Kasparov

Kasparov vs Anand, 1995
New York City

Although stripped of his title by FIDE for holding his 1993 match with Short outside the world chess body’s auspices, Kasparov was nevertheless widely considered the legitimate World Champion. The Professional Chess Association (PCA) created by Kasparov held a series of a series of candidate matches to choose an opponent for him. Viswanathan Anand succeeded in becoming the champions opponent.

	Kasparov and Anand play above New York City

Anand’s rise in the chess world was meteoric. Born in India he quickly emerged as his nation’s greatest player. At age fifteen, he became the youngest Indian to win the Intrnational Master title. At the age of sixteen he was crowned India’s National Champion. In 1987 he was the first Indian to win the World Junior Championship. In 1988, at the age of eighteen, he became the first official Grandmaster of India. Anand qualified for the PCA World Championship final by winning the candidates matches against Michael Adams and Gata Kamsky. ^[1]

The 1995 PCA title match was played on the Observation Deck on the 107th floor of the World Trade Center in New York City. The prize fund was 1,500,000 US$, with 2/3 for the winner. Ten percent of the fund would to go to the PCA. In case of a tied match, Kasparov would retain the PCA title, but the prize would be split. The match was to last 20 games instead of the traditional 24, each game played at 40 moves in 2 hours, then 20 moves in 1 hour, followed by 30 minutes to complete the game, There were to be no timeouts and no adjournments.

The match started with eight straight draws (a record for the opening of a world championship match) until Anand drew first blood by winning game nine. This victory was not to be enjoyed for very long, as Kasparov then rebounded by dominantly winning four of the next five games.

After 18 games, with a final score of 10½ to 7½ Kasparov retained the PCA World Chess Champion title.