Magnus Carlsen quits Grand Prix
By Jack Peters, International Master
December 14, 2008
LA Times
The World Chess Federation (FIDE) plans to begin the third tournament of its Grand Prix series today in Elista, Russia. The first two Grand Prix tournaments were unqualified successes, featuring exciting battles between many of the world’s top 20 grandmasters. The forecast for the rest of the series is less rosy.
When organizers of Grand Prix events in Qatar and Switzerland backed out, FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov moved the Qatar tournament to his hometown of Elista and announced that Armenia would host a tournament. But FIDE also changed the rules, making the Grand Prix leader merely one of eight contenders in a tournament that would determine the challenger in the 2010 world championship. This decision was viewed as an attempt to finagle Vladimir Kramnik and Veselin Topalov, stars who had scorned the Grand Prix, into the world championship cycle. Magnus Carlsen and Levon Aronian, winners of the first two Grand Prix tournaments, protested.
Carlsen withdrew from the Grand Prix after an unsatisfying reply from FIDE. The father of the 18-year-old prodigy posted these explanations at the website blog.magnuschess.com: “What we want from FIDE are transparent processes, fairness and predictability” and “Magnus is simply not motivated to continue the GP series with these dramatically changed conditions.”
In my opinion, FIDE’s main purpose should be to enable the best players to face each other. It has failed. Under Ilyumzhinov, FIDE has repeatedly broken promises and needlessly argued with the players it should support. Now the organization is feuding with Carlsen, its brightest young star.
Ilyumzhinov recently challenged critics to organize their own events. For once, he’s right.
Here is the full story.
Magnus is so awesome.