It was 1993 when the personality of the World Chess Federation (FIDE) split. World champion Gary Kasparov and world champion candidate Nigel Short headed a number of grand masters who left FIDE and created a new international federation: The Professional Chess Association (PCA).

Kasparov, Short, and company had several reasons for their departure, but the primary cause was the confrontation with the Filipino ex FIDE President Florencio Campomanes, who decided to annul the players' right to vote in the decision making of FIDE. Kasparov and Short found this unacceptable and were expelled from FIDE.

For a period of time the world had no chess champion, but both federations decided to move on and organize separate world championships.

Kasparov and Short played the PCA world championship in 1993 in London. Kasparov won and became PCA world champion.
Anatoli Karpov and Jan Timman played the FIDE world championship. Karpov won and became FIDE world champion.

Since then, chess has had two world champions. FIDE got rid of Campomanes and chose a new president, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. This did not help much though, as the FIDE title remained devalued.

In an effort to regain credibility, FIDE changed the format of the world championship tournament. The traditional champion against candidate tournament was replaced by multi player knockout tournaments, which drove almost unknown grand masters as Khalifman or Kasimdzhanov to the world title.

The new formula was not working, so the leadership of FIDE then decided to end this chaos. Last year they brought the eight strongest players in the world to San Luis, Argentina, for a world championship, in which Veselin Topalov prevailed.

At the same time, the ACP was having its problems. Its main sponsors abandoned them and the organization almost went bankrupt. Ultimately, the ACP found sponsors for its world championship between Kasparov and Kramnik in 2000. Kramnik won and has managed to retain the title to the present day.

Both sides realized it was time to treat chess' schizophrenia, and conversations between the champions began in order to organize a reunification tournament September 21 October 13 in the Russian city of Elista.

The chess world seemed united again, but strife has struck this championship, too. (How couldn't it?)

After four games the score was 3 1 for Kramnik, before Topalov and his team decided to play dirty. They absurdly accused Kramnik of cheating, and the games ceased. At this moment we don't know what's going to happen and the schizophrenia of chess continues. At least the two world champions have played four interesting games. Today we present game number two, the most interesting of the four.