FIDE and the PCA each held a championship cycle in 1993–1996, with many of the same challengers playing in both. Kasparov and Karpov both won their respective cycles. In the PCA cycle, Kasparov defeated Viswanathan Anand in the PCA World Chess Championship 1995 . Karpov defeated Gata Kamsky in

404-425: A claim while Morphy was alive (Morphy died in 1884). There are a number of references to Steinitz as world champion in the 1870s, the earliest being after the first Zukertort match in 1872. Later, in 1879, it was argued that Zukertort was world champion, since Morphy and Steinitz were not active. However, later in his career, at least from 1887, Steinitz dated his reign from this 1866 match, and early sources such as

505-507: A computer and made publicly available for free. The FICS game archive has been used in academic studies on memory, decision-making, and user interface design. The server and its archive have been used to train chess engines and chess-related machine learning projects, while the FICS code has been used to launch similar regional or thematic chess servers as well as influencing the design of other chess projects. Internet chess server In

606-462: A dedicated client, there are also web-based interfaces. Users can play using an anonymous guest account or register for an account with a username. Registered users can play games rated using the Glicko rating system . Once connected, discussion takes place in a wide number of function-specific or subject-specific chat channels numbered 0 through 255. For example, channel 0 is for administrators only, 1

707-654: A match (8–6, 0 draws). However, he was not immediately able to conclusively demonstrate his superiority. Steinitz placed third at the Paris 1867 chess tournament , behind Kolisch and Szymon Winawer ; he placed second at the Dundee 1867 tournament, behind Gustav Neumann ; and he again placed second at the Baden-Baden 1870 chess tournament , which was the strongest that had been held to date (Anderssen came first, and won twice against Steinitz). Steinitz confirmed his standing as

808-413: A new challenger for the world championship match, which was held every three years. Before the 1993 match , then reigning champion Garry Kasparov and his championship rival Nigel Short broke away from FIDE, and conducted the match under the umbrella of the newly formed Professional Chess Association . FIDE conducted its own tournament, which was won by Anatoly Karpov , and led to a rival claimant to

909-549: A possibility. Michael Moore, of the University of Utah , and Richard Nash recognised the potential of an Internet chess server and created its first incarnation, hosted at lark.utah.edu and accessible through telnet . The official opening date of the ICS was January 15, 1992. John Chanak, William Kish, and Aaron Putnam moved the server to a host machine at Carnegie Mellon University in July 1992, and took over its operation. Although it

1010-489: A proposal put forward by the Soviet Union (authored by Mikhail Botvinnik ). The 1938 AVRO tournament was used as the basis for the 1948 Championship Tournament . The AVRO tournament had brought together the eight players who were, by general acclamation, the best players in the world at the time. Two of the participants at AVRO – Alekhine and former world champion José Raúl Capablanca – had died; but FIDE decided that

1111-509: A service which had been free. Several former ICS programmers saw the move as exploiting their work. On the day its rebranding was announced, programmers created a mailing list focused on developing an alternative, though work had been in progress, using Nash's original code, since Sleator initially revealed his commercialization plans. Several developers contributed, led by Nash, Henrik Gram, David Flynn, and Chris Petroff. The effort reacting to commercialization led to servers in several places around

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1212-429: A similar clause that if Lasker should resign the title after a date had been set for the match, Capablanca should become world champion. On 27 June 1920 Lasker abdicated in favor of Capablanca because of public criticism of the terms of the match, naming Capablanca as his successor. Some commentators questioned Lasker's right to name his successor; Amos Burn raised the same objection but welcomed Lasker's resignation of

1313-432: A super-tournament (AVRO) of ex-champions and rising stars should be held to select the next challenger. FIDE rejected this proposal and at their second attempt nominated Salo Flohr as the official challenger. Euwe then declared that: if he retained his title against Alekhine he was prepared to meet Flohr in 1940 but he reserved the right to arrange a title match either in 1938 or 1939 with José Raúl Capablanca , who had lost

1414-577: A tie-breaking rule, with Reuben Fine placed second and Capablanca and Flohr in the bottom places; and the outbreak of World War II in 1939 cut short the controversy. Alexander Alekhine died in 1946 before anyone else could win against him in match for the World Champion title. This resulted in an interregnum that made the normal procedure impossible. The situation was very confused, with many respected players and commentators offering different solutions. FIDE found it very difficult to organize

1515-475: A tradition continued of the world championship being decided by a match between the reigning champion, and a challenger: if a player thought he was strong enough, he (or his friends) would find financial backing for a match purse and challenge the reigning world champion. If he won, he would become the new champion. Steinitz successfully defended his world title against Mikhail Chigorin in 1889 , Isidor Gunsberg in 1891 , and Chigorin again in 1892 . In 1887,

1616-615: Is a simple, text-based variant of the TELNET protocol. It is sparsely documented and not standardised, although a few reference implementations and several clients exist. In addition to standalone clients, many servers also offer websites that can be used directly from a Web browser . These are popular with new users and users of public computers. Over the years, several Internet chess servers have been created. The most popular are Chess.com , Chesshub.com , Lichess , ICC , Chess Craft , Playchess.com , FICS and Chesscube . Chess

1717-419: Is also among the games previously offered by non-specialist site Yahoo! Games . World Chess Championship Pre-FIDE FIDE: Split titles (Classical): Split titles (FIDE): Reunified (FIDE): The World Chess Championship is played to determine the world champion in chess . The current world champion is Ding Liren , who defeated Ian Nepomniachtchi in the 2023 World Chess Championship after

1818-588: Is considered to have established Staunton as the world's strongest player, at least in England and France. By the 1830s, players from Germany and more generally Central Europe were beginning to appear on the scene: the strongest of the Berlin players around 1840 was probably Ludwig Bledow , co-founder of the Berlin Pleiades . The earliest recorded use of the term "World Champion" was in 1845, when Staunton

1919-442: Is for general help, 50 is general chat, and 49 is for tournaments. Players can choose any time control and increment. In addition to standard chess, FICS hosts several chess variants , including suicide , loser's , atomic , wild (including chess960 ), bughouse , and crazyhouse . FICS relays major live chess events. A bot takes the moves in ongoing games and relays them to special demo accounts on FICS. These demo accounts bear

2020-467: Is some debate over whether to date Steinitz's reign as world champion from his win over Anderssen in 1866, or from his win over Zukertort in 1886. The 1886 match was clearly agreed to be for the world championship, but there is no indication that Steinitz was regarded as the defending champion. There is also no known evidence of Steinitz being called the world champion after defeating Anderssen in 1866. It has been suggested that Steinitz could not make such

2121-620: The 1984 World Chess Championship , Karpov fought against Garry Kasparov . Karpov retained the title after the tournament went for more than five months and was terminated with Karpov leading with five wins to Kasparov's three and 40 draws after 48 matches. Karpov eventually lost his title in 1985 to Kasparov, who won the title by a scoreline of 13–11. The two played three more subsequent championships in World Chess Championship 1986 (won by Kasparov, 12½–11½), World Chess Championship 1987 (drawn 12–12, Kasparov retained

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2222-568: The American Chess Congress started work on drawing up regulations for the future conduct of world championship contests. Steinitz supported this endeavor, as he thought he was becoming too old to remain world champion. The proposal evolved through many forms (as Steinitz pointed out, such a project had never been undertaken before), and resulted in the 1889 tournament in New York to select a challenger for Steinitz , rather like

2323-485: The Anderssen vs Steinitz match (London, 1866); Steinitz and Zukertort played their 1886 match for £400 a side. Lasker introduced the practice of demanding that the challenger should provide the whole of the purse, and his successors followed his example up to World War II. This requirement made arranging world championship matches more difficult, for example: Marshall challenged Lasker in 1904 but could not raise

2424-744: The COVID-19 pandemic . The next match returned to the normal schedule and was held in 2024. Emanuel Lasker was the longest serving World Champion, having held the title for 27 years, and holds the record for the most Championship wins with six along with Kasparov and Karpov. Though the world championship is open to all players, there are separate championships for women , under-20s and lower age groups , and seniors . There are also chess world championships in rapid , blitz , correspondence , problem solving , Fischer random chess , and computer chess . The game of chess in its modern form emerged in Spain in

2525-494: The Internet Chess Club , or ICC, and charging a yearly membership fee of $ US 49 ($ US 59.95 in 2007). This announcement was highly controversial among existing members. Many volunteers who had contributed in various ways to the flourishing of ICS were upset that anyone would attempt to profit from their efforts. Active players on the server who were used to the service being provided without charge were not pleased with

2626-558: The interregnum . The proposals which led to the 1948 Championship Tournament also specified the procedure by which challengers for the World Championship would be selected in a three-year cycle: countries affiliated to FIDE would send players to Zonal Tournaments (the number varied depending on how many good enough players each country had); the players who gained the top places in these would compete in an Interzonal Tournament (later split into two and then three tournaments as

2727-402: The 15th century, though rule variations persisted until the late 19th century. Before Wilhelm Steinitz and Johannes Zukertort in the late 19th century, no chess player seriously claimed to be champion of the world. The phrase was used by some chess writers to describe other players of their day, and the status of being the best at the time has sometimes been awarded in retrospect, going back to

2828-475: The 1962 Candidates and then defeated Botvinnik in 1963 to become world champion. After the 1962 Candidates, Bobby Fischer publicly alleged that the Soviets had colluded to prevent any non-Soviet – specifically him – from winning. He claimed that Petrosian, Efim Geller and Paul Keres had prearranged to draw all their games, and that Viktor Korchnoi had been instructed to lose to them. Yuri Averbakh , who

2929-461: The 1970s, one could play correspondence chess in a PLATO System program called 'chess3'. Several users used chess3 regularly; often a particular user would make several moves per day, sometimes with several games simultaneously in progress. In theory one could use chess3 to play a complete game of chess in one sitting, but chess3 was not usually used this way. PLATO was not connected to Internet predecessor ARPANET in any way that allowed mass use by

3030-495: The Berlin Pleiades], the best player of Germany": von der Lasa was unable to attend the 1851 tournament, though he was invited. In 1851, Anderssen lost a match to von der Lasa; in 1856, George Walker wrote that "[von der Lasa] and Anderssen are decidedly the two best in the known world". Von der Lasa did not compete in tournaments or formal matches because of the demands of his diplomatic career, but his games show that he

3131-569: The Classical World Chess Champion. Meanwhile, FIDE had decided to scrap the Interzonal and Candidates system, instead having a large knockout event in which a large number of players contested short matches against each other over just a few weeks (see FIDE World Chess Championship 1998 ). Rapid and blitz games were used to resolve ties at the end of each round, a format which some felt did not necessarily recognize

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3232-512: The FIDE World Championship in 1999 , Anand in 2000 , Ruslan Ponomariov in 2002 , and Rustam Kasimdzhanov in 2004 . By 2002, not only were there two rival champions, but Kasparov's strong results – he had the top Elo rating in the world and had won a string of major tournaments after losing his title in 2000 – ensured even more confusion over who was World Champion. In May 2002, American grandmaster Yasser Seirawan led

3333-524: The New York Times in 1894, Emanuel Lasker in 1908, and Reuben Fine in 1952 all do the same. Many modern commentators divide Steinitz's reign into an "unofficial" one from 1866 to 1886, and an "official" one after 1886. By this reckoning, the first World Championship match was in 1886 , and Steinitz was the first official World Chess Champion. Following the Steinitz–Zukertort match,

3434-534: The World Championship. Fischer won the 1992 Fischer–Spassky rematch decisively with a score of 10–5. After becoming world champion by default, Karpov confirmed his worthiness for the title with a string of tournament successes from the mid 70s to the early 80s. He defended his title twice against ex-Soviet Viktor Korchnoi , first in Baguio in 1978 (6–5 with 21 draws) and in Merano in 1981 (6–2, with 10 draws). In

3535-575: The addition of the membership fee. A handful of programmers who had worked on the original ICS became unhappy with what they saw as the commoditization of their project. They formed the Free Internet Chess Server (FICS), and continued to allow everyone to have access to all features for free. In 1996, John Fanning , uncle of Napster founder Shawn Fanning , started Chess.net, a commercial Internet chess server to rival ICS. Both services remain operational today. The ICS protocol

3636-604: The analysis Philidor gave in his book (e.g. the Modenese Masters ), and some more recent authors have echoed these doubts. In the early 19th century, it was generally considered that the French player Alexandre Deschapelles was the strongest player of the time, though three games between him and the English player William Lewis in 1821 suggests that they were on par. After Deschapelles and Lewis withdrew from play,

3737-487: The breakdown of his first attempt to negotiate a title match against Lasker (1911), Capablanca drafted rules for the conduct of future challenges, which were agreed to by the other top players at the 1914 Saint Petersburg tournament, including Lasker, and approved at the Mannheim Congress later that year. The main points were: the champion must be prepared to defend his title once a year; the match should be won by

3838-402: The challenger or both players, with the assistance of financial backers, would contribute to a purse ; about half would be distributed to the winner's backers, and the winner would receive the larger share of the remainder (the loser's backers got nothing). The players had to meet their own travel, accommodation, food and other expenses out of their shares of the purse. This system evolved out of

3939-406: The champion must defend his title within one year of receiving a challenge from a recognized master; the champion would decide the date of the match; the champion was not obliged to accept a challenge for a purse of less than US$ 10,000 (about $ 170,000 in current terms); 20% of the purse was to be paid to the title holder, and the remainder being divided, 60% going to the winner of the match, and 40% to

4040-732: The championship should be awarded to the winner of a round-robin tournament in which the other six participants at AVRO would play four games against each other. These players were: Max Euwe , from the Netherlands; Botvinnik, Paul Keres and Salo Flohr from the Soviet Union; and Reuben Fine and Samuel Reshevsky from the United States. However, FIDE soon accepted a Soviet request to substitute Vasily Smyslov for Flohr, and Fine dropped out in order to continue his degree studies in psychology , so only five players competed. Botvinnik won convincingly and thus became world champion, ending

4141-516: The code. One of his primary contributions was a mechanism to adjust clock times for the effects of internet lag. He announced plans to commercialize the service, copyrighted the code in 1994, and rebranded it as the Internet Chess Club (ICC) in 1995, charging membership fees. Sleator's decision to commercialize the ICS was controversial, outraging members who felt the internet should be free and open, or who simply did not want to pay for

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4242-503: The early 17th-century Italian player Gioachino Greco (the first player where complete games survive). Richard Lambe, in his 1764 book The History of Chess , wrote that the 18th-century French player François-André Danican Philidor was "supposed to be the best Chess-player in the world". Philidor wrote an extremely successful chess book ( Analyse du jeu des Échecs ) and gave public demonstrations of his blindfold chess skills. However, some of Philidor's contemporaries were not convinced by

4343-503: The early 1920s but only Alekhine could raise the US$ 10,000 Capablanca demanded and only in 1927. Capablanca was shockingly upset by the new challenger. Before the match, almost nobody gave Alekhine a chance against the dominant Cuban , but Alekhine overcame Capablanca's natural skill with his unmatched drive and extensive preparation (especially deep opening analysis, which became a hallmark of most future grandmasters). The aggressive Alekhine

4444-489: The early discussions on how to resolve the interregnum because problems with money and travel so soon after the end of World War II prevented many countries from sending representatives. The shortage of clear information resulted in otherwise responsible magazines publishing rumors and speculation, which only made the situation more confusing. It did not help that the Soviet Union had long refused to join FIDE, and by this time it

4545-578: The final of the FIDE World Chess Championship 1996 . Negotiations were held for a reunification match between Kasparov and Karpov in 1996–97, but nothing came of them. Soon after the 1995 championship, the PCA folded, and Kasparov had no organisation to choose his next challenger. In 1998 he formed the World Chess Council, which organised a candidates match between Alexei Shirov and Vladimir Kramnik . Shirov won

4646-435: The final venue. Even then Fischer raised difficulties, mainly over money. It took a phone call from United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and a doubling of the prize money by financier Jim Slater to persuade him to play. After a few more traumatic moments Fischer won the match 12½–8½. An unbroken line of FIDE champions had thus been established from 1948 to 1972, with each champion gaining his title by beating

4747-441: The first player to win six or eight games (the champion had the right to choose); and the stake should be at least £1,000 (about £120,000 in current terms). Following the controversies surrounding his 1921 match against Lasker, in 1922 world champion Capablanca proposed the "London Rules": the first player to win six games would win the match; playing sessions would be limited to 5 hours; the time limit would be 40 moves in 2½ hours;

4848-512: The frequent complaint that players would lose blitz games on time due to network lag. In 1994, he copyrighted the code, and began receiving purchase offers from companies wanting to commercialise the server. There were questions about whether Sleator was right to claim that the ICS was his intellectual property, since he did not code the original server, although he had made substantial improvements to its code. On March 1, 1995, Sleator announced his intentions to commercialise ICS himself, renaming it

4949-667: The grasp, successively, of Philidor, Bernard, Carlier [two members of La Société des Amateurs ], and Deschapelles". In 1840, a columnist in Fraser's Magazine (who was probably Walker) wrote, "Will Gaul continue the dynasty by placing a fourth Frenchman on the throne of the world? the three last chess chiefs having been successively Philidor, Deschapelles, and De La Bourdonnais." After La Bourdonnais' death in December 1840, Englishman Howard Staunton 's match victory over another Frenchman, Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint-Amant , in 1843

5050-493: The highest-quality play: Kasparov refused to participate in these events, as did Kramnik after he won the Classical title in 2000. In the first of these events, in 1998, champion Karpov was seeded directly into the final, but he later had to qualify alongside the other players. Karpov defended his title in the first of these championships in 1998, but resigned his title in protest at the new rules in 1999. Alexander Khalifman won

5151-527: The later world championship matches. Approximately 85 games (the true number is up for historical debate) were played, with La Bourdonnais winning a majority of the games. In 1839, George Walker wrote "The sceptre of chess, in Europe, has been for the last century, at least, wielded by a Gallic dynasty. It has passed from Legalle [Philidor's teacher, who Philidor regarded as being a player equal to himself, according to Deschapelles] to La Bourdonnais, through

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5252-421: The loser; the highest purse bid must be accepted. Alekhine , Bogoljubow , Maróczy , Réti , Rubinstein , Tartakower and Vidmar promptly signed them. The only match played under those rules was Capablanca vs Alekhine in 1927 , although there has been speculation that the actual contract might have included a "two-game lead" clause. Alekhine, Rubinstein and Nimzowitsch had all challenged Capablanca in

5353-402: The match should be considered drawn if neither player finished with a two-game lead; and it should have a maximum of 30 games, but finish if either player won six games and had a two-game lead (previous matches had been won by the first to win a certain number of games, usually 10; in theory, such a match might go on for ever). Capablanca objected to the two-game lead clause; Lasker took offence at

5454-566: The match, but negotiations for a Kasparov–Shirov match broke down, and Shirov was subsequently omitted from negotiations, much to his disgust. Plans for a 1999 or 2000 Kasparov–Anand match also broke down, and Kasparov organised a match with Kramnik in late 2000. In a major upset, Kramnik won the match with two wins, thirteen draws, and no losses. At the time the championship was called the Braingames World Chess Championship, but Kramnik later referred to himself as

5555-464: The money to challenge Steinitz. Lasker won the 1894 match and succeeded Steinitz as world champion. Lasker held the title from 1894 to 1921, the longest reign (27 years) of any champion. He won a return match against Steinitz in 1897 , and then did not defend his title for ten years, before playing four title defences in four years. He comfortably defeated Frank Marshall in 1907 and Siegbert Tarrasch in 1908 . In 1910, he almost lost his title in

5656-428: The money until 1907; in 1911 Lasker and Rubinstein agreed in principle to a world championship match, but this was never played as Rubinstein could not raise the money. In the early 1920s, Alekhine , Rubinstein and Nimzowitsch all challenged Capablanca , but only Alekhine was able to raise the US$ 10,000 that Capablanca demanded, and not until 1927. Attempts to form an international chess federation were made at

5757-494: The more recent Candidates Tournaments . The tournament was duly played, but the outcome was not quite as planned: Chigorin and Max Weiss tied for first place; their play-off resulted in four draws; and neither wanted to play a match against Steinitz – Chigorin had just lost to him, and Weiss wanted to get back to his work for the Rothschild Bank . The third prizewinner, Isidor Gunsberg , was prepared to play Steinitz for

5858-449: The names of the players in the event. Users and guests on FICS can watch the games in progress and chat about the games with each other. The relay has covered every single World Chess Championship since its inception. Other major relays include the yearly relay of Wijk aan Zee , Morelia-Linares and Amber Melody . The web-based Lichess platform obtains its tournament relays via FICS. All games played by registered users are recorded by

5959-465: The next cycle, 1963–1966, the round-robin tournament was replaced by a series of elimination matches. Initially the quarter-finals and semi-finals were best of 10 games, and the final was best of 12. Fischer, however, refused to take part in the 1966 cycle, and dropped out of the 1969 cycle after a controversy at 1967 Interzonal in Sousse. Both these Candidates cycles were won by Boris Spassky , who lost

6060-432: The number of Soviet players he might have to meet in the title match. Botvinnik lost to Vasily Smyslov in 1957 but won the return match in 1958, and lost to Mikhail Tal in 1960 but won the return match in 1961. Thus Smyslov and Tal each held the world title for a year, but Botvinnik was world champion for rest of the time from 1948 to 1963. The return match clause was not in place for the 1963 cycle. Tigran Petrosian won

6161-619: The number of countries and eligible players increased ); the highest-placed players from the Interzonal would compete in the Candidates Tournament , along with whoever lost the previous title match and the second-placed competitor in the previous Candidates Tournament three years earlier; and the winner of the Candidates played a title match against the champion. Until 1962 inclusive the Candidates Tournament

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6262-567: The organisation of the so-called "Prague Agreement" to reunite the world championship. Kramnik had organised a candidates tournament (won later in 2002 by Peter Leko ) to choose his challenger. It was agreed that Kasparov would play the FIDE champion (Ponomariov) for the FIDE title, and the winner of that match would face the winner of the Kramnik–Leko match for the unified title. However, the matches proved difficult to finance and organise. The Kramnik–Leko match did not take place until late 2004 (it

6363-633: The other offering more features for a fee. FICS is accessible via telnet and was text-only by default. Before graphical interfaces, users would see a board created by ASCII characters, with the lines of the board created by hyphens and pipes , and pieces represented by letters. Whereas ICC has dedicated, proprietary graphical interfaces, several have been developed for FICS, with none having official status. The earliest were XICS and XBoard , with subsequent programs including WinBoard , BabasChess, Jin, Thief, Raptor, eboard, PyChess , and JavaBoard. Though built with pre-web technology which typically requires

6464-405: The popularity of ICC, but as of 2012 it had about 900 people logged in at any given time, and by August 2014 it had over 650,000 registered accounts. In 2016, 50,000 active players played a total of 23 million games. In a 2024 book, Peter Doggers drew a comparison between the FICS and ICC rivalry and the later Lichess vs. Chess.com rivalry, with one side committed to free and open principles and

6565-415: The previous champion Magnus Carlsen had declined to defend his title. Ding is presently defending his title against Gukesh Dommaraju in the 2024 World Chess Championship tournament. The first event recognized as a world championship was the 1886 match between Wilhelm Steinitz and Johannes Zukertort , which was won by Steinitz, who became the first world champion. From 1886 to 1946, the champion set

6666-458: The previous incumbent. This came to an end when Anatoly Karpov won the right to challenge Fischer in 1975. Fischer objected to the "best of 24 games" championship match format that had been used from 1951 onwards, claiming that it would encourage whoever got an early lead to play for draws. Instead he demanded that the match should be won by whoever first won 10 games, except that if the score reached 9–9 he should remain champion. He argued that this

6767-406: The public, and consequently, chess3 was and still is relatively unknown to the public. In the eighties, chess play by email was still fairly novel. Latency with email was less significant than with traditional correspondence chess via paper letters. Often one could complete a dozen moves in a week. As network technology improved, public, widespread use of a centralised server for live play became

6868-524: The right to challenge Kasparov for the title. However, before the match took place, both Kasparov and Short complained of FIDE's mishandling of the prize pool in organizing the match, corruption in the leadership, and FIDE's failure to abide by their own rules, and split from FIDE to set up the Professional Chess Association (PCA), under whose auspices they held their match. In response, FIDE stripped Kasparov of his title and held

6969-458: The rules very flexibly to enable Fischer to play, as he thought it important for the health and reputation of the game that Fischer should have the opportunity to challenge for the title as soon as possible. Fischer crushed all opposition and won the right to challenge reigning champion Boris Spassky . After agreeing to play in Yugoslavia, Fischer raised a series of objections and Iceland was

7070-441: The same bracket" as Deschapelles and La Bourdonnais, who he had played years before, and that "his superiority is as obvious as theirs". But when Morphy returned to America in 1859, he abruptly retired from chess, though many considered him the world champion until his death in 1884. His sudden withdrawal from chess at his peak led to his being known as "the pride and sorrow of chess". After Morphy's retirement from chess, Anderssen

7171-405: The same conditions that governed their match in 1927. Although FIDE wished to set up a match between Alekhine and Bogoljubow, it made little progress and the title "Champion of FIDE" quietly vanished after Alekhine won the 1929 world championship match that he and Bogoljubow themselves arranged. While negotiating his 1937 World Championship rematch with Alekhine, Euwe proposed that if he retained

7272-446: The strongest players from France and England respectively were recognised as Louis de la Bourdonnais and Alexander McDonnell . La Bourdonnais visited England in 1825, where he played many games against Lewis and won most of them, and defeated all the other English masters despite offering handicaps . He and McDonnell contested a long series of matches in 1834 . These were the first to be adequately reported, and they somewhat resemble

7373-426: The terms in which Capablanca criticized the two-game lead condition and broke off negotiations. Further controversy arose when, in 1912, Lasker's terms for a proposed match with Akiba Rubinstein included a clause that, if Lasker should resign the title after a date had been set for the match, Rubinstein should become world champion. When he resumed negotiations with Capablanca after World War I , Lasker insisted on

7474-510: The terms, requiring any challenger to raise a sizable stake and defeat the champion in a match in order to become the new world champion. Following the death of reigning world champion Alexander Alekhine in 1946, the International Chess Federation (FIDE) took over administration of the World Championship, beginning with the 1948 tournament . From 1948 to 1993, FIDE organized a set of tournaments and matches to choose

7575-459: The time of the 1914 St. Petersburg , 1914 Mannheim and 1920 Gothenburg Tournaments. On 20 July 1924 the participants at the Paris tournament founded FIDE as a kind of players' union. FIDE's congresses in 1925 and 1926 expressed a desire to become involved in managing the world championship. FIDE was largely happy with the "London Rules", but claimed that the requirement for a purse of $ 10,000

7676-403: The title in New York, so this match was played in 1890–1891 and was won by Steinitz. The experiment was not repeated, and Steinitz's later matches were private arrangements between the players. Two young strong players emerged in late 1880s and early 1890s: Siegbert Tarrasch and Emanuel Lasker . Tarrasch had the better tournament results at the time, but it was Lasker who was able to raise

7777-415: The title match to Petrosian in 1966, but won and became world champion in 1969. In the 1969–1972 cycle Fischer caused two more crises. He refused to play in the 1969 US Championship, which was a Zonal Tournament. This would have eliminated him from the 1969–1972 cycle, but Benko was persuaded to concede his place in the Interzonal to Fischer. FIDE President Max Euwe accepted this maneuver and interpreted

7878-424: The title of World Champion for the next thirteen years until 2006. The titles were unified at the World Chess Championship 2006 , and all the subsequent tournaments and matches have once again been administered by FIDE. Since 2014 , the championship has settled on a two-year cycle, with championship matches conducted every even year. The 2020 and 2022 matches were postponed to 2021 and 2023 respectively because of

7979-530: The title to Alekhine in 1927; if Euwe lost his title to Capablanca then FIDE's decision should be followed and Capablanca would have to play Flohr in 1940. Most chess writers and players strongly supported the Dutch super-tournament proposal and opposed the committee processes favored by FIDE. While this confusion went unresolved: Euwe lost his title to Alekhine; the AVRO tournament in 1938 was won by Paul Keres under

8080-402: The title), and World Chess Championship 1990 (won by Kasparov, 12½–11½). In the five tournaments, Kasparov and Karpov played a total of 144 World Championship games with 104 draws, 21 wins by Kasparov and 19 wins by Karpov. In 1993, Nigel Short broke the domination of Kasparov and Karpov by defeating Karpov in the candidates semi-finals followed by Jan Timman in the finals, thereby earning

8181-506: The title, FIDE should manage the nomination of future challengers and the conduct of championship matches. FIDE had been trying since 1935 to introduce rules on how to select challengers, and its various proposals favored selection by some sort of committee. While they were debating procedures in 1937 and Alekhine and Euwe were preparing for their rematch later that year, the Royal Dutch Chess Federation proposed that

8282-407: The title. Capablanca argued that, if the champion abdicated, the title must go to the challenger, as any other arrangement would be unfair to the challenger. Lasker later agreed to play a match against Capablanca in 1921, announcing that, if he won, he would resign the title so that younger masters could compete for it. Capablanca won their 1921 match by four wins, ten draws and no losses. After

8383-422: The two Soviet representatives in FIDE, who were personal friends of reigning champion Mikhail Botvinnik . A defeated champion would have the right to a return match. FIDE also limited the number of players from the same country that could compete in the Candidates Tournament , on the grounds that it would reduce Soviet dominance of the tournament. Averbakh claimed that this was to Botvinnik's advantage as it reduced

8484-432: The wagering of small stakes on club games in the early 19th century. Up to and including the 1894 Steinitz–Lasker match, both players, with their backers, generally contributed equally to the purse, following the custom of important matches in the 19th century before there was a generally recognized world champion. For example: the stakes were £100 a side in both the second Staunton vs Saint-Amant match (Paris, 1843) and

8585-638: The world and in the United States, with the latter consolidating to form the Free Internet Chess Server, which launched on March 5, 1995. Its tagline is "we do it for the game--not the money". After a few months, it had 1,500 members. In 1998, the Free Internet Chess Organization (FICS) was organized as a nonprofit organization , although the formal entity was dissolved in 2007. The server is still maintained and administered by volunteers. FICS never matched

8686-491: The world's leading active player, winning the Paris 1878 chess tournament . Zukertort then won the London 1883 chess tournament by a convincing 3-point margin, ahead of nearly every leading player in the world, with Steinitz finishing second. This tournament established Steinitz and Zukertort as the best two players in the world, and led to a match between these two, the World Chess Championship 1886 , won by Steinitz. There

8787-645: The world's leading player by winning the London 1872 tournament, winning a match against Johannes Zukertort in 1872 (7–1, 4 draws), winning the Vienna 1873 chess tournament , and decisively winning a match over Joseph Henry Blackburne 7–0 (0 draws) in 1876. Apart from the Blackburne match, Steinitz played no competitive chess between the Vienna tournaments of 1873 and 1882 . During that time, Zukertort emerged as

8888-413: The world's leading player. In 1893, Henry Bird retrospectively awarded the title of first world chess champion to Anderssen for his victory, but there is no evidence that he was widely acclaimed as such at the time, and no mention of such a status afterwards in the tournament book by Staunton. Indeed, Staunton's tournament book calls Anderssen "after Heydebrand der Laza [Tassilo von der Lasa, another of

8989-419: Was buggy and suffered from lag problems, the server was popular among a small group of chess enthusiasts. Over time, many features were added to the ICS, such as Elo ratings and support for graphical clients, and the server was made more stable. In late 1992, Daniel Sleator , professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, took over management of the ICS. He addressed, among other issues,

9090-531: Was a multi-cycle round-robin tournament – how and why it was changed are described below. The FIDE system followed its 1948 design through five cycles: 1948–1951, 1951–1954, 1954–1957, 1957–1960 and 1960–1963. The first two world championships under this system were drawn 12–12 – Botvinnik-Bronstein in 1951 and Botvinnik-Smyslov in 1954 – so Botvinnik retained the title both times. In 1956 FIDE introduced two apparently minor changes which Soviet grandmaster and chess official Yuri Averbakh alleged were instigated by

9191-402: Was again regarded as the world's strongest active player, a reputation he reinforced by winning the strong London 1862 chess tournament . Louis Paulsen and Ignatz Kolisch were also playing at a comparable standard to Anderssen in the 1860s: Anderssen narrowly won a match against Kolisch in 1861, and drew against Paulsen in 1862. In 1866, Wilhelm Steinitz narrowly defeated Anderssen in

9292-473: Was clear that about half the credible contenders were Soviet citizens. But, realizing that it could not afford to be excluded from discussions about the vacant world championship, the Soviet Union sent a telegram in 1947 apologizing for the absence of Soviet representatives and requesting that the USSR be represented on future FIDE Committees. The eventual solution was very similar to FIDE's initial proposal and to

9393-648: Was described as "the Chess Champion of England, or ... the Champion of the World". An important milestone was the London 1851 chess tournament , which was the first international chess tournament, organized by Staunton. It was played as a series of matches, and was won convincingly by the German Adolf Anderssen , including a 4–1 semi-final win over Staunton. This established Anderssen as

9494-407: Was drawn, so Kramnik retained his title). Meanwhile, FIDE never managed to organise a Kasparov match, either with 2002 FIDE champion Ponomariov, or 2004 FIDE champion Kasimdzhanov. Kasparov's frustration at the situation played a part in his decision to retire from chess in 2005, still ranked No. 1 in the world. Soon after, FIDE dropped the short knockout format for a World Championship and announced

9595-458: Was head of the Soviet team, confirmed in 2002 that Petrosian, Geller and Keres arranged to draw all their games in order to save their energy for games against non-Soviet players. Korchnoi, who defected from the USSR in 1976, never confirmed that he was forced to throw games. FIDE responded by changing the format of future Candidates Tournaments to eliminate the possibility of collusion. Beginning in

9696-429: Was helped by his tactical skill, which complicated the game. Immediately after winning, Alekhine announced that he was willing to grant Capablanca a return match provided Capablanca met the requirements of the "London Rules". Negotiations dragged on for several years, often breaking down when agreement seemed in sight. Alekhine easily won two title matches against Efim Bogoljubov in 1929 and 1934 . In 1935 , Alekhine

9797-409: Was hosted at the University of Utah , but over its first two years it moved repeatedly across American universities, with additional servers opening and connecting to each other through Nash's Internet Ratings Server. The software was coded, supported, and operated by volunteers. Daniel Sleator , professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University , took over operation in July 1992 and improved

9898-507: Was impracticable and called upon Capablanca to come to an agreement with the leading masters to revise the Rules. In 1926 FIDE decided in principle to create a title of "Champion of FIDE" and, in 1928, adopted the forthcoming 1928 Bogoljubow – Euwe match (won by Bogoljubow) as being for the "FIDE championship". Alekhine agreed to place future matches for the world title under the auspices of FIDE, except that he would only play Capablanca under

9999-456: Was more advantageous to the challenger than the champion's advantage under the existing system, where the champion retained the title if the match was tied at 12–12 including draws. Eventually FIDE deposed Fischer and crowned Karpov as the new champion. Fischer privately maintained that he was still World Champion. He went into seclusion and did not play chess in public again until 1992, when Spassky agreed to participate in an unofficial rematch for

10100-521: Was one of the world's best then: he won series of games against Staunton in 1844 and 1853. Anderssen was himself decisively beaten in an 1858 match against the American Paul Morphy (7–2, 2 draws). In 1858–59 Morphy played matches against several leading players, beating them all. This prompted some commentators at the time to call him the world champion: Gabriel-Éloy Doazan, who knew Morphy, wrote that "one can and...must place [him] in

10201-518: Was unexpectedly defeated by the Dutch Max Euwe , an amateur player who worked as a mathematics teacher. Alekhine convincingly won a rematch in 1937 . World War II temporarily prevented any further world title matches, and Alekhine remained world champion until his death in 1946. Before 1948 world championship matches were financed by arrangements similar to those Emanuel Lasker described for his 1894 match with Wilhelm Steinitz : either

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