FIDE World Chess Championship 2002 FIDE World Chess Championship 2002 The FIDE World Chess Championship 2002 was held in Moscow, Russia. The first six rounds were played between 27 November and 14 December 2001, and the final match started on 16 January and ended on 23 January 2002. The Ukrainian Grandmaster Ruslan Ponomariov, aged 18, won the championship and became the youngest FIDE World Champion. At the time of this championship, the World title was split. The Classical World Champion, Vladimir Kramnik, did not participate, as well as the previous Classical Champion and world's highest-rated player, Garry Kasparov. However, all other strongest players of the
World Chess Championship 2008 (Vladimir Kramnik) had been given the right to challenge to regain his title. Its origin was in the complications in reunifying the world title in 2006. The chess world title was split between 1993 and 2006. In early 2006, FIDE had already announced the conditions for the World Chess Championship 2007: an eight-player tournament which included FIDE World Champion Veselin Topalov, but not "Classical" World Champion Vladimir Kramnik. FIDE later organized a reunification match between Kramnik and Topalov (the World Chess Championship 2006), with Kramnik to take Topalov's place in the 2007 tournament if he was to win the match.