World Chess Championship a Kasparov match, either with 2002 FIDE champion Ponomariov, or 2004 FIDE champion Kasimdzhanov. Partly due to his frustration at the situation, Kasparov retired from chess in 2005, still ranked No. 1 in the world. Soon after, FIDE dropped the short knockout format for a World Championship and announced the FIDE World Chess Championship 2005, a double round robin tournament to be held in San Luis, Argentina between eight of the leading players in the world. However Kramnik insisted that his title be decided in a match, and declined to participate. The tournament was convincingly won by the Bulgarian Veselin
World Chess Championship World Chess Championship The World Chess Championship (sometimes abbreviated as WCC) is played to determine the world champion in chess. Since 2014, the schedule has settled on a two-year cycle with a championship held in every even year. Magnus Carlsen has been world champion since he dethroned Viswanathan Anand in 2013. He then went on to successfully defend his title against Anand in 2014, against Sergey Karjakin in 2016 and against Fabiano Caruana in 2018. The official world championship is generally regarded to have begun in 1886, when the two leading players in Europe and the United States, Johann Zukertort