English Chess Forum

Graham Borrowdale wrote:Personally, I find the idea of a national federation 'buying' a candidates slot dubious to say the least. It means players from countries with heavy state involvement (funding) in chess have an inbuilt advantage. As Radjabov is so highly rated nobody seems to be objecting, but if Adams (for example) were rated 5th in the world he would still most likely not get a place.

I would say it's a very pragmatic choice. Simply organizing the candidate tournament seems to be a problem for FIDE when sponsors and money are not readily available. Many countries would not be interested if no local player is involved, this gives you two problems: any country would disappear from the organization race if their flagship player was not qualified and organizing committees would have difficulties securing funding or starting negotiations before the lineup of players is qualified.
Having the 8th place assigned as wildcard is not ideal, but at least helps making sure the other 7 qualified players get better conditions.
Many other sports grant wildcard entry to the organizing country, like the football worldcup if I'm not mistaken.

And as pointed out previously, the organising federation getting a "free" place certainly wasn't that uncommon in the "good old days"........

David Sedgwick wrote:Reaction from Steve Giddins:

http://stevegiddinschessblog.wordpress. ... jackanory/

and from Silvio Danailov:

http://www.chessdom.com/silvio-danailov ... ment-2012/

I wouldn't mind FIDE organising a tournament in Magadan, provided someone manages to mislay Giddins's and Danailov's return tickets.

The Russian English language site http://www.chessintranslation.com/ has tracked down Agon to Jersey
https://www.jerseyfsc.org/registry/docu ... ?id=284111 gives registration details.

Also mentioned is the website http://www.agonlimited.com/

from which

Agon website wrote:Agon has undertaken to help the World Chess Federation (FIDE) with the long term commercial development of World Chess and has been granted the rights to organize, promote and commercialize the 2-year World Chess Championship cycle for the foreseeable future. Agon will be building audiences, increasing engagement and interactivity, and encouraging traditional and new (social) media coverage. And Agon will be refining and focusing the profile and brand values of World Chess so as to more powerfully support its hosts and sponsors.

Agon state:

At Agon, we are passionate about chess and will try to bring together or produce analytics of chess trends around the world, ranging from 'How many people under 35 play chess in Sumatra' to 'What's the correlation between propensity to play chess more than twice a month and earnings'.

Be still my beating heart.

It seems as though it's definitely on:

http://www.fide.com/component/content/a ... ondon.html

The website http://www.chess-news.ru has a bit more at http://chess-news.ru/en/node/6371

It indicates the Company owners as
Ogier Nominees (Jersey) Limited and Reigo Nominees (Jersey) Limited.

A bit of Google indicates that these are nominee companies frequently used for setting up new Companies where the ownership is masked. The Ogier website has more
http://www.ogier.com/Publication%20Libr ... Jersey.pdf

I see Malcolm Pein has said that the London Chess Classic could be in doubt as a result of the Candidates Matches taking place in London around the same time as well. Why not hold the 'Classic' in another city like Manchester or Birmingham? To name a couple. Why does it HAVE to be London? There's still plenty of time to arrange the tournament in another large city in the UK. It doesn't even have to be in England. Dublin. Glasgow. Cardiff all spring to mind. It would be good to move the 'Classic' from city to city. It's not impossible, it can be done, and it would be exciting for those who live in the chosen city to attend. The Classic shouldn't just stop because of the Candidates, just take it to pastures new. It'll be good for the game in the UK.

Malcolm Pein: ... I'll have to consider the effect of FIDE's move on the Classic, which I suspect cannot be held in its current form this year.
(Daily Telegraph 8/3/2012)

Richard Field wrote:I see Malcolm Pein has said that the London Chess Classic could be in doubt as a result of the Candidates Matches taking place in London around the same time as well. Why not hold the 'Classic' in another city like Manchester or Birmingham?

I think the point is nothing to do with location, but the fact that some of the top players (Anand, Kramnik, Carlsen, Aronian) who might normally take part in the London Classic, might not want to take part in both so close together.

Malcolm's principal concern is that having two major chess events in Londomn in close poximity may damage the impact of the second one which, of course would be the London Chess Classic. This may have happened in 1983-4.
December 1983 Acorn Computer World Chmpionship semis
April 1984 Phillips & Drew/GLC Kings there was definitely much less of a buzz about the event. Of course there were other factors.

This probably has not yet come to anybody else's attention:
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=7985
Andrew Paulson and Ray Keene were like soul-mates at the Garrick Club. They are both members and the food was of high quality.

Thanks for breaking the above news of RDK's scoop interview. It should have been entitled:
Agony - six months of negotiations with FIDE - & Ecstacy (methylenedioxymethamphetamine) - "the idea that chess was brought to earth by aliens... and... (the) claim he (Kirsan) was actually taken to an alien spaceship to play chess... a grand fairytale that has stimulated everyone's imigination."

An established cycle with standard dates is very likely a good plan, as is getting sponsors for a whole cycle of events. We might recall the PCA events with Intel behind them. We might also recall that when Intel dropped out, no replacement was found and the PCA faded from view. I don't know whether comparisons with BrainGames are relevant, except to observe that once you've raised and spent money on a chess or any sporting or cultural event, theCompany which ran the event has little by the way of assets except goodwill and that to run the next event, it will need to fund raise again.

The beneficial ownership of Agon is hidden and likely to remain so. It would not look good if the Company was able to pay dividends to its owners if they were eventually revealed to be senior people in FIDE unless they had put up their own money to get it started.

Stewart Reuben wrote:This probably has not yet come to anybody else's attention:
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=7985
Andrew Paulson and Ray Keene were like soul-mates at the Garrick Club. They are both members and the food was of high quality.

So it would appear that a casual chess player happened to bump into the head of the game's world governing body, decided to use the meeting as an attempt to obtain the right to stage the world championship, was initially refused, and proceeded to stalk its officials until they gave in. That does sound like a promising start.