Professional Chess Association - Demise and Aftermath

Demise and Aftermath

The PCA lost its main sponsor, Intel, in 1996, as retaliation for Kasparov's choice to play a match against IBM's supercomputer Deep Blue earlier that year, which boosted the fame of IBM, a main rival of Intel's; the PCA folded soon afterwards. This left Kasparov unable to organise a proper qualifying cycle for his title. He finally played (and lost) a match to a hand picked challenger, Vladimir Kramnik, in 2000 (Classical World Chess Championship 2000). This match was played under the auspices of Braingames.

When Kramnik defended his title at the Classical World Chess Championship 2004, he gave the title the name "Classical", to emphasise the continuity that his title had with the tradition of defeating the previous titleholder. Since this is the same title as the Kasparov's PCA World title, the PCA World title is sometimes retrospectively called the "Classical" title.

The PCA split from FIDE was finally healed with the FIDE World Chess Championship 2006, a re-unification match between Kramnik and 2005 FIDE World Champion Veselin Topalov, which was won by Kramnik.