Elsewhere on the Web : World Championship Developments
Saturday May 1, 2004
World chess news is front and center again this week. The World Championship saw a number of significant developments.
- FIDE announced that 115 out of 128 players signed contracts to participate in the forthcoming knockout event in Tripoli, Libya. Vacant places will be taken from the reserve list.
List of Participants and Reserve List
Of the players who didn't sign, World No.2 Viswanathan Anand is the only Top-5 player missing from the current schedule of World Championship events. See
Anand refuses to sign
for details.
No.1 Garry Kasparov will play the winner of the Libya tournament. No.3 Vladimir Kramnik and No.4 Peter Leko will square off later this year at a still-to-be-announced venue. That leaves No.5 Veselin Topalov as the top ranked player competing in Libya. See
World meet loses cerebral power for a list of other top players who failed to sign their contracts.
- Gens una sumus? In another
press release,
FIDE announced that Libya will 'provide entry visas to all the qualified participants of this great Championship. No parallel event will be organized in Malta and all the games of the Championship will be played in Libya.' If you haven't been following the story until now, the problem was with participants from Israel.
- In the women's event, Chinese star Zhu Chen will not defend her World Women's Championship title. Details can be found
here.
- See Elsewhere on the Web
3 April 2004
and
24 April 2004
for background.
New World Records were set for most and for youngest.
-
Cubans set world record
'Cuba has broken its own world record for the number of people playing chess at the same time in the same place, with 13,000 players at the foot of Che Guevara's tomb, organisers say.'
The event saw the participation of former World Champion Anatoly Karpov, who played 11 simultaneous games.
-
World's youngest grandmaster
'Norway's chess prodigy Magnus Carlsen became the world's youngest international grandmaster (GM) on Monday after playing a draw against highly rated Alexei Fedorov of Belarus in the penultimate round of the 6th Dubai Open. Carlsen, 13, clinched the highest life title awarded by world chess federation FIDE with a round to spare.'
The same article reminds us that 'Sergei Karyakin of Ukraine holds the record for the youngest ever GM, gaining the title at 12 years and seven months of age in 2002.'
-
See Elsewhere on the Web
10 April 2004
for other records.
Index of all World Championship blog posts