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The Professional Chess Association (PCA), now defunct, was created in 1993 by Garry Kasparov and Nigel Short for the marketing and organization of its chess world championship, as a consequence of the then FIDE President, Florencio Campomanes, abrogating the voting rights of the players. By regulation, the bids for the World Championship final should have been decided by three parties - FIDE, the World Champion and the Challenger. However 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.

FIDE stripped the World Championship Title from Kasparov and denied Short the right to challenge Kasparov.

In October 1993, the duel between Kasparov and Short took place in the Savoy Theatre in London. Kasparov won clearly 12.5-7.5 and became PCA World Champion. Since FIDE ejected Kasparov and Short, Anatoli Karpov played Jan Timman for the FIDE World Championship Title, in which Karpov triumphed. 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.

In 1995, Kasparov defended his PCA World Championship title against Anand in the World Trade Center in a match starting September 11, 1995. Kasparov won the 20 game match 10.5 - 7.5.

The PCA lost its main sponsor, Intel, in 1996, and folded soon after. This left Kasparov unable to organise a proper qualifying cycle for his title. He finally played (and lost) a match to a hand picked challenger, Vladimir Kramnik, in 2000. This match was played under the auspices of Braingames, which also appears to have folded.