|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Chessville
Advertise to Single insert:
|
CHESS AND PIPELINE POLITICS
Thus, funded by Kirsan, the Kramnik v Topalov world championship reunification match is happening in Elista, the capital of Kalmykia, over September and October 2006 - with a 1-million dollar prize - split equally. Moreover, the Azerbaijan grandmaster Radjabov has already challenged Topalov - assuming he is the winner- to a private world championship match in Baku early next year. This challenge has been accepted! With a 1.5 million dollar prize - Topalov will receive 1 million come what may from this future challenge, providing he overcomes the hurdle of a somewhat resurgent Kramnik. The principle that the winner takes the lions share appears to have been abandoned in both cases, but one cannot cavil at Kirsan's policy of allowing powerful challengers to take a shot at the title so long as the official cycle is also maintained. This can do nothing but help to encourage the spread of chess. The notable factor in all this FIDE ACTIVITY is that regions and local governments are sponsoring chess, not - as in the past - corporations or businesses. Preceding the Elista and Baku events, the same pattern emerged with the FIDE world tournament in Argentina last year and the FIDE championship tournament scheduled for Mexico 2007. Also FIDE events in outposts of Russia recently, such as Ekaterinburg and Khanty Mansisk. This may be a function of Ilumzhinov being president of Kalmykia and thus giving him access to a new type of contact in government circles. It may also be a function of what has been termed PIPELINE POLITICS, creating a new economic frontier based on OIL and its distribution. Under this scenario, a novel and powerful economic entity is emerging, consisting of rich or strategically positioned Russian provinces and Russian autonomous Republics - such as Kalmykia itself - which may either have oil or gas or can facilitate oil transportation over vast distances and avoiding tricky areas or terrorist attack. These cities and regions of the former Soviet empire now seem to be enthusiastic about sponsoring high profile chess events. This is a powerful indicator that they are forming the unexpected bastions of a richly endowed economic future. Kalmykia itself owns oil and gas reserves, and it is also a focal point for the convergence of other petroleum interests which might wish to avoid more inflammatory areas. Kirsan is reputed to have made his first fortune by trading with Saddam Hussein. Indeed, he actually tried to hold the 1996 FIDE World Championship in Baghdad. Although talked out of that by nervous advisers, he did go on to stage a FIDE World Championship tournament in Colonel Gadaffi's Tripoli.
True, Kirsan was on the last flight out of Baghdad before Saddam Hussein fell - and he endured a period of relative austerity after that. Now, though, he has recovered his footing and I would not be at all surprised if he enjoyed covert but committed backing both from Putin in Moscow, with whom he now seems to be on very friendly terms, and, paradoxically also the US State Department.
Consider these facts. Petroleum industry plenipotentiaries are increasingly finding their way to Elista, the capital of Kalmykia. Kirsan has oil and gas but also a far more important resource - his own secure personal seaborne outlet. The crisscrossing of former Soviet Asia with existing and projected lines is extraordinary; but land -based pipelines are singularly vulnerable to political pressure and terrorist attack. Contrast that asset with the security of controlling ones own port and one's own supertankers on the open ocean. Both are far less exposed to unwelcome external influences!! Kirsan is recently on record as having struck an agreement with a group of German investors and Iranian oil producers to develop his own port on the Caspian sea at Lagan. This puts him in the top league and makes what would seem to be a tin-pot former Russian colony - now an autonomous region - the hub of this new economic frontier. Kirsan has won the FIDE election, doubtless supported by pressures from power and influence centres Bessel Kok could not even imagine. Chess purists will gnash their teeth and are so doing - witness the following from Robert Huntington, a former Associated Press chess specialist and Bessel Kok supporter. FIDE, desperate for resources and heedless of where they came from, brought in Ilyumzhinov as its new president in November 1995:
Huntington's logic is impeccable in many ways, but he is wrong in the sense that he has overlooked Kirsan's specific vision for chess, one that is constructed on untold wealth, to be housed on a vibrant new economic frontier and supported by huge forces that are largely invisible to the conventional chess ivory towerist.
Many cultures have their own preferred board game, which can trace its origins back to either chataranga or one of its very early offshoots. In essence, what becomes ‘the variant’ or what remains the mainstream game over the course of time is highly subjective and varies from culture to culture. Given that this is the case, there is no harm in at least asking the question: “Is the current configuration of the chessboard the one that results in the most satisfying game?” This must have been on the mind of the
great José Capablanca. With his astonishing tournament record you have to wonder: "Why
would he want to change the game?" He foresaw that draws among
the chess elite would become very commonplace...Read
More! Visit the Gothic Chess Federation
|
The
|
||||
|
||||||
Kirsan Ilumzhinov, the colourful
president, both of the autonomous Russian republic of Kalmykia and of FIDE,
the world chess federation, won the FIDE election, held at the Turin
Olympiad early in June 2006, and thus retained his presidency of the
international chess body. He defeated the challenger, European
businessman Bessel Kok, by a handsome margin, relying on the support of
virtually every non-European nation. Top players and European
federations may have no faith in him but paradoxically, he is probably not
the third-world demagogue his predecessor, Florencio Campomanes, turned out
to be, but a far more subtle player on the world political
and
economic chessboard. His megalomaniac ambitions have, in the past,
been gauged by his construction of an essentially deserted chess city in his
homeland, but this is just one element of a much broader strategy for
bringing chess to the attention of the world, in his own idiosyncratic
fashion.
Old European chess interests - such as
Bessel Kok, the defeated presidential challenger - look back longingly to a
classical chess past where the grandmasters and champions such as Fischer
and Kasparov were, on the plus side, world renowned superstars but also, on
the downside, a law unto themselves. Witness, for example, Fischer's
refusal to defend his title in 1975 when his own regulations were thrown out
by FIDE. Now, however, that old template has been swept away by Kirsan
who has hidden supporters and concealed strengths at which the world at
large may only conjecture. His ambition has always been to tame the
over-mighty champions and make them toe the governing body's line. His
insistence on drug tests, largely irrelevant for chessplayers, has been an
integral part of the arsenal for this disciplinary process. Now, with
Kasparov in self -imposed retirement, and Kramnik willing to stake his
independent world title in Elista, Kirsan is ready, after more than a decade
as titular head of the chess world, to seize real as well as nominal
control.
