First they take Crimea; now they eye the world...

...chess title that is.

Tomorrow is deadline day for the signing of the contract for the rematch of the FIDE World Chess Championship. The match is scheduled from 7th November and should be a contest between the previous World Champion Viswanathan Anand and the current world champion and highest rated player of all time Magnus Carlsen.

However, while Vishy has signed up Magnus is in the middle of the Sinquefield Cup in USA and is scheduled to take on World number 2, Armenia's Levon Aronian tomorrow as the deadline for signing the contract comes to pass. He has said that he has issues with the venue and little knowledge of the principle sponsor of the rematch. Having failed to get financial backing or a location it was determined to hold it in Sochi, Russia, which also sources close to Carlsen say causes a problem due to the unrest in Ukraine. Magnus had asked for a postponement in the tournament, but when FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov turned him down he asked for an extension of the signing deadline, which is also not acceptable to FIDE.

In the last 100 years there have only been 23 years that the World Champion (or at least one of them from 1993-2006) has not been from the former Soviet Union. The result should Carlsen fail to sign would mean that the runner up to Anand in the Candidates tournament would be elevated to step in. The reticence of the Russian FIDE President, who had fixed it for Sochi to step in to host the Tournament, to accommodate the current world champion may be in part due to that runner up being Sergey Karjakin of Russia. What is of added significance may be that Karjakin is a ethnic Russian from the recently annexed Crimea.

A home challenger to the greatest crown in Chess would be advantageous to the principle sponsor and organisers, but would be bad for Chess if the strongest player were to be defaulted on a technicality. It may well result in a second split in the recognised World Champion in recent memory when Garry Kasparov, who recently lost out to Ilyumzhinov for the FIDE presidency in the vote in Carlsen's native Norway, set up the PCA to take on a world title match against Nigel Short in 2013.

There could well be a split again brought about to have a Crimean take on the title for Russia. Is the refusal to allow the first Western world champion since Bobby Fischer to defend the title in a place or time he feels safe, with sponsorship he is happy with a political football?

It's Friday....So.......

It's the weekend, time for some fun.

You could have blown be over with a feather yesterday, and probably Jonathan Calder as well, for the Metro had some chess stories. Yes I did use the plural correctly.

The first was saying how the youngest American to become Grandmaster, yeah even younger than Bobby Fischer was over for the return of the London Chess Classic after 25 years. Hikaru Nakamura seen in action below on the left in a 1 minute game, will be taking on some of the British GMs including Luke McShane and David Howell who I once sat at a competition board in the same room with, admittedly a long way down.



The other was thestory of two GMs Wang Yue and Li Chao who were thrown out of the World Chess Cup in Russia for returning late from a smoking break. For Li Chao it is an added danger to the peer pressure that smoking can exert, he only took it up to keep his fellow Chinese player company.

At least they didn't get into a fight with FIDE over the new rules. What many of you may not know is that former world Heavy Weight champion Lennox Lewis was quite a decent Chess player. Probably just as well he never took up chess boxing he may have been deemed a little too good at one of the disciplines involved.




So with Chess being the theme for the week I think that can only call for Murray Head singing a bit of Benny and Bjorn.

If at First You Don't Succeed Play On

This is a tale that is particularly relevant to Jonathan Calder and chess playing AM Peter Black but the lesson is a pertinent one for us all.

Looking at the 2nd Chess table below it would appear that I came equal second. The winner clearly won all their games and me and the other mid table sitter shared the spoils of our own encounters and beat the player who came last in both games.

However, this was a ranked tournament only for those with a ranking of 1500 or less. With the first round of online play now concluded I got the following email.

Congratulations on winning the 1st round of Intermediate Chess section, 55th GameKnot tournament! The player with the top score in your group has been moved to the next higher section due to their top rating in the past 90 days exceeding the rating limit of the section, so you will be advancing to the next round as the runner-up.

So the lesson is that though at times you may think you are fighting for scraps keep up the effort you may well be rewarded after you yourself had given up hope. Looking at the table above I'd need the victor to make some serious advances over the coming ranks for that feat to be repeated in the 56th Tournament as well.