Moscow will
be the venue for this year’s FIDE World Chess Championships. Games World Body- FIDE-
announced that the championships will be held from November 24 to December 11, 2001. The
announcement on World Championships was made in Moscow on Thursday and the meeting was
chaired by Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the President of FIDE. Others present at the conference to
make the announcement were Emmanuel Omuku, the Executive Director of FIDE, A Selivanov,
the President of Russian Chess Federation and Florencio Campomanes, the Honorary President
of FIDE.
This ends weeks of debate and uncertainty
over this year’s championships. And it also means reigning FIDE World Champion
Viswanathan Anand’s plans to rest himself till November have proved correct. He will
now have ample time to rest, relax and prepare to defend his title. For sometime now,
there has been pressure on Anand as the rival body, BrainGames, announced its own World
Championships with a qualifier in Dortmund next year. Neither Anand nor Kasparov are
expected to play in it.
The men’s preliminaries till the
semi-final rounds and the entire Women’s World Championships will be held
concurrently in Moscow. The men’s title match, which will be an eight-game match, as
against six last year between India’s Anand and Alexei Shirov, and will be held from
January 03 to 13, 2002. The venue is yet to be announced, but London is said to be a
likely venue. The FIDE announcement said the World Championships in Moscow have been
planned as part of the celebrations marking the 90th anniversary of the legendary Mikhail
Botwinnik.
The Championships will also be used to
pay tribute to the memory of the third FIDE President and World Champion the late Max
Euwe, whose centenary is being celebrated this year. Also to be honored will be some of
the greatest players of the last Century, like Andre Lilienthal (90), Vassily Smyslov
(80), Mark Taimanov (75), Victor Korchnoi (70), Nona Gaprindashvili (60), Anatoly Karpov
(50), and Maya Chiburdanidze (40). Interestingly, Russian capital is also likely to play
host to a three-man Super GM event called the Botvinnik Memorial tournament featuring
Kasparov, Kramnik and Karpov. The three Ks are expected to play against each other four
times in that event. The final announcement for Botvinnik Memorial is expected soon.
Source: FIDE
announcement on World Championship @ Moscow |
