Quickly after becoming the president of FIDE, Ilyumzhinov proposed a World Championship reunification tournament with as many as 100 players participating. The contest would be an elimination event composed of short matches where Kasparov and the winner of Karpov-Kamsky would enter in the semi-final round. The tournament should take place in late 1996 or early 1997.

The advantages of this format were that it avoided a long cycle. The whole tournament could be completed in one month at one venue, so there would be no scheduling problems which affected some of the previous World Championship cycles. Also more players (up to 128) could be included in the championship. And the most important reason for changing the old format (3 year cycle) for the new - money! After the 1993 split, FIDE had serious problems with finding sponsors for their Candidates and World Championship matches. Even Kasparov, who was considered as the "true" World Champion, needed 5 years to find sponsors for just one match. So it was much easier (and cheapper) for FIDE to organize just one tournament, than to finance the whole 3 year cycle. Most subsequent FIDE World Championships were financed personally by Ilyumzhinov.

Most players and chess commentators were against this format, pointing out that short matches (only 2 games in the earlier rounds) left too much to chance - the stronger player could blunder a game, and it would be difficult to recover from a bad start. Also the rapid, blitz and later even armageddon playoffs were also seen to be left too much to chance - strength in speed chess is not the same as strength in chess with normal time controls. And of course there was an argument that a 110 years old tradition where you can only become the new champion by defeating the old champion in a match, should be preserved.

Since it's difficult to preserve the tradition if you don't have enough money, FIDE went through with the new format anyway. Kasparov refused to play under this conditions and declined his invitation. The format was then modified and Karpov (reigning FIDE World Champion) was seeded directly into the final.

Prominent non-participants:

• Garry Kasparov (ranked #1 on the world) - as mentioned above, Kasparov refused to participate under these conditions
• Vladimir Kramnik (ranked #2 on the world) - he was scheduled to play, but later withdrew (on short notice) on the grounds that Karpov's direct entry into the final was unacceptable
• Gata Kamsky (ranked #7 on the world) - Kamsky retired from chess soon after his 1996 match with Karpov

All other top players were present (all top 35 players except above three).

Tournament conditions:

• tournament was played from December 9th to December 30th, 1997 in Groningen, The Netherlands
• tournament was a 7 round knock-out with 100 players (the highest seeds got a bye into the 2nd round)
• time controls were 100 minutes for first 40 moves, then 50 minutes for next 20 moves, then 10 minutes for the rest of the game, with 30 seconds per move increment from move 1
• in rounds 1-6 two regular games were played, in round 7 four regular games were played
• If the match was tied, 2 rapid (25min+10sec) games were played. If still tied, 2 rapid (15min+10sec) games were played. If still tied sudden death games (white had 4min+10sec, black had 5min+10sec) were played until the decision. (Note that this sudden death game is not the same as what was used later and became known as armageddon game. Black had no draw odds here. In case of a draw, the colours were simply reversed and a new game was played. For example Larry Christiansen and Ulf Andersson played 5 sudden death games in their 1st round encounter before producing a winner.)Also note that in the 1st round, the 2nd rapid playoff was skipped. They went straight from the 1st rapids to the sudden death. Thats because in the 1st round tie-breaks were played on the same day as the 2nd regular game (instead of separate days like in subsequent rounds)
• players eliminated in 1st round got 6.000 USD, in 2nd round 12.000 USD, in 3rd round 24.000 USD, in 4th round 48.000 USD, in 5th round 96.000 USD, in 6th round 192.000 USD, the runner-up in the Groningen tournament got 375.000 USD (for the winner of the Groningen tournament and the World Championship winner see below)

The Tournament

Download gamess in PGN

Only rounds 5, 6 and 7 are shown here.
After 3 weeks of playing, Anand (the highest seed after Kramnik withdrew) won the tournament. But only 3 days later he had to face Karpov who was exempt from all this dog-fighting.