Paris Outbids Chennai For This Year's Title Match; Will FIDE Care?
More here.
(HT: Chess Today.)
More here.
(HT: Chess Today.)
Viswanathan Anand's hometown of Chennai, in India, has (at least for the moment) been given the rights to host the planned world championship match between Anand and his challenger, Magnus Carlsen. While this goes back to the adventures in planning the Anand-Gelfand match last year, it's obviously problematic for Carlsen, whose objection is twofold. The obvious problem is that it's in his opponent's hometown, but a second, possibly bigger problem is procedural, that there wasn't any sort of open bidding process.
Espen Agdestein, Carlsen's manager, has objected to this, and rightly so. Worse still, his letters to FIDE (the international chess federation) have for some reason not been acknowledged as constituting an"official" protest. Stay tuned.
A thought or two. First, is it necessarily wrong for the match to be played in India? In general, world champoinship and candidates matches are held in neutral sites negotiated by the players, but in (other) sports the federation simply decides such things without consulting with any players or teams. The location of the World Cup isn't determined by the rankings, to make sure that none of the favorites' home countries can host the event.
If that's right, then if the procedure that resulted in the Moscow and Chennai deal in 2011 was open and correct (and I'm not claiming it was), then maybe FIDE has (for once) a leg to stand on.
(HT: Chess Today.)