Editing World Chess Championship (section)

====Birth of FIDE's World Championship cycle (1946–1948)====
{{main|Interregnum of World Chess Champions}}
[[Alexander Alekhine]] died in 1946 before anyone else could win against him in match for the World Champion title. This resulted in an [[Interregnum of World Chess Champions|''interregnum'']] that made the normal procedure impossible. The situation was very confused, with many respected players and commentators offering different solutions. FIDE found it very difficult to organize the early discussions on how to resolve the ''interregnum'' because problems with money and travel so soon after the end of World War II prevented many countries from sending representatives. The shortage of clear information resulted in otherwise responsible magazines publishing rumors and speculation, which only made the situation more confusing.<ref name="Winter2003Interregnum" />
It did not help that the Soviet Union had long refused to join FIDE, and by this time it was clear that about half the credible contenders were Soviet citizens. But, realizing that it could not afford to be excluded from discussions about the vacant world championship, the Soviet Union sent a telegram in 1947 apologizing for the absence of Soviet representatives and requesting that the USSR be represented on future FIDE Committees.<ref name="Winter2003Interregnum" />
[[File:Botvinnik 1936.jpg|thumb|[[Mikhail Botvinnik]] was the first World Champion under FIDE jurisdiction.]]
The eventual solution was very similar to FIDE's initial proposal and to a proposal put forward by the Soviet Union (authored by [[Mikhail Botvinnik]]). The 1938 [[AVRO tournament]] was used as the basis for the [[World Chess Championship 1948|1948 Championship Tournament]]. The AVRO tournament had brought together the eight players who were, by general acclamation, the best players in the world at the time. Two of the participants at AVRO – Alekhine and former world champion [[José Raúl Capablanca]] – had died; but FIDE decided that the championship should be awarded to the winner of a [[round-robin tournament]] in which the other six participants at AVRO would play four games against each other. These players were: [[Max Euwe]], from the Netherlands; Botvinnik, [[Paul Keres]] and [[Salo Flohr]] from the Soviet Union; and [[Reuben Fine]] and [[Samuel Reshevsky]] from the United States. However, FIDE soon accepted a Soviet request to substitute [[Vasily Smyslov]] for Flohr, and Fine dropped out in order to continue his degree studies in [[psychology]], so only five players competed. Botvinnik won convincingly and thus became world champion, ending the ''interregnum''.<ref name="Winter2003Interregnum">{{cite web | url=http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/interregnum.html | access-date=15 September 2008 | title=Interregnum | author=Winter, E. | date=2003–2004 | publisher=Chess History Center | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101206160240/http://chesshistory.com/winter/extra/interregnum.html | archive-date=6 December 2010 | url-status=live }}</ref>

The proposals which led to the 1948 Championship Tournament also specified the procedure by which challengers for the World Championship would be selected in a three-year cycle: countries affiliated to FIDE would send players to Zonal Tournaments (the number varied depending on how many good enough players each country had); the players who gained the top places in these would compete in an Interzonal Tournament (later split into two and then three tournaments as the number of countries and eligible players increased<ref name="WeeksWorldChampionshipEvents1948to1990">{{cite web | url=http://www.mark-weeks.com/chess/wcc-indy.htm | access-date=15 September 2008 | title=World Chess Championship FIDE Events 1948–1990 | author=Weeks, M. | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140901124131/http://www.mark-weeks.com/chess/wcc-indy.htm | archive-date=1 September 2014 | url-status=live }}</ref>); the highest-placed players from the Interzonal would compete in the [[Candidates Tournament]], along with whoever lost the previous title match and the second-placed competitor in the previous Candidates Tournament three years earlier; and the winner of the Candidates played a title match against the champion.<ref name="Winter2003Interregnum" /> Until 1962 inclusive the Candidates Tournament was a multi-cycle round-robin tournament – how and why it was changed are described below.