Editing Anatoly Karpov (section)

===FIDE champion again (1993–1999)===
[[Image:Anatoly Karpov.jpg|thumb|Karpov in 1993]]
In 1992, Karpov lost a Candidates Match against [[Nigel Short]]. But in the [[World Chess Championship 1993]], Karpov reacquired the FIDE World Champion title when Kasparov and Short split from FIDE. Karpov defeated Timman – the loser of the Candidates' final against Short.

The next major meeting of Kasparov and Karpov was the 1994 [[Linares chess tournament]]. The field, in eventual finishing order, was Karpov, Kasparov, [[Alexei Shirov|Shirov]], [[Evgeny Bareev|Bareev]], [[Vladimir Kramnik|Kramnik]], [[Joël Lautier|Lautier]], [[Viswanathan Anand|Anand]], [[Gata Kamsky|Kamsky]], [[Veselin Topalov|Topalov]], [[Vasyl Ivanchuk|Ivanchuk]], [[Boris Gelfand|Gelfand]], [[Miguel Illescas|Illescas]], [[Judit Polgár]], and [[Alexander Beliavsky|Beliavsky]]; with an average [[Elo rating system|Elo rating]] of 2685, the highest ever at that time. Impressed by the strength of the tournament, Kasparov had said several days before the tournament that the winner could rightly be called the world champion of tournaments. Perhaps spurred on by this comment, Karpov played the best tournament of his life. He was undefeated and earned 11 points out of 13 (the best world-class tournament winning percentage since Alekhine won [[San Remo 1930 chess tournament|San Remo in 1930]]), finishing 2½ points ahead of second-place Kasparov and Shirov. Many of his wins were spectacular (in particular, his win over Topalov is considered possibly the finest of his career). This performance against the best players in the world put his [[Elo rating system|Elo rating]] tournament performance at 2985, the highest [[Performance rating (chess)|performance rating]] of any player in history up until 2009, when [[Magnus Carlsen]] won the category XXI [[Pearl Spring chess tournament]] with a performance of 3002. Chess statistician [[Jeff Sonas]] considers Karpov's Linares performance the best tournament result in history.<ref>[http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=5828 "Facts and figures: Magnus Carlsen's performance in Nanjing"]. ChessBase. Retrieved  October 26, 2009.</ref>

Karpov defended his FIDE title against the rising star [[Gata Kamsky]] (+6−3=9) in 1996. In 1998, FIDE largely scrapped the old system of Candidates' Matches, instead having a large knockout event in which a large number of players contested short matches against each other over just a few weeks. In the first of these events, the [[FIDE World Chess Championship 1998]], champion Karpov was seeded straight into the final, defeating [[Viswanathan Anand]] (+2−2=2, rapid tiebreak 2–0). In the subsequent cycle, the format was changed, with the champion having to qualify. Karpov refused to defend his title, and ceased to be FIDE World Champion after the [[FIDE World Chess Championship 1999]].<ref>{{cite news |author1=[[Leonard Barden]] |title=Games |work=The Guardian |date=4 September 1999 |location=Greater London |page=37 |quote=Anatoly Karpov refused to defend his title because of the absence of a challenge round and has now filed a breach of contract suit against the world chess body, claiming more than $1m in compensation.}}</ref>