This time the traditional tournament of the strongest in the Spanish town of Linares was won by Garry Kasparov very assuredly but the situation in the chess world remains bogged up.

The champion title is traditionally important as it is gained in a face-to-face match while the elite tournaments, as all other kinds of events, are important for rating purpose only and produce, besides high-class games, the food for fruitless talks. So, in 1996 V.Topalov was the best player in tournaments, in 1997 - (possibly) Kasparov or V.Kramnik, while in 1998 it was Vishy Anand. However, all that had a very distant relationship to determining the champion.

It is not surprising that after the last unsuccessful Linares (Anand was the winner then) Kasparov has not been playing in tournaments for almost a year(!) without risking his status. So, he confronted his adversaries in Wijk aan Zee and Linares with all novelties prepared for the frustrated match against Shirov during this period.

It is worthwhile reminding that from 1886 to 1937 the world champion title was, actually, the property of its holder. Alekhine's death in 1946 altered this situation and FIDE was arranging all world championship tournaments in 1948 - 1990 until Kasparov played the match against Short outside of the frame of this organisation in 1993. The split is not overcome until now. FIDE maintains that Karpov is the world champion as he defended this title last year again while Kasparov is a traditionally recognised champion because nobody defeated him in a match.

At any rate his legitimacy is relative as he has not defended his title since 1995. The 1998 attempt to organise the match of contenders Anand and Kramnik met with Anand's refusal as he, distinct from Kramnik, played in the last FIDE championship and signed the restrictive contract. A.Shirov played instead of Anand and, unexpectedly, won. The final Shirov - Kasparov match was frustrated and as far as the chief organiser was L. Rentero, the Linares director, therefore nobody was surprised when the owner of the fourth (after Kasparov, Anand and Kramnik) rating in the world - Shirov did not play in Linares 1999. By the way, Karpov did not play as well.

Unfortunately, Kasparov is the obvious person to blame for the mess of the last years. The only advantage in all that is that his accidental loss to Deep Blue supercomputer in 1997 (2.5 : 3.5) will not stay as the win of the computer over the recognised champion because the separation became the fact before that.

Mikhail Golubev
Odessa, Ukraine    March 12, 1999