World Chess Championship 1990

The 1990 World Chess Championship was played between Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov. It was the fifth and final Kasparov-Karpov championship match, Kasparov winning by a single point.

Interzonals

Three Interzonals were held in June-August 1987, with 16 to 18 players playing in each and top three qualifying. In the first one, in Subotica, Gyula Sax, Nigel Short, and Jon Speelman shared the first place with 10½/15 points. In the Szirak Interzonal Valery Salov and Jóhann Hjartarson finished top of the table with 12½/17, and Lajos Portisch and John Nunn tied for the third. The candidates place was decided in a separate play-off, with Portisch winning 4–2. Viktor Korchnoi was the winner in the last Interzonal in Zagreb, scoring 11 in 16 games and one point ahead of Jaan Ehlvest and Yasser Seirawan.

Players eliminated in this stage included former World Champions Mikhail Tal and Vasily Smyslov.

Candidates matches

In addition to nine players from the Interzonals, four quarterfinalists of the previous cycle (Andrei Sokolov, Jan Timman, Rafael Vaganian, and Artur Yusupov) were seeded as the Candidates. The organizing federation of the preliminary matches (which were held in Saint John, New Brunswick) nominated one player, Kevin Spraggett. Anatoly Karpov, the challenger in the previous cycle, was seeded into the quarterfinal.

Championship match

The first twelve games were played in New York (8 October – 7 November), the other twelve taking place in Lyon, France (26...
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