‘Karpov candidate for FIDE President’

Anatoly Karpov will put forward his candidacy to become FIDE President, according to reporters of Russian news agency SarInform. “It is necessary to restore order,” the 12th World Champion reportedly said yesterday. Read more

FIDE publishes March 1 ratings, Linares not counted

Just a few days ago Veselin Topalov won the Linares tournament and narrowed the gap with Magnus Carlsen on the live rating list to just one point. On the March 1st FIDE rating list the Norwegian leads with a personal record of 2813 and is still 8 points ahead of Topalov. Read more

Contract Anand-Topalov signed

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, representing the World Chess Federation and Stefan Sergiev, representing the Bulgarian Chess Federation, yesterday signed the contract for the organization of the Anand-Topalov World Championship match. The prize fund for the match is 2 million Euros and the dates are April 23rd (game 1) to May 12th, 2010 (possible tiebreaks). Read more

Pairings round 1 World Cup published

The FIDE World Cup 2009 will be a knockout tournament of 128 players, held from November 20th till December 15th, 2009 in Khanty-Maniysk, Russia, just like the previous two World Cups won by Levon Aronian and Gata Kamsky respectively. After the publication of the new rating list, FIDE immediately announced the pairings of the first round. Read more

Carlsen officially world’s number 2 at 2801

Magnus Carlsen officialy broke the 2800 barrier today. On the November 1st FIDE rating list the Norwegian is the new world’s number 2, only 9 points behind Veselin Topalov (2810). Radjabov and Ivanchuk left the top 10 for Gashimov and Svidler. Read more

FIDE accepts bid, Anand-Topalov in Sofia

Despite the fact that a formal bank guarantee still hasn’t been provided, FIDE today accepted a bid from Sofia, Bulgaria to host the 2010 World Championship match between Viswanathan Anand and Veselin Topalov. The dates have not yet been confirmed but the World Chess Federation suggested starting on April 5th, the birthday of its President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. Read more

No financial guarantees yet for Anand-Topalov

“That the match between two retired champions causes more media frenzy than any other chess event tells you about the current state of affairs in the world of chess,” Garry Kasparov said in Valencia last week. That the three current bids for the 2010 World Championship Match between Viswanathan Anand and Veselin Topalov aren’t backed by financial guarantees, is telling as well. Read more

(Almost complete) list World Cup participants published

After publising a provisional list of qualifiers for the 2009 World Cup last month, FIDE has now put online the (almost complete) list of confirmed players who will travel to Khanty-Mansiysk in December. Only the 4 nominees of the local organizers have yet to be announced; the top seeds in Siberia will be Ivanchuk, Morozevich and Radjabov. Read more

Ivanchuk re-enters top 10 on new FIDE rating list

Following its new policy of publishing six instead of four rating lists a year, FIDE already made available the September rating list today. The top 10 didn’t change much; Jakovenko is out but after a great summer Vassily Ivanchuk is back in; the Ukrainian climbed from spot 30th all the way up to 8th place.
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Who already qualified for the World Cup?

This week FIDE published an almost complete list of qualifiers for the 2009 World Cup, scheduled for November 20-December 15 in Khanty-Maniysk, Russia. The winner cashes USD 120,000 and will qualify for the Candidates stage of the World Championship cycle 2009-2011. Read more

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