Candidates Tournament
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Candidates Tournament was a triannual chess tournament organized by the world chess federation FIDE as the final contest to determine the challenger for the World Chess Championship. The numbers in the tournament varied over the years, between eight and fifteen players. Most of these qualified from Interzonal tournaments, though the top one or two from the previous Candidates tournament gained direct entry without having to play the Interzonal.
Before 1965, the tournament was organized in a round-robin format. From 1965 on, the tournament was played as knockout matches, often spread over several months. In 1995-6, the defending champion also entered the Candidates, so the winner was the FIDE world champion.
FIDE discontinued the Candidates tournaments after 1996.
Following its split from FIDE in 1993, the "Classical" World Championship has also held three candidates tournaments, under a different sponsor each time.
[edit] Location and winners
- 1950 - Budapest - David Bronstein
- 1953 - Zurich - Vasily Smyslov
- 1956 - Amsterdam - Vasily Smyslov
- 1959 - Bled, Zagreb, and Belgrade - Mikhail Tal
- 1962 - Curaçao - Tigran Petrosian
- 1965 - Boris Spassky
- 1968 - Boris Spassky
- 1971 - Robert James Fischer
- 1974 - Anatoly Karpov
- 1977 - Viktor Korchnoi
- 1980 - Viktor Korchnoi
- 1983 - Garry Kasparov
- 1986 - Anatoly Karpov
- 1989 - Anatoly Karpov
- 1992 - Nigel Short
- 1994 (Professional Chess Association) - Viswanathan Anand
- 1996 (FIDE) - Anatoly Karpov
- 1998 (World Chess Council) - Linares - Alexei Shirov
- 2002 (Classical World Championship) - Dortmund - Peter Leko
