Braingames announces next cycle

DORTMUND, JULY 15. World chess champion Viswanathan Anand and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov have been invited into the last eight of the Candidates tournament of 2002 to decide the challenger to play Braingames world chess champion Vladimir Kramnik later next year.

In a meet the press this afternoon at Dortmund's Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza Hotel, Grandmaster Raymond Keene, Director of Braingames announced this and gave other related information leading to find Kramnik's next challenger.

Twenty-one years back, Keene won the Dortmund tournament and he reasoned that to signing the contract with City of Dortmund at Westfallen Park. Dortmund would stage the Candidates from July 6 to 25 next year and the prize fund would be $200,000 from Braingames and an additional 30,000 Marks per player from the local organisers.

Besides Anand and Kasparov, who have been given direct seeding, four would be picked from the rating list and two would qualify from the Internet tournament and this would be done by spring next year. The internet games will be played with 20 minutes a player and it will be on the Braingames web site.

The Candidates tournament will be split into two groups of four players and it will be a double round robin tournament. Two from each group will advance and the semi-finals will be knock out of two games and the finals a knock out of four games. The winner of the Candidates will meet Kramnik over 16 games in a venue which is yet to be decided but 90 per cent could be in Bahrain. ``The prize money for the finals will be less than two million dollars,'' Keene said. So, Kramnik will not be required to come to Dortmund next July unless he would like to `spy' what his challenger is doing.

Asked if both Kasparov and Anand would accept this offer to play a tournament to decide the challenger for Kramnik, Keene, replied `we haven't invited them yet.' Grandmaster and expert opinion in Dortmund points to a crash of this proposal which hangs solely on the participation of Kasparov and Anand. Both of whom are likely to refuse the offer to play, making the rift within the anti-FIDE lobby. Kramnik's title without these two names participating will only lose legitimacy to his title.

It was announced that the subsequent world chess championship final match will be held in Dortmund in 2004. There was a question as to what happened to the interest evinced by the Dortmund organisers in staging the FIDE World Championship.

Replying to this, Mr Carsten Hensel said this town believes in classical chess, not rapid control which FIDE is practising in its tournaments. He confirmed having showed interest in offering to have the 2003 Grand Prix of FIDE in Dortmund. Keene who said he organised three world championship matches in the last 15 years hopes Germany which has the most rated players would stage the finals in Dortmund in 2004 for the first time since 1934.

Answering a question that Kasparov has been seeking for a rematch, Kramnik said Kasparov and other strong players should try to play the qualifier.

- Our Chess Correspondent

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