Meanwhile, the idea of rapid tournaments was quickly adopted by the organisers of festivals in the German city of Mainz, while the Amber super tournament awaited classics of rapid and blind chess. The only sticking point was Kasparov's principled refusal to play in Monaco because he considered the tournament not serious, but he made an exception for the German event and won the 1999 tournament.
The first tournament before the return of a succession of rapid tournaments was the 2001 World Cup, which took place in Cannes. The tournament was organised by the French Chess Federation with FIDE support. 16 exceptional chess players were split into 4 groups and played according to a knockout system. The tournament lacked a few big names, as its rival in Monaco was played during the same dates. However, Garry Kasparov, the leader of the rating list, has consented to play in a FIDE tournament for the first time since the 1996 Olympiad. The tournament also employed a revolutionary Fischer control of 25 minutes per match with +10 seconds increment per each move.
In the final, Kasparov defeated Evgeny Bareev 1,5:0,5. The world champion's opponent battled respectably, but could not find a salvation within seconds in a pawn ending.
A year later, this time under the auspices of Eurotel, a similar tournament took place in Prague. This time, all the strongest players were assembled: Kasparov, Kramnik, Anand, Topalov, Adams, Bareev, Morozevich, Ivanchuk, Gelfand, Khalifman, Grischuk, Karpov, Svidler. The only one missing was FIDE world champion Ruslan Ponomariov. This time, once again, 32 chess players appeared on the start line. Kasparov lost the quarterfinal match to Ivanchuk, while an elderly Karpov passed through Morozevich and Shirov before losing to Anand in the final.