Elista R2: Grischuk beats Leko, Radjabov beats Bacrot

FIDE Grand Prix in Elista 2008

The Third FIDE Grand Prix tournament is taking place in Elista from December 13 to 29, 2008. Despite the recent withdrawals (Carlsen, Adams) and the absence of players like Anand, Kramnik and Topalov the tournament is very strong, with a category of 19. The venue, originally Doha, is now "City Chess" in Elista, Kalmykia. There are 14 players from nine different countries:

Results

Standings

Interview with the CEO of Global Chess Geoffrey Borg

Monday, 15th December 2008

- We have been working together with FIDE for two years already and in my opinion we’ve achieved a lot. We’ve done a great deal of work with FIDE and concluded a commercial agreement. The legal agreement between FIDE and Global Chess was confirmed in November 2007. The first part was implemented in June this year. We did the marketing part, administer the FIDE website, created the new design which simplifies the communication with national federations and chess-players. Global Chess participates in all FIDE projects, and helps organize various contests – club tournaments, club championships, woman championships, blitz tournaments.

Yes, we do understand that chess can arouse interest in potential sponsors only in the event that a special platform attractive for most of the players is created. I had meetings with the representatives of national chess federations and elaborated a deeper understanding of our strategic targets. We exert every possible effort to promote chess in the regions. I did a study of a number of suggestions concerning chess promotion at schools and via TV. This is one of the priority aims in the matter of chess development.

The prize fund of each Grand Prix tournament is 212,000 Euro – every tournament has a 162 thousand Euro prize money (every player is rewarded). Besides tournament prizes, a large sum is allocated at the end of the event and awarded to the top ten players. The Grand Prix winner will get the prize of 75 thousand Euros. Basically the funds are provided by the host venue.

During the Grand Prix last May in Baku Geoffrey Borg chats with Peter Svidler.
Oxana Kosteniuk, the sister of women's world champion Alexandra, looks on.

We are currently carrying out negotiations on the following Grand Prix series: Russian, Azerbaijan, China, Oman, UAE and other cities who wish to host the tournaments. The negotiations are under way in different phases: some of the potential organizers signed preliminary agreements with us, some of them show slight signs of interests. We will collaborate only with those who will be able to secure financial guarantees for tournaments organization.

The capital of Kalmykia has got a vast experience in hosting world-scale contests. Local organizers, first and foremost Vice PM of the Republic and Vice-President of the Russian Chess Federation Valery Bovaev, insistently laboured for the right to host one of the Grand Prix tournaments. When choosing Elista as the host we’ve considered a whole array of factors, the celebration of the 400 years of the voluntary entry of the Kalmyks into the Russian state among them. As you know the Elista tournament was to be held next year in August on the eve of the anniversary. However due to the cancellation of Doha, the capital of Qatar, to host the third Grand Prix tournament, the Elista tournament was brought forward to this period. Nonetheless this tournament is dedicated to the 400th anniversary, as FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov declared.

At that time I became the CEO of Global Chess, and it will not be correct to work for two companies.

I am a FIDE Master. I was playing in the international zonal tournaments, chess club championships and also at the Chess Olympiads.

Geoffrey D Borg is a Fide Master who was quite active a number of years ago, winning a silver medal on Board 1 in the Thessaloniki Olympiad in 1984. He still enjoys playing on the Internet, but in the past years has been more active in chess organisation and politics. In 2005 Geoffrey was the Campaign Director for the Dutch-Turkish bid for the FIDE Presidency, which challenged the incumbent President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. After the latter had won the election Borg became one of FIDE's Vice Presidents. Today he is the commercial director of Global Chess.

FIDE Grand Prix Elista 2008 – Schedule and results

Links Tournament web site All games in PGN The games are being broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download ChessBase Light, which gives you immediate access. You can also use it to read, replay and analyse the PGN games. Download free PGN reader ChessBase Light