FIDE World Chess Champion 2002
In 2002 he beat his fellow countryman Vassily Ivanchuk in the final of the FIDE World Chess Championship 2002 by a score of 4½/2½ to become FIDE World Champion at the age of 18, the first teenager and youngest person to ever become FIDE World Champion.
In the same year he finished second in the very strong Linares tournament, behind Garry Kasparov. His result in the strong 2003 Corus tournament at Wijk aan Zee was not as good – despite having the third highest Elo rating, he finished only joint eleventh out of fourteen players with 6/13, and at Linares the same year he finished only fifth out of seven with 5½/12.
There were plans for him to play a fourteen-game match against Kasparov in Yalta in September 2003, the winner of which would go on to play the winner of a match between Vladimir Kramnik and Péter Lékó as part of the so-called "Prague Agreement" to reunify the World Chess Championship (from 1993 until 2006 there were two world chess championships). However, this was called off by FIDE on the grounds that Ruslan Ponomariov failed to sign the contract in time. The latter always alleged lack of equality in the contract for both contenders.
Ponomariov remained FIDE champion until Rustam Kasimdzhanov won the FIDE World Chess Championship 2004.
Read more about this topic: Ruslan Ponomariov
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