The 1997 FIDE Candidates tournament was a 97-player knockout held at the Martinihal in Groningen, the Netherlands, 9-30 December. It was the first time the knockout tournament format was used to decide FIDE's World Championship. The winner would earn the right to challenge FIDE World Champion Anatoly Karpov in 1998. Most of the world's strongest players took part, but not Garry Kasparov, who split from FIDE in 1993 and claimed to be the "true" World Champion. The early rounds had two games each, plus tiebreak games if necessary. The final was a match of four games. The players received 100 minutes for the first 40 moves, followed by 50 more minutes for the next 20 moves, and then 10 more minutes for the rest of the game, with 30 seconds added per move from move one. The tiebreaks consisted of two 25 min + 10-sec increment Rapid games, then if necessary two 15+10 Rapid games (these were skipped in Round 1), and if still equal, individual "sudden death" Rapid games with 4+10 for White and 5+10 for Black until there was a win (a draw did not count as a win for Black). If too many draws in the latter the arbiter could decide on a single Armageddon game in which White received 6 minutes with no additions and Black 5 minutes, with a draw counting as a win for Black. The total prize fund was $5 million, with the Round 1 losers taking home $6000 and the final (Round 7) winner no less than $1,370,000 - minus 20% tax to FIDE. Play started each day at 1:30 pm. Chief arbiter: Geurt Gijssen.
Vladimir Kramnik withdrew, mainly in protest against the status given to Karpov, whom he regarded as seeded into the WC match. The Women's World Champion Zsuzsa Polgar also declined to play, and Essam El Gindy did not turn up, so the number of players was reduced from 100 to 97. With 28 players seeded into Round 2, and Boris Gelfand seeded into Round 3, Round 1 had 68 players (34 matches). Round 2 had 34 + 28 = 62 players (31 matches), and with the addition of Gelfand, Round 3 had the usual 32 players (16 matches). A total of 323 games were played (194 Classical games and 129 Rapid games). The results of Rounds 5-7 were as follows:
Quarterfinals, Dec 20-22 Semifinals, Dec 23-25 Final, Dec 26-30
Anand 1½ -- -- - 1½
Shirov 0½ -- -- - ½
Anand ½1 -- -- - 1½
Gelfand ½0 -- -- - ½
Gelfand ½½ ½1 -- - 2½
Dreev ½½ ½0 -- - 1½
Anand ½½½½ ½½ ½½ 1 5
Adams ½½½½ ½½ ½½ 0 4
Adams ½½ ½1 -- - 2½
Van Wely ½½ ½0 -- - 1½
Adams 10 ½½ ½½ 1 4
Short 01 ½½ ½½ 0 3
Short 11 -- -- - 2
Krasenkow 00 -- -- - 0
Viswanathan Anand beat Michael Adams in the first sudden death game of the final (Round 7) and qualified for playing against a rested Karpov three days later in Lausanne, Switzerland, see Karpov - Anand FIDE World Championship Match (1998).The terms of Groningen was that both Karpov and Kasparov were seeded into the semifinal Round 6 matches. In the event that one of the two declined to participate (Kasparov did), the other would be seeded directly into the Lausanne match. Kasparov dismissed the match between Anand and Karpov as being between "a tired player and an old player". FIDE promised that for subsequent World Championships the reigning champion would enter the elimination matches as seeded into Round 2, and two years later the FIDE champion (Karpov) had to participate in the knockout to fight for the title. But then he declined to play, see FIDE World Championship Knockout Tournament (1999).
Mark Weeks 1: https://www.mark-weeks.com/chess/97...
Mark Weeks 2: https://www.mark-weeks.com/chess/98...
Carolus Chess: https://sites.google.com/site/carol...
TWIC 1: https://theweekinchess.com/html/twi...)
TWIC 2: https://theweekinchess.com/html/twi...)
TWIC 3: https://theweekinchess.com/html/twi...)
TWIC 4: https://theweekinchess.com/html/twi...)
TWIC 5: https://theweekinchess.com/html/twi...)
Leidsch Dagblad, 31 December 1997, p. 23: https://leiden.courant.nu/issue/LD/...
Tidskrift för Schack, 1/1998, pp. 2-14: https://tfsarkiv.schack.se/pdf/1998...
Wikipedia article: FIDE World Chess Championship 1998
Wikipedia article: MartiniPlaza
Previous: Karpov - Gelfand Candidates Final (1995) and Kamsky - Salov Candidates Final (1995). Next: Dortmund Candidates (2002)
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