Monday, April 22, 2019

Official Portraits and Unofficial People

https://rsport.ria.ru/20190421/1552899801.html
Moscow, April 21. Oleg Bogatov, RIA Novosti. President of the Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE), Arkady Vladimirovich Dvorkovich, told RIA Novosti that the decision to hold the first Word Fischerandom Chess Championship is due to the growing popularity of Fischer’s chess, and that Magnus Carlsen from Norway, the current World Champion of classical chess, will be one of the main favourites in the new Championship.
Fischerandom is a variant of chess advocated by 11th World Chess Champion Robert James “Bobby” Fischer from United States, in which the starting position of the pieces on the home rank is randomised (so as to feature 960 unique possible starting positions). The “Regulations for the 2019 FIDE World Fischer Random Chess Championship” have been published on the FIDE web site last Saturday. The Championship will begin on April 28, the Semifinals and Finals will be held from October 27 to November 2 in Bærum, Norway. The winner of the World Championship will receive $125,000 USD.
“FIDE decided to hold the World Fischerandom Chess Championship, given the growing popularity of Fischer’s chess”, Dvorkovich said. “It is called with various names, including chess960 (deriving from the number of starting arrays). Magnus Carlsen is obviously the favourite. He’s already World Champion of classical, rapid, and blitz chess, and he also won the unofficial World Fischerandom Chess Championship last year. No doubt he will be the favourite. But, nevertheless, it won’t be an easy race, as Pyotr Veniaminovich Svidler and Ian Alexandrovich Nepomniachtchi from Russia and Hikaru Nakamura from United States are all very strong, great contenders”.
“For now it’s a pilot project”, FIDE President said. “It’s official, but also experimental. On one hand, there is an online process of selection, open to everyone, regardless of rating and titles, and we’ll have to carefully monitor how servers, software and anti-cheating software will work — which may make our task technically quite difficult. Then, and only then, we will make a decision for the future. On the other hand, there are professionals playing for the title of World Champion, who are spasmodically followed by crowds of chess fans all over the world”.

(Very free translation by Nobody’s Perfect)

No comments:

Post a Comment