MOSCOW, Dec 16: Two Ukrainians will dispute the official world chess championship title next month while Garry Kasparov, the world’s greatest player, sits on the sidelines and a fourth grandmaster ponders giving him another crack at the unofficial crown.

Confused? So are many long-suffering chess fans.

The sport, once memorably described as mind-tennis, has had two world “champions” since 1993 when Kasparov, the 13th FIDE (World Chess Federation) title-holder, set up a rival organisation to run a world championship series more to his liking.

Several rule changes later, the “official” world championship, under the controversial aegis of FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, has become a knockout competition played under a foreshortened time control that many grandmasters regard as a travesty of classic play.

The “beast of Baku”, who has cast a massive shadow since he seized the world title in 1985 after two titanic struggles against Anatoly Karpov, won nine of the 10 tournaments he competed in this year, and tied for first place with Kramnik in the tenth.

He has been loudly proclaiming his desire for a rematch with the former pupil who remains the only player ever to beat him in a full series of classic games, but Kramnik has been studiously avoiding committing himself to a defence of his “title”,

Their encounter earlier this month for 20 games involving a variety of different time controls (classic, rapid-play and blitz), staged in parallel with the FIDE tournament in what appeared suspiciously like a spoiler, was won by Kasparov in a 10-game blitz finale.

He raised his arms in triumph at the result, but few believe that Kasparov, who attributed last year’s defeat to “personal problems,” will have been satisfied.

Kramnik has his supporters, among them the Dutch GM Loek van Wely, who believed that “with the new FIDE time control, it makes it more difficult to have a legitimate champion”.

The FIDE tournament’s knockout format also devalues the world championship as an indicator of true worth, favouring upsets by allowing stronger players little chance to catch up after slips or surprises.

So where does this leave the two Ukrainians, Vassily Ivanchuk, sixth in the Elo world rankings, and Ruslan Ponomariov, 21st, who are to meet in Moscow, or possibly Kiev, next month to determine who holds the “official” crown?

Whoever wins will no doubt regard himself as no less “legitimate” than did India’s Viswanathan Anand, the previous title-holder, or his predecessor the little-known Alexander Khalifman.—AFP