Official site of Kasparov – Karpov 2009
history of the matches and possible world tour
Report by chessdom.com
Only a few days after we published the official video of the match Kasparov – Karpov, with the additional details about a possible world tour, today we present you the official site of “Valencia cuna del ajedrez” Kasparov – Karpov duel. It is available at the domain http://www.valenciacunadelajedrezmoderno.com/ and contains interesting details about the event. As the site is still entirely in Spanish, the organizers have nicely added a section with the links in English, containing all the details.
Official schedule
The official schedule is similar to the announced a few days ago. Important detail is that the rapid games have 5 seconds increment, and the blitz games have 2 seconds increment.
September 21 – press conference and simul
September 22 – 2 rapid games (25 mins + 5 sec.)
September 23 – 2 rapid games (25 mins + 5 sec.)
September 24 – 8 blitz games (5 mins + 2 sec.)
September 25 – Closing ceremony
History of the matches
Kasparov and Karpov have played five big matches in their carreer. Two of them happend in Moscow, one in London – Leningrad, one in New York – Lyon, and one in Sevilla. Exactly these are the places that might host a Kasparov – Karpov world tour in the next years. The negotiations are still going on, more details will be revealed during the match in Valencia.
Will Karpov have a chance?
This is awesome and great for the game. The outcome doesn’t really matter as it’s more a celebration of the rivalry these two had back in the day, and it will be a good time to remember the great matches these two played.
Kasparov will wip Karpov, though. 😛
If anyone is interested there is a great video on the 1990 Kasparov-Karpov (Lyon) match online. About 2.5 hours long with analysis and interviews from Kasparov and Karpov.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-123587302886162278
The video quality is bad for the first few minutes, then gets better.
Well, Kasparaov is still pretty close to his prime, in age, and Karpov has shown this he is feeling the years. Not to take anything away from Karpov, though. In fact, quite the opposite. I think he is quite underrated in the history of chess. He played many games at the highest level against Kasparov, and the margin between them was almost insignificantly small. Yet, many consider Kasparov the greatest of all time and don’t even put Karpov on their lists. Nonsense! If Kasparov is the greatest of all time, you are forced to conclude that Karpov is the second greatest, and not far behind.
I have 100% faith in Karpov. I Believe that he will win this. He has proven that when he is determined he can not be stopped, and he seems pretty serious about this. I hope he wins.
Although I never liked Karpov and his drag-out to draw tactics, I’d have to say that this “re-match” seems to be way too much biased in Kasparov’s favor. Karpov was never good at fast games, even when age difference wasn’t a factor, and many players who excel at them are inferior in real games.
Having said that, it was funny to see that Kasparov was the one who lost a game due to the time crunch, and that he easily turns into a nervous wreck. I would even bet that if it was 4 days and/or 4 short games per day that Kasparov just might have lost and turn really nasty behavior-wise – which would be good for TV :-))
BTW, I’ve found this link (http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chess.pl?tid=69871) to be easier to follow and more informative for the games played, since they also have links to a bit of the theory and history of a each opening played.