FIDE gives Kasparov Feb 26 deadline to decide on match participation

[Jack Rabbit]

From ChessBase.com
Dated Wednesday February 16

Ilyumzhinov: reunification with or without Kasparov

Reunification is still on track, the match in Turkey will go ahead, for an increased prize sum of $1.65 million. That was the gist of a press conference held by FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov in Moscow yesterday. He has given Garry Kasparov a deadline until February 26 to agree to the conditions, otherwise another player will replace him.

Summary: Kirsan Ilyumzhinov is essentially stating that FIDE is going ahead and will be staging a reunification match in Istanbul in April. If Kasparov does not cooperate another opponent for Kasimdzhanov will be found. Kasparov has until February 26 to agree with FIDE's terms. Kasparov, on the other hand, is sticking to the Cuba Gooding line in Jerry McGuire. What remains inexplicable is that this stage of the reunification match was designed for one purpose alone: to bring the world's strongest and best-known player, Garry Kasparov, into the cycle. It is unclear whether the Turkish Chess Federation is willing to finance a two-million-dollar match for an unscheduled match that comes between the normal FIDE world championships in Libya 2004 and Vietnam 2005.

Kommersant is reporting on a press conference held by FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov in Moscow yesterday. In it Ilyumzhinov announced that the prize fund for the world champion title match between Garry Kasparov and Rustam Kasimdzhanov has been raised from US $1.25 million to $1.65 million. "Now FIDE president is waiting for an answer from the rated world No.1, who withdrew in January from playing the World Chess Championship match against Rustam Kasimdzhanov at the scheduled dates of April 25th to May 14th 2005."

Kommersant contacted Kasparov and received the answer that he still has no intentions to participate in the reunification cycle. He had seen his match against the previous champion Ruslan Ponomariov cancelled twice, then moved to Lebanon. Finally Ilyumzhinov officially announced Dubai as the venue for the event, naming a prize fund of $1.25. However, remembering the failure of matches with Ponomarev, Kasparov insisted on financial guarantees this time. As this was not forthcoming he sent an open letter to the FIDE General Assembly in October proposing an alternate solution to the problem. The Turkish Chess Federation was willing to provide the identical conditions for the Kasparov-Kasimdzhanov match. However the plan was not even considered at the time. FIDE returned to it only when it became obvious that the Dubai match would not happen.

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[hfojvt]

1. what is this doing here

chess is not a sport!

Did you ever see the SNL skit with Jim Belushi as "the chess coach"? He's pacing one the sidelines screaming "move the queen's pawn" or something like that. At the end there is a bench-clearing brawl.

Is the world-champion playing in this tournament. What was his name - deep blue or deep thought or something like that?

[Jack Rabbit]

2. !!

Chess is neither a science nor an art. It is what human nature most delights in--a fight.
-- Emanuel Lasker.

No, I missed that skit.

The present world champion is Vladimir Kramnik. He won the title by defeating Kasparov in a match in 2000. However, Kasparov is still the highest-rated player in the world.

Kasparov's opponent in the match of which the article speaks is Rustam Kasimdzhanov of Uzbekistan. Kasimdzhanov holds a form of the world championship recognized by FIDE, the world chess federation. In this version, the "world champion" is the winner of an annual knock-out (single-elimination) tournament. What has come to be called the classical chess championship is more like the world championship of boxing, where one competitor holds the title until somebody beats him in a one-on-one match of several games.

Personally, I think it is a bit pretentious to call the winner of single-elimination tournament the world champion.

The idea of the Kasparov-Kasimdzhanov match is to reunify the FIDE and classical world championship. Hopefully, the winner of the match in Turkey, if it is ever played, will play Kramnik for the world title later this year.

Kasparov and Kasimdzhanov will be competing against each other and five other players in a strong tournament in Linares, Spain, starting next week.

[hfojvt]

3. saturday night's all right for chess

I play computers so much that it kinda freaks me out to play humans. I was pretty much undefeated on the internet chess site (the Zone), but I felt like such a pissant, constantly harrassing my opponent, check, check, check, threaten, check. Then again I also played some 14 year old kid about a dozen games of speed chess and he seemed to enjoy it, although he only won one game on time. He/she was my idea of a good opponent, they give you a good game and then lose like a gentleman.
I am not even that good, maybe 1800. I used to play this guy who was about 2000 with 8 minutes on my clock and two minutes on his and I consistently lost by only a pawn. So I thought, "I am almost as good as him". Then we played with 5 minutes on each clock and he just demolished me about five games in a row.
I agree about the single-elimination tournament thing. I thought classically it was a match going to eleven or something, but I never really followed it.

[DelawareValleyDem]

4. Great skit

I love the part where he's arguing with the ref that the last move the opponent made wasn't really a check, as if that's open to debate, and when he's diagramming the Sicilian on the chalkboard.

[Jack Rabbit]

5. More on the Kasparov-FIDE feud

From Wikipedia article World Chess Championship

Chaos

Not long after Kasparov became champion, the Soviet Union collapsed, freeing Kasparov from the grip of the Soviet state. This set the stage for a more lasting set-back to FIDE's system when in 1993, Kasparov and challenger Nigel Short complained of corruption and a lack of professionalism within FIDE and split from FIDE to set up the Professional Chess Association (PCA), under whose auspices they held their match. The event was orchestrated largely by Raymond Keene, who has been at the centre of much off-the-board chess activity for a long time now. Keene brought the event to London (FIDE had planned it for Manchester), and England was whipped up into something of a chess fever: Channel Four broadcast some 81 programmes on the match, the BBC also had coverage, and Short appeared in television beer commercials. However, Kasparov crushed Short by five points, and interest in chess in the UK soon died down.

At the same time, FIDE held a championship match between Karpov (who had been champion before Kasparov) and Jan Timman (who had been defeated by Short in the Candidates final) in the Netherlands and Jakarta, Indonesia. Karpov emerged victorious. Ever since that time there have been two simultaneous World Champions and World Championships.

Kasparov went on to defend his PCA title against Viswanathan Anand, who had qualified through a series of events similar to those in the old FIDE system. It seemed his next challenger would be Alexei Shirov, who won a match against Vladimir Kramnik to apparently secure his place. However, plans for a match with Shirov never materialised, and he was subsequently omitted from negotiations, much to his disgust. Instead, Anand was lined up to play Kasparov once more, but here too, plans fell through (in somewhat disputed circumstances). Instead, Vladimir Kramnik was given the chance to play Kasparov in 2000. Against all expectations, Kramnik won.

FIDE, meanwhile, after one more traditional championship cycle which resulted in Karpov successfully defending his title against Gata Kamsky in 1996, largely scrapped the old system, instead having a large knock-out 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, champion Karpov was seeded straight into the final (as in previous championships), but subsequently the champion had to qualify like other players. Karpov defended his title in the first of these championships in 1998, but resigned his title in anger at the new rules in 1999. Alexander Khalifman took the title in 1999, Anand in 2000 and Ruslan Ponomariov in 2002.

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