won his third title after a long match against Evgeny Bareev, decided after a third pair of tiebreak games. Along the way he defeated Vladimir Malakhov, Ruslan Sherbakov, Semen Dvoirys and Alexey Dreev in the semi-finals. In July–August he tied for second place with 5.5/9 in Bad Homburg. Svidler was a signatory of a letter published in September which protested the decision of FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov to change the format of the World Championship. Under the proposals, Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov would be seeded directly to the semi-finals of the FIDE World Chess Championship 1998, Kasparov's refusal to participate meant that Karpov was seeded to the final. The letter also complained about the proposed schedule. At Fontys Tilburg in October 1997, Svidler's last round win against Alexander Onischuk enabled him to tie for first with Vladimir Kramnik and Kasparov, scoring 8/11. He also defeated an overly ambitious Kasparov - who had started with 5.5/6 - in their individual game. This results propelled him to 9th in the PCA rankings. In October at the World Team Championship in Lucerne, Svidler claimed board two gold with 4.5/7 for the gold medallists Russia. At the World Championship in December, Svidler defeated both Utut Adianto and Epishin 1.5-0.5, before taking Michael Adams to rapid tiebreaks in the third round, where he would lose the last three games to crash out of the event. His successes over the past year saw him given fourth place in the Chess Oscars voting, ahead of Karpov but behind winner Anand, Kasparov and Kramnik. Entering FIDE top 10 Svidler entered the FIDE top 10 for the first time in January 1998, at ninth with a rating of 2690. At Linares, supported by Nigel Short, he showed he could compete at that level of competition with a solid 5.5/12, then came second in Madrid with 5.5/9 in May, a point behind Viswanathan Anand. He lost an exhibition internet blitz match against Kasparov 2-0 immediately after. It was revealed that Kasparov had accidentally played him two days before in a training match online, Kasparov winning 3-1. He won his last two games to share victory at Dortmund with 6/9. During the tournament it was confirmed that Svidler's rating had risen above 2700 for the first time to 2710. In June he finished a point behind Viktor Korchnoi at Bad Homburg with 6/9 and finished second on tiebreak at the