I would like to remind the reader that Kirsan has made more for chess for the last 15 years than all his predecessors put together for all the years of FIDE existence (this article was printed in 2010, - Ed.)He had to do this after the large corporate sponsors left chess because of the stupid, childish ambitions of chess grandees who did not want to reckon with anything other than their narrowly selfish interests. He used his own money -- this is well known to the entire world chess elite.
The most recent examples are the programme "Chess instead of drugs" in Afghanistan, a match on 1000 boards between Israeli and Arab children under the motto "Sport without borders, Chess without walls", the project of building a Chess Center in place of the New York twin towers...
My only comment here is: "Bravo, Kirsan!" And have you, his haters, ever done anything like this? The money of corporate sponsors is extremely rare in the world's second largest sports federation.
In fact, it is not some rubbish persons that "yielded to Kirsan charms" but the Intel itself. But (I repeat for the third time) the great ones were unable to behave decently enough. After all, it is clear that every sponsor gives money on certain conditions. You should fulfill these conditions to use money.
In this sense, yesterday's decision of the Olympic Court in Lausanne to support the legitimacy of Ilyumzhinov's nomination only improves the purity of experiment: instead of struggle for "withdrawal of candidature", competition of programs now comes to the fore.
I admit that I did not know anything about it. I believe that this is some unexpected Kirsan’s trump card. You have to make colossal efforts, to carry out powerful advertising and have skillful management to turn chess into a highly paid professional sport like tennis. So far, nobody has succeeded; and even the two most glorious names -- Kasparov and Karpov, alas, are not enough for this.
09.29.2010
