Classical World Chess Championship 2000

The Classical World Chess Championship 2000, known at the time as the Braingames World Chess Championships, was held from 8 October 2000 – 4 November 2000 in London, United Kingdom. Garry Kasparov, the defending champion, played Vladimir Kramnik. The match was the best of 16 games, and in the event of an 8-8 tie, Kasparov would keep his title.

Although Kasparov was the strong favourite, Kramnik won the match with two wins, 13 draws and no losses. To the supporters of the world championship by succession (later dubbed the "classical" world championship by Kramnik), Kramnik became the 14th world chess champion.

Following the split in the world chess championship in 1993, there were two rival world titles: the official FIDE world title, and the PCA world title held by Garry Kasparov. The rationale behind Kasparov's title was that he had not been defeated in a match, but in fact had defeated the rightful challenger Nigel Short in 1993, so FIDE had no power to strip the title from him.

The PCA then held an Interzonal and Candidates matches in 1993-1995, and Kasparov successfully defended his PCA title in 1995, this time against Viswanathan Anand.

The PCA folded in 1996 after its main sponsor, Intel, withdrew its support following Kasparov's decision to play against the computer program Deep Blue, which augmented the profile of IBM, one of Intel's main rivals. However, Kasparov still saw himself as the true world champion (as did the majority of the chess world), so Kasparov looked for other ways to select his next challenger.

Without the sponsorship of the PCA, Kasparov found he was unable to organise a series of qualifying matches to choose a challenger. Eventually in 1998, he announced that, based on their ratings and results, Anand and Vladimir Kramnik were clearly the next two best players in the world, and that they would play a match to decide who would challenge for Kasparov's title.

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