The World Chess Championship 2013 will be held in Chennai between November
6 and 26 at Chennai and the state government will allot Rs 29 crore for
the event, Chief Minister Jayalalithaa told the Assembly on Monday.
Making a suo motu statement in the House, she said the championship 2013
would be between World Chess Champion Viswanathan Anand, winner of the World
Chess Championship 2012, and Magnus Carlsen of Noway, who had secured 2,872
points, the highest in the FIDE (Word Chess Federation) rating.
Ms. Jayalalithaa said when the World Chess Federation president Kirsan
Illyumzhinov met her in 2011, he had requested her to hold the World Chess
Championship in Chennai. She also had agreed to organise the event at a
cost of Rs. 20 crore.
“However, it failed to materialise as Russia made the highest bidding
for the championship. Since Tamil Nadu came forward to organise the event
in 2012, the Word Chess Federation agreed to hold it in Chennai without
bidding,” she said.
Ms. Jayalalithaa said the international event would further encourage the
youth to learn chess and would lead to creations of more and more champions.
Note: The Indian term "crore", which comes
from the Prakrit word krodi, is a unit in the numbering system equal to
ten million. So Rs 29 crore is actually 290 million Rupees, which at the
current exchange rate is around four million Euros or 5.3 million US Dollars.
Looking back
On July 13, 2011 we
reported that the Tamil Nadu Government has placed a winning bid for
the Chess World Championship match between reigning Champion Viswanathan
Anand and Challenger Boris Gelfand. The match would take place in April
or May of 2012, the total budget is Rs. 20 crores (= 3.2 million Euros or
US $4.5 million at the time).
FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov in
conversation with Chief Minister J. Jayalalitha
But then, in August 2011, we received word that a rival bid from the Russian
Chess Federation with a US $2.55 million prize fund has been accepted by
FIDE. It was a big disappointment to the Tamil Nadu government, which had
bid $2.25 million. In our
report we quoted the press release of FIDE, which included the following
passage:
The FIDE President, Kirsan llyumzhinov expressed his gratitude to the
All India Chess Federation who worked very hard to put in a very competitive
bid with the support of the Government of Tamil Nadu.
In view of the commitment shown by the AICF and the appreciation of FIDE
towards the development of chess in India, the AICF would be given a first
option of three months following the match in Moscow, to make a proposal
for the organization of the World Chess Championship Match 2013.
This is clearly what Chief Minister Jayalalithaa Jayaram is referring to.
Chennai
Chennai, which was formally known as Madras, is the capital city of the
Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is a major commercial, cultural, economic
and educational center in South India – the "Cultural Capital
of South India"– and was declared as the most liveable city in
India by the Institute of Competitiveness on account of economic, social,
security and medical conditions as parameters. The population is 4.7 million.
Chennai is the home town of Viswanathan Anand.
World Championship in Tromsø?
A number of Norwegian newspapers were pushing the idea of staging the World
Championship in Tromsø, in the north of Norway. Here are some examples
(use Google Translate to read them):
While we
really love Tromsø and would give anything to spend three weeks
there, we see a small problem with the 2013 World Championship being held
in the Arctic Circle. On November 6th there will be five hours and 41 minutes
of daylight (sunrise to sunset), on November 16 three hours and 49 minutes,
and on November 26 the sun will rise at 11:04 a.m. and set at 11:58 a.m.
On November 27, the day of departure, it will not rise above the horizon
at all. The next time the people of Tromsø will see the sun is January
15, 2014, when it will make a first 30-minute appearance.
But then again there is the extraordinary pleasure of riding snow mobiles,
and Tromsø is a wonderful place to see the Aurora
Borealis or Northern Lights.
