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Напрежението
в София е огромно
за Топалов
Камски си крие
екипа, ще дойде
с човек от Мосад
"Topalov under pressure" – that is the title in the Bulgarian newspaper Standart, which carried an interview with Veselin Topalov's manager Silvio Danailov on Thursday. The subject of the interview is the world championship qualification match between Gata Kamsky, who won the FIDE World Cup 2007 in Khanty Mansiysk, and Veselin Topalov, who was given a special slot in the world championship qualification in a FIDE decision of June 2007. The match is scheduled to take place in one of the halls of the National Palace of Culture in Sofia, Bulgaria, from 16th to 28th February, 2009. the prize fund is US $250,000 which will be shared equally by the players. The main contents of the interview were summarized for us by friends in Sofia.
When asked about and obstacles on the way to organizing the match in Sofia, Danailov says that it would not have happened at all if Kramnik had beaten Anand at the World Championship in Bonn. "The influence of the Russians is very powerful," he says. "Topalov is the number one in the world, and Kramnik will do anything to avoid playing him. He refused to play in Sofia for one million dollars."
Danailov goes on to explain how Kamsky's team did not want the match to be held in Bulgaria. They were given eight months to find an alternate site and secure the prize money, but did not succeed. Danailov give two reasons why the Topalov side did not favour Bulgaria either: (1) the financing would come out of national funds; and (2) the expectation that Topalov must win will be too high ("it will be national tragedy if he loses").
The match is scheduled to start on February 16th, and Danailov talks about the problem in fixing the schedule. Kamsky had agreed to play in Wijk aan Zee, and Topalov in Linares. Since the former did not cancel his participation in Holland (in which case the match could have been held before Linares) it was up to Topalov to give up his contractual agreement to play in the Super-GM in Andalusia. "The Mayor of Linares is my friend and he agreed to annul the contract," says Danailov.
Asked about what happens if Topalov beats Kamsky and faces Anand, Danailov is defensive: "We are taking it one at a time and not thinking about that." Comparing the Kamsky match with Topalov's match against Kramnik Danailov says that his client and his team now have much greater experience. Will there be any scandals? "Kamsky wants to bring an expert from the Mossad (Israel Intelligence Agency) to check the playing venue," says Danailov, "but we have nothing to fear, we have nothing to hide."
In the meantime FIDE has announced that the organisation Universal Event Promotion GmbH, which staged both the match Kramnik vs Deep Fritz and the recent World Championship between Anand and Kramnik, has bid to stage the entire upcoming World Championship cycle.
Friday, 06 February 2009 16:01
Today FIDE has finalised the bid procedure for the Candidates 2010 and World Championship Match 2011 and is pleased to announce that it has received an offer from Universal Event Promotion GmbH to organise the Candidates.
The main elements of the offer are as follows:
UEP is ready, firstly, to organize an 8-player Candidate event:
Secondly, UEP have offered to host the World Championship match in September 2011 between the winner of the 2010 Candidates event and the current World Champion.
More details will be forthcoming in the next few days.
Source: FIDE
