Or review the Results Bulletin.

New! Notes from player interviews during FIDE press conferences. Now available in the Press Release Section. Includes interviews with Vladimir Kramnik, Vadim Zvjaginsev, Nigel Short, Vladimir Akopian, Alexander Khalifman, Michael Adams, and Sergei Movsesian .

Event Overview

FIDE held the second World Championship Knockout tournament in Las Vegas July 30-August 29 at Caesar's Palace.

Invited were 100 of the top players in the world. Accepting invitations were all nine invited Americans - including Gata Kamsky! The other U.S. players were U.S. Champion Nick de Firmian, Joel Benjamin, Dmitry Gurevich, Tal Shaked, Boris Gulko, Alex Yermolinsky, Sergey Kudrin, and Alexander Ivanov. All nine are Grandmasters. Shaked, Gulko, Yermolinsky, and Kamsky played in Round 2, but all were eliminated. USCF coverage continued throughout the event.

See also the FIDE Official site.

Pairings, Schedule, and Other Information

Results for Each Round

• Most Current Result Summary

Press Releases

• July 19 Press Release from the USCF
• Official FIDE Press Release on the Event
• Index to FIDE Press Releases During the Event

Schedule and Player Information

• Day by Day Schedule of Events (All games start at 3 pm)
• Round by Round Pairings
• List of all Players with Ratings and Country
• Zipped Excel Spreadsheet of all Players with Ratings and Country (15K)
• Zipped Word File in Ladder Format (28K)

Analysis

• Archives of live commentary by GM Rohde
• Analysis of Shaked - Babula from Round 2 by GM Larry Christiansen
• Analysis of Federov - Gulko and Shirov - Sokolov from Round 2 by GM Larry Christiansen

The 1997 Event

Curious about the last World Championship Tournament? Want to look up how one of your favorites fared? See our Chess Life Online Archive Feature section on the 1997 FIDE World Chess Championship.

Open to Amateurs: the 100th US Open Championship

Down the highway from the FIDE Knockout World Championship will be the 1999 U.S. Open. You can come to Reno August 10-19 and play in the new nine-day format while the big boys and girls are knocking heads in nearby Las Vegas.

What About Kasparov and Anand?

Kasparov and Anand (who recently won the Chess Oscar for the second time) aren't playing in the FIDE Knockout World Championship because they are playing each other for the Ultimate World Championship and a $3,000,000 prize fund some time during the last quarter of the year. We don't know as we go to press where they are going to play, but it will be a 16-game match, with Kasparov maintaining his title in case of a drawn match.

Alexei Shirov, who qualified as Kasparov's challenger by defeating Vladimir Kramnik in a match late last year, is not involved in this Ultimate World Championship, despite being ranked Number 2, just ahead of Anand and Kramnik, on the World Chess Ranking that Kasparov has set up in competition with FIDE.

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The US Chess Federation is the official sanctioning body for tournament chess in the United States, and for US participation in international chess events. It has over 80,000 members. In addition to rating tournaments, the USCF supports and promotes chess activities in scholastics and correspondence chess. The USCF publishes two national magazines, CHESS LIFE and SCHOOLMATES (for children).