The official website of the world chess title match Anand-Gelfand was launched on Monday. Earlier this month the organizers had already revealed the official logo.

The homepage of the official website

On Monday we received a press release from the organizers of the Anand-Gelfand World Championship match, revealing the URL of the official website:

http://moscow2012.fide.com/

More than a month before the start of the match, the site already contains all the basic information on the forthcoming duel.

Visitors to the site will find out the match schedule and rules. The Players’ Introduction section carries detailed biographies of Viswanathan Anand (very detailed in his case!) and Boris Gelfand. For those who are interested in chess statistics and history, the tournament and match records of the champion and the challenger and the results of all their previous head-to-head games are presented ('pre-match stats' on the right hand side). This part end with the previous encounters between Anand and Gelfand, which can all be replayed.

A separate section is devoted to the venue of the match, the State Tretyakov Gallery, which is the world’s biggest collection of Russian art. You will also find interviews with leading world chess players, giving their forecasts for the match and reflecting on the prospects for synergy between chess and the world museums. ('Leading chess players speak about the match'.)

There, you can read comments by Peter Svidler, Vladimir Kramnik, Anatoly Karpov, Yuri Averbakh and Viktor Kortchnoi. They answered two questions: 1. What do you expect of the forthcoming Anand–Gelfand match? 2. The match will take place in the Tretyakov Gallery. Andrei Filatov, the sponsor of the match, believes that bringing chess and art together can open a new page in chess history. What do you think of this idea?

Especially Karpov's answers were quite interesting:

1. I’ve known both these Grandmasters for many years. They are close in age, and it seems to me that the difference in their strength in chess was more marked in the past. We have to bear in mind that Gelfand still has ambitions and the desire to scale new heights and become the world champion, while Anand possibly no longer has the sharpness with which he approached his first match and his title. Of course, he wants to maintain the status quo, but does he have the nerves? It seems to me that he is nervously more worn-out than Gelfand. World championship matches are a matter of nerves, and the question of motivation can prove to be more important than the purely chess element. Also, as far as I can tell, Gelfand is still less attached to the computer than Anand. This could be a source of both minuses and pluses.

2. The idea of playing in a museum is very interesting. I remember playing in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam myself in 1976. It was a strong international tournament, and I got a lot of pleasure from going to look at a picture between moves, something I did over two weeks. I played fast in those days!

Of course, it’s not a tournament ahead of us, but a world championship match – quite a different matter for the contestants, and they’re not likely to have the opportunity for distractions. But for the spectators there are more opportunities. I think the idea is very good, and chess lovers should like it.

The Greetings section features messages by FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, Chairman of the RCF Supervisory Board Arkady Dvorkovich, General Director of the State Tretyakov Gallery Irina Lebedeva and match sponsor Andrei Filatov, a shareholder in the N-Trans Group.

Journalists will find on the site all the information they might need about accreditation and references to materials published in leading Russian and world media.

According to the press release, the site is only just "beginning its work" - it will be regularly updated.

The match between the reigning champion Viswanathan Anand (India, 2799) and the challenger Boris Gelfand (Israel, 2739) will take place on 10-31 May 2012. On March 12th, the official logo was revealed:

The logo is a schematic drawing of a chess crown comprising of several elements. The upper part of the logo depicts semi-spheres of the crown borrowing the colors of the national flags of India and Israel (orange/green and grey/blue, respectively). The central element of the crown is formed by the outlines of chess pieces. At the foot of the crown is a heraldic band featuring the colors of the Russian national flag (white, blue, red) with the FIDE logo in its center. Framing the crown is the circle inscription “FIDE World Chess Championship Match 2012”.