Grand Prix 2019

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Roger de Coverly
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Grand Prix 2019

Post by Roger de Coverly » Thu Oct 11, 2018 6:42 pm

On the precedent of previous years, there would need to be a Grand Prix to give two spots for a Candidates tournament in 2020, followed by a world championship match later in 2020.

Has anything been announced?

If starting with a clean sheet of paper, perhaps retain the concept of a Grand Prix, but dump the separate tournaments. Instead piggy back on existing top events. So perhaps establish an elite list of 30 players, say, from a rating list. Every tournament that has at least perhaps 5 of these players, Swiss system tournaments included, is part of the Grand Prix. Winner and runner up are those scoring the most, only the best 3 events counting. All participants could be included in the points calculation, the top 30 just being there to establish qualification status for the tournament.

Agon's role in such a series would be much reduced, but FIDE ought to be partnering with long standing elite tournaments and the on-line websites that feature games, video and commentary from these.

David Sedgwick
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Re: Grand Prix 2019

Post by David Sedgwick » Thu Oct 11, 2018 7:01 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote:
Thu Oct 11, 2018 6:42 pm
On the precedent of previous years, there would need to be a Grand Prix to give two spots for a Candidates tournament in 2020, followed by a world championship match later in 2020.

Has anything been announced?
The Agenda for the recent meeting of the FIDE General Assembly included the following item:

7.22.5. FIDE Grand-Prix.
Mr. I. Merenzon to inform.

Merenzon is from AGON, of course

I have no idea what was said or whether the election of Dvorkovich (no fan of AGON) will have changed things.

NickFaulks
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Re: Grand Prix 2019

Post by NickFaulks » Thu Oct 11, 2018 7:15 pm

David Sedgwick wrote:
Thu Oct 11, 2018 7:01 pm
I have no idea what was said or whether the election of Dvorkovich (no fan of AGON) will have changed things.
I was there but remember only a presentation regarding the London match. Was anyone paying better attention?

I imagine that the Dvorkovich victory will change things a great deal.
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Alex Holowczak
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Re: Grand Prix 2019

Post by Alex Holowczak » Thu Oct 11, 2018 7:33 pm

NickFaulks wrote:
Thu Oct 11, 2018 7:15 pm
David Sedgwick wrote:
Thu Oct 11, 2018 7:01 pm
I have no idea what was said or whether the election of Dvorkovich (no fan of AGON) will have changed things.
I was there but remember only a presentation regarding the London match. Was anyone paying better attention?

I imagine that the Dvorkovich victory will change things a great deal.
I remember the visual presentation on the London match, but it was mostly dwarfed by the things that were coming out of his mouth that I didn't believe. I wrote a lot of them down, but my notes don't mention the Grand Prix. From my notes:
  • Only A-list media will be invited
  • It would be marketed as the "oldest world championship in any sport", which Andy Howie pointed out was wrong; the Real Tennis World Championship dates back to 1740.
  • We were invited to give comments on the proposed merchandise they were intending to sell, which included World Chess branded Christmas baubles.
  • They've load-tested their website by using the Olympiad feed, and it copes with 11,000 people just fine. They didn't advertise that because they didn't want to take traffic away from the official site, which is consistent with what they want to do. The match itself will get many times that number of viewers, so there wasn't much confidence from the English-speaking mumblers around me in the merits of that test.
  • The New York match had a media reach of 1.4 billion people, and the opening press conference reached 700 million people.
  • Sky Sports (UK) and Fox News (USA) will cover it.

Richard Bates
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Re: Grand Prix 2019

Post by Richard Bates » Thu Oct 11, 2018 8:11 pm

Sky News maybe (on a one off basis). Sky Sports I think unlikely.

Paul Cooksey
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Re: Grand Prix 2019

Post by Paul Cooksey » Thu Oct 11, 2018 8:13 pm

I don't know if I should be more embarrassed to admit I quite like the Grand Prix or that I might buy one of the Christmas decorations.

Alex Holowczak
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Re: Grand Prix 2019

Post by Alex Holowczak » Thu Oct 11, 2018 8:20 pm

Richard Bates wrote:
Thu Oct 11, 2018 8:11 pm
Sky News maybe (on a one off basis). Sky Sports I think unlikely.
When I said "cover it", he said it would be regular coverage. Presumably this means every day.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: Grand Prix 2019

Post by Roger de Coverly » Thu Oct 11, 2018 8:27 pm

Alex Holowczak wrote:
Thu Oct 11, 2018 8:20 pm
When I said "cover it", he said it would be regular coverage. Presumably this means every day.
In the UK, the BBC, Thames and Channel 4 have all covered World Championship matches. When was the last TV coverage? I think it was after 1993 but not much beyond that. Intel got some programmes made of their Speed Chess Challenge. Again that was the 1990s.

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Matt Mackenzie
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Re: Grand Prix 2019

Post by Matt Mackenzie » Thu Oct 11, 2018 10:10 pm

The last I can recall was coverage of the 1995 Kasparov v Anand match on the BBC.
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Roger de Coverly
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Re: Grand Prix 2019

Post by Roger de Coverly » Thu Oct 11, 2018 10:16 pm

Matt Mackenzie wrote:
Thu Oct 11, 2018 10:10 pm
The last I can recall was coverage of the 1995 Kasparov v Anand match on the BBC.
That makes sense, because the PCA died after that and Kirsan had abolished the alternative FIDE cycle in favour of a knock out although I think the unwanted Kamsky v Karpov match was a little later. In the Kasparov v Kramnik match in 2000, they thought they only needed live internet coverage. Either that or broadcasters weren't interested.

Kevin Thurlow
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Re: Grand Prix 2019

Post by Kevin Thurlow » Fri Oct 12, 2018 7:03 pm

"The New York match had a media reach of 1.4 billion people, and the opening press conference reached 700 million people."

Assuming the American "billion", that means that 800 million non-players looked at it!?

Alex Holowczak
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Re: Grand Prix 2019

Post by Alex Holowczak » Fri Oct 12, 2018 8:49 pm

Kevin Thurlow wrote:
Fri Oct 12, 2018 7:03 pm
"The New York match had a media reach of 1.4 billion people, and the opening press conference reached 700 million people."

Assuming the American "billion", that means that 800 million non-players looked at it!?
Apparently so. Or by another metric, 1 in 5 people in the world.