Say hi to Ruslan Ponomariov, the youngest FIDE world champion. Wait, isn’t that D Gukesh? No, technically, he isn’t. What? How is that possible? Let us make it simpler. D Gukesh is the youngest undisputed FIDE world champion. Undisputed is the keyword here. Understood. But what about it? To cut the long story short, there was a time period between 1993 and 2006 when the chess world had two world champions, one was the undisputed classical world champion conducted outside FIDE’s control and the other one was crowned by a parallel knockout tournament conducted by FIDE.
Former world champion Gary Kasparov, who is credited with having held the world title between 1993 and 2000, split away from FIDE after a dispute and formed the Professional Chess Association, reported The Indian Express. “Ever since 1993, there have been two titles, the phoney one controlled and organised by FIDE and the real one organised outside FIDE’s control,” IM David Levy wrote for Chessbase in 2004.
“While Kasparov was defending his title against the strongest opponents of the day, FIDE continued to conduct a “World Championship” of its own. But the idea of FIDE’s event was not to find out who was the strongest chess player in the world at the time of their event, instead it was merely a tournament in which the winner would be designated, by FIDE, as ‘World Champion’,” he wrote.
Needless to say, the knockout tournament, also known as the world championship, conducted by FIDE didn’t always feature the world’s best chess players. Ukraine’s Ruslan Ponomariov won one of those tournaments in 2002 and was crowned the FIDE world champion.
When did Ponomariov become a World Champion?
“The win meant that Ponomariov, just a few months after his 18th birthday, was the FIDE World Champion—by far the youngest to do so. Note that this was when the world title was split, so the current and previous classical world champions, GMs Vladimir Kramnik and Garry Kasparov, respectively, didn’t take part in this world championship event,” wrote chess.com.
Gukesh, on the other hand, became world champion at the age of 18 years and six months. Ponomariov, who once held the record for being the youngest Grand Master at the of 14, was younger than Gukesh when he aced a 128-player knockout tournament with two-game matches in the first five rounds, four-game matches in the semifinals, and eight-game matches in the finals. But it was not recognised by the world’s top chess players.
Where is Ponomariov now? “He continued building an impressive chess career and remained in the world’s top-20 ranked players until the early 2010s. To this day, he stays active in chess by taking part in high-level chess competitions and streaming regularly,” says chess.com
The despute between the two fractions of chess was finally resolved in 2006 when Classical World Chess Champion Kramnik and FIDE World Chess Champion Veselin Topalov – were brought together to crown an undisputed World Champion.
Now, the important question — Is Gukesh the youngest world champion or not? Yes, officially, he is, as Ponomariov’s win is not undisputed.
