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CENTRO DANNEMANN
PIERRE RUIZ-VIDAL NOVEMBER 2004, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED FOR SETTINGS DOCUMENTATION, ARCHIVES LAURENT TINTURE
PRODUCED WITH DOCUMENTS PUBLISHED BY CHESSBASE, FRIEDRICH FRIEDEL CENTRO DANNEMANN BRISSAGO, JACOB AAGAARD, RAINER KNAAK, JOERG WEGERLE CHESS TODAY, VLADIMIR BARSKY, MIKHAIL GOLUBEV, MAXIM NOTKIN, NIKOLAI VLASSOV, ALEX BABURIN THE WEEK IN CHESS, JAMES COLEMAN, MARK CROWTHER, MALCOLM PEIN SPORT-EXPRESS, YURI VASILIEV, SERGEI SHIPOV
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he press invitation, started off with the drawing of colours with a new and interesting twist. Adriana Madeira, a representative of Dannemann, selected a square, f5, which was not revealed to the players. Kramnik and Leko started a blitz game, and the first to place a piece on the selected square got White in game one of the match. Peter Leko managed with the move h4-f5 in the position below. So he will be White in game one on September 25th. Present at the press conference were Hans Leusen, President of Dannemann Brazil, the title holder Vladimir Kramnik, challenger Peter Leko, ACP President Joel Lautier and a few others involved in the staging of the match. The press conference was attended by a group of around forty journalists and photographers. Hans Leusen, speaking in German with a pleasant Dutch accent, told the audience that the size of the prize sum underlines the global importance of this tournament our commitment is intended to contribute to the further development and professionalisation of chess. The proceedings were simultaneously-translated for Vladimir Kramnik. Peter Leko and Joel Lautier are both fluent in German. During the conference Vladimir's mobile phone suddenly rang... but there were no serious consequences, like disqualification or anything. One of the main speakers was Joel Lautier, who announced the full backing of the event by the Association of Chess Professionals (ACP). His speech, which is given below, retraced the schism in the chess world and the problems created by the FIDE (Fdration Internationale des Echecs). Lautier, who is also the tournament director of the Dannemann event, presented the rules for the World Championship, which according to ACP could also
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form the framework for future World Championship duels. He set FIDE a deadline for October to organise the match between Kasparov and the winner in Libya, or they would have to look at other reunification options. In his address Vladimir Kramnik mentioned that the person on the Dannemann logo had a stunning resemblance to the first chess World Champion Wilhelm Steinitz. When asked about his chances against Leko he drew laughter by quoting Alekhine, who speaking about his opponent Capablanca, said: "I don't know how I'm going to beat him; but I also cannot imagine how he can beat me." Peter Leko spoke about the importance this match has for him personally and for the Hungarian chess community which has for such a long time been close to providing a challenger for the World Championship but never quite made it until now. Peter told the audience that Hungary is planning live coverage of the event in public places all over the country.
sports, and what makes it so valuable is the fact that every World Champion has beaten his predecessor in a fair duel. The only exceptions were in 1948 and 1975, but there were good reasons for that: in the first case Alexander Alekhine abruptly died, while in the second Bobby Fischer just stopped playing chess. Therefore, Garry Kasparov himself, in his recent best-selling book My Great Predecessors, only recognizes Vladimir Kramnik as the current World Champion, the fourteenth in the history of chess. Since 1993, FIDE has been struggling to hold its own championships, as it was always lacking the participation of the strongest player at the time. In 2002, by signing the so-called Prague Agreement, FIDE recognized the necessity to reunify the chess world. It took upon itself the responsibility of organizing a FIDE title match between the current holder Ruslan Ponomariov and Garry Kasparov. The winner of this match was due to meet the winner of the Classical World Championship for the reunified title. For reasons that are not fully elucidated to this day, the match between Ponomariov and Kasparov was eventually cancelled by FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. This means that FIDE has gone one
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step backward in the reunification process, Hans Leusen, President of Dannemann Brazil and Joel Lautier. since Ponomariov has lost his status as World Champion and now has to defend his title in a large knock-out event involving 128 players before being able to play Kasparov in a separate match. FIDEs attitude towards Ponomariov is very questionable and has provoked a strong reaction from Ponomariov who has refused to take part in the knock-out World Championship, but we shall not dwell on that now. Vladimir Kramnik, in the meantime, has obtained a worthy challenger in the person of Peter Leko, who convincingly won a very strong candidates tournament in Dortmund in 2002. Once their match will be over, we shall know the name of the Classical World Champion and this part of the Prague Agreement, at any rate, will have been fulfilled. FIDEs part of the Prague deal, however, is not likely to be delivered very soon. At the moment, FIDE is promote chess by setting up a circuit of experiencing serious difficulties in attracting the professional chess events. best players in its World Championship knock-out Both FIDE and the ECU have, unfortunately, given event that will be staged in Libya in June-July. All us a lot of work as far as defending the players is the FIDE World Champions since 1993, all four of concerned. I will just explain briefly some of the them Karpov, Khalifman, Anand and more recent conflicts we have had to solve. Ponomariov, have refused to play in Libya. On top As I mentioned previously, the next FIDE World of that, out of the best 16 players in the world, 9 Championship will be a large knock-out event with have declined to play in Libya, not counting 128 players, to be staged in Tripoli, Libya. Kasparov who is granted a direct match for the However, in order to take part, the participants had FIDE title against the winner from Libya. This to sign a so-called Players Undertaking that had basically means that FIDE has already failed in very little to do with a proper contract. It is its avowed attempt to reunify the chess world. It actually a written commitment signed by the also means that in the current state of things, players, which contains no obligations on FIDEs FIDEs World Championship title cannot be part and does not even bear any signature from a considered legitimate if so many top players are FIDE representative. This means that if a dispute missing from the competition. arises between a player and FIDE, the organization As you can see, FIDE has not done a stellar job in can use this document at leisure while the player running high-level chess during the last years, has no binding evidence of FIDEs obligations and that is precisely why the ACP has come into towards him or her. FIDE has turned a deaf ear to existence. In September 2003, a small group of our offer of improving this undertaking, as a result strong professional players decided that it was many top players have refused to sign it and have time to take matters in their hands and not let consequently been excluded from the World the bureaucrats from FIDE or the ECU, the Championship. I must also point out that, by European branch of FIDE, dictate professional holding the FIDE World Championship in Libya, players how and where they should play chess. FIDE is de facto depriving all Israeli players and This small group of players gathered together and several American participants of a chance to fight created the ACP, a not-for-profit international for the world title. To this day, it is absolutely organisation established in Paris under the unclear whether Israeli players are allowed to French law. We actively started recruiting new enter Libya, as FIDEs press releases assuring members from October 2003 and in December of that all players will be granted visas have just last year, a Board of nine members was elected to been completely contradicted by a public run the association and I was elected as its statement coming from the Libyan authorities president. Eight months after the birth of the claiming that they never intended to allow Israeli ACP, we have more than 200 members, a large citizens to enter Libya. If this were confirmed, it majority of which are high-level professional chess would be an obvious breach of a basic sporting players. The aim of the ACP is twofold, to defend rule, namely that no participants in a major the rights of chess players worldwide and to sports competition can possibly be disqualified on * This introduction says: It is always an exciting challenge for me to speak in the language of Goethe. But my knowledge of it is unfortunately insufficient to adequately express my opinion on the complicated themes which I will explain to you today. Please do not be fooled by these German sentences I practised them carefully this morning. If you permit I will now switch to English.
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account of race, citizenship or religious beliefs. Another striking example is FIDEs absurd decision to stage the Womens World Championship in the city of Batumi, located in a province of Georgia called Ajaria. This province was refusing to obey the central powers in the capital Tbilisi, and therefore the Georgian government had warned FIDE and the participants that it was against the staging of a World Championship in Batumi, as it couldnt guarantee the safety of the participants. The ACP repeatedly asked FIDE to let common sense prevail and it finally did, but at a very late stage. The event in Batumi has just been cancelled and moved to Elista, capital of Kalmykia, only a couple of weeks prior to the event. The list of FIDEs management mistakes goes on and on, but I will bore you no longer with that. The second part of the ACP activity, promoting chess, has been more rewarding. We have staged two successful Internet chess tournaments and we are now actively working on building a unified circuit of tournaments called the ACP Tour. In a nutshell, the idea is to group important existing tournaments, both at classical and rapid timecontrols, both from closed and open tournaments, all into one system. The top performers of the season will then be qualified to a Masters event that the ACP plans to organize at the end of next year. For some reason, this simple model, which has worked very well for major individual sports such as tennis, golf or Formula 1, has never been implemented in chess. Given the time and means, we also envision to develop chess teaching for children, as chess is ideally suited to help kids develop a strong sense of logic and therefore, serves as an ideal introduction to mathematics and sciences in general. Numerous other qualities are stimulated by the early practice of chess, such as independent thinking, competitive drive or a sense for aesthetics, to name but a few. Chess is best taught at an early age, around six or seven, when children usually learn to read and their intellect develops at a very fast pace.
Having introduced the ACP, I would now like to state its role as far as the Classical World Chess Championship goes. For the reasons described previously, the ACP recognizes the World Championship match between Vladimir Kramnik and Peter Leko, as opposed to the FIDE event in Libya. However, I must stress that the sponsor Dannemann is the official rights holder to the Classical World Chess Championship, therefore it would be incorrect to call this the ACP World Championship. Nevertheless, the company Dannemann shares the views of the ACP on the current situation in the chess world, that is why I have been offered the function of match director, which it has been my honour to accept. Of course, the big question on everyones mind is now: what will happen after the World Championship match between Vladimir and Peter? Well, we all agree that what chess needs more than anything else, is the reunification of all the best players in one championship cycle. FIDE has such a damaged reputation nowadays that we fear it will be hard for them to find sponsors to fulfil their part of the reunification process. In fact, the only thing they have going for them is Garry Kasparovs commitment to play one match for the FIDE title. However, even that may not last forever, since Kasparov has already seen his match with Ponomariov twice announced and twice cancelled, in Buenos Aires and Yalta. If FIDE struggles to find the financial backing for a match between the winner in Tripoli and Kasparov, it is not quite clear how they could stage a reunification match. The ACP position is the following: FIDE should be given some time to stage its match between the winner in Tripoli and Kasparov. By the end of the match in Brissago, we should already have a fair idea of how far FIDE has advanced in that direction. If nothing definite is announced by FIDE by the end of October 2004, the ACP will seriously consider taking part in the reunification process. When the time comes, we shall advise everyone in another press conference. Something tells me we might see each other again in the near future! Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attention.
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