World Chess Championship 1990 World Chess Championship 1990 The World Chess Championship 1990 was played between Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov. It was the fifth and final Kasparov–Karpov championship match, Kasparov winning by a single point. Three Interzonals were held in the summer of 1987, with 16 to 18 players playing in each and the top three scorers from each qualifying. In the first tournament in Subotica, Sax, Short, and Speelman qualified. Lubomir Kavalek withdrew after six rounds; his results are not included in the totals for the other players. Robert Hübner was invited, but declined to participate. As a result, Ribli had a
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.