Between Here and April

Speaking to Russian News Agency TASS in the backstage of the Forum “Strong Ideas for the New Time” underway in Moscow, Russia (November 11-13), FIDE President Arkady Vladimirovich Dvorkovich said that hopefully the second half of the Candidates Tournament is to be actually resumed at the end of April 2021 in Yekaterinburg, thus dismissing as groundless the rumours about its moving to another country.

Rewired

Finally, FIDE had to raise the white flag of surrender and postpone the second coming of the Candidates Tournament to the spring of next year. Most of the reasons given concern the COVID-19 surge, but, as stated in the official communiqué, the temporary unavailability of Chinese authorities to enable 丁立人 (Dīng Lìrén) and 王皓 (Wáng Hào) to travel abroad proved to be far more daunting than dealing with health and safety protocols. But there’s nothing to fear, because FIDE says they will announce the new venue and the date details with two months advance, which may suggest that negotiations must have started much earlier.

A Letter to the Editor

Chess-News.ru (@Chess_News)

“We never relinquished our right to host the Candidates Tournament in Yekaterinburg”. Anatoly Yevgenyevich Karpov sent a LETTER to Arkady Vladimirovich Dvorkovich, expressing his surprise at learning that FIDE “is conducting backdoor negotiations” to move the Tournament to another location. For further details, please visit: http://chess-news.ru/node/27387.

Tomorrow Never Knows

Chinese Grandmaster 王皓 (Wáng Hào) is not happy to go back to Siberia for the second time in the same year, and raised safety concerns about the opportunity for resuming the Candidates Tournament under such times and circumstances. Not surprisingly, he found an ally in Australian Grandmaster Ian Rogers, who argued that “Moving the tournament seems like a sensible suggestion by 王皓 (Wáng Hào)”. Mutatis mutandis, the ghost of Azerbaijani Grandmaster Teimour Boris oghlu Radjabov reappeared backstage as a metaphor for conscience, which put FIDE President Arkady Vladimirovich Dvorkovich before yet another dilemma: either to charter a fleet of airplanes, or to move the second act of the saga elsewhere. Interviewed by chess24.com, world’s No. 2 Fabiano Caruana couldn’t say whether November 1 (and Yekaterinburg) shall be the resumption date (and venue) or not: “I think there is a chance, but I can’t predict how much of a chance”. On the other hand, between past and future, there is no key to understand the original sin: “To be honest I think we should have just completed the tournament when we were there!”, Caruana said.

Climate, Man, and History

12th World Chess Champion Anatoly Yevgenyevich Karpov, in an interview to Sportbox.ru last April 2, pronounced himself totally against a “virtualisation” of the last seven rounds of the Candidates Tournament: “Niet! The Candidates Tournament should never be held online”, he thundered. “Of course, people are free to alienate themselves as they please, and I have nothing against rapid or online blitz tournaments, but no virtual reality or pseudo-reality can sublimate a World Chess Championship match with the physical presence of the contenders and the audience. Chess is a struggle of ideas on a board; chess is a human exchange: emotional, passional and psychological. For sure, online you can have almost everything, but fortunately chess it’s one of those things which still does need humans and their subjectivity”.