Professional Chess Association

The Professional Chess Association (PCA), which existed between 1993 and 1996, was a rival organisation to FIDE, the international chess organization. The PCA was created in 1993 by Garry Kasparov and Nigel Short for the marketing and organization of their chess world championship.

In 1993, Nigel Short won the Candidates Tournament and so qualified as challenger to Garry Kasparov for the World Chess Championship.

By FIDE regulation, the bids for the World Championship final should have been decided by three parties – FIDE, the World Champion (Kasparov) and the Challenger (Short). According to Kasparov and Short, FIDE president Florencio Campomanes broke these rules by simply announcing the venue of winning bid as being Manchester. FIDE derived a substantial part of its income from the prize fund of the World Championship.

In response to this, Kasparov and Short formed the PCA, appointing Bob Rice as Commissioner. They played their world championship match under its auspices in October 1993. The match took place in the Savoy Theatre in London, under the sponsorship of The Times. Kasparov won clearly 12.5–7.5 and became PCA World Chess Champion.

FIDE stripped Kasparov of the FIDE World Championship title, and instead held a rival match between Anatoly Karpov and Jan Timman, the two final players Short had defeated to win the Candidates Tournament. Karpov won that match, to become FIDE World Chess Champion. For the first time in chess history there were two world champions, the FIDE world champion Karpov and the PCA world champion Kasparov.

From 1993 to 1995, the PCA held an Interzonal tournament and Candidates matches, in the style of the FIDE world championship qualifiers. FIDE also had its own cycle of qualifiers, with many of the same players playing in both. The PCA candidates cycle was won by the Indian GM Viswanathan Anand.

...
Wikipedia