
Looking ahead to Mexico City 2007
With all eyes on the 2006 world championship match finishing today in Elista,
the official website for the 2007 world championship poked its head out of
the nest. www.chessmexico.com
is still mostly empty, but organizers Jorge Saggiante and Marcel Sisniega have
ambitious plans for this beautiful site, as well as ambitious plans for the
year leading up the event and the tournament itself.
The world championship will begin on September 12, 2007 in Mexico City, right
in the heart of the historic center. They've rented out an entire floor of the
massive Sheraton Hotel to provide space for rooms for commentary in different
languages, video production facilities, and of course the massive playing hall
with room for thousands of spectators. Yes, we said thousands. Did you know
Mexico City is one of the two or three largest cities in the world? (Depending
how you measure.) Nearly 20 million people live in its urban sprawl.

The site brings a Mexican flavor to the web. Check out the Aztec chess piece!
The site will be fully bilingual in Spanish and English. There isn't much in
either language just yet, of course. But we're told they plan to have interactive
games and contests, columnists and news, and an emphasis on mainstream instructional
and general interest content, especially for kids. Señor Saggiante's
great ambition isn't just to host the world chess championship. He is a man
on a mission to professionalize the sport and see it flourish at every level
in Mexico and beyond. You may remember him as the man behind the Cuernavaca
young stars tournament last year.

Organizer Jorge Saggiante and his wife with Veselin Topalov.
Directing
the Mexico 2007 operation is Mexican Grandmaster Marcel Sisniega. He's a writer
and filmmaker these days, having given up competitive chess quite a while ago.
Now Mexico's first GM wants to bring chess to the entire country with this ambitious
project. They have scheduled 100 tournaments to take place in Mexico before
the world championship begins! They also have a full schedule of exhibitions
and lectures, including a gigantic simultaneous exhibition to fill the famous
Zocalo (plaza) in the heart of the city.
The website will be covering all these events throughout the 11 months leading
up to the beginning of the championship. There will also be many exclusively
online events, such as Grandmaster games against the world, quizzes, and contests.
The prizes include a trip to Mexico to attend the event! One thing that is already
active on the site is a
registration page where you can get a username for future activities
and sign up to receive the official site newsletter with updates about the content
and events.

Profiles of the participants make up some of the content already online.
One of the promises at the site is that of lots of live and post-game video
once the event begins. With YouTube and similar sites becoming the norm, it's
about time chess got on the Flash video bandwagon. Along with the live coverage
and commentary, there will be video wrap-ups with analysis and interviews after
every round.
We'll keep you up to date with the latest developments, although we're rather
hoping to win that free trip to Mexico City for ourselves... Update: It looks
like the first order of business for webmaster Mig
Greengard is to swap the player profile of Veselin Topalov with that of
new unified world champion Vladimir Kramnik! Ouch!