World Championship match Anand – Topalov postponement possibilities (updated)
official statement by the organizers
Update: April 19th, 12:00 CET
The organizing committee of the World Championship match between Anand and Topalov officially issued a statement regarding the situation that arose in the previous days (scroll down for timeline). The news was reported live from Chessdom.com correspondents in Sofia.
The following statement is official answer to the letter of Viswanathan Anand.
FROM STEFAN SERGIEV
TO MR. GEORGIOS MAKROPOULOS
DEPUTY PRESIDENT OF FIDE AND SUPERVISOR OF THE MATCH FOR WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP ANAND – TOPALOV
Copy Mr. V. Anand – World champion
Copy Mr. V. Topalov
Dear Mr. Makropoulos,
The Organizers committee of the match for world championship 2010 between V. Anand, world champion and V. Topalov has been informed with the e-mail of Mr. Anand dated 17.04 and your verbal request from 18.04.2010 to postpone the match with 3 days.
We would like to inform you that this is not acceptable for us.
1. We can postpone the press conference.
2. Unfortunately we can not postpone the opening ceremony scheduled on April 21st at 6 pm. according to the contract. The invitations to all the official guests, sponsors, politicians, TV stations and all the media was already sent long time ago. We have signed a lot of commercial contracts with serious penalties for us in case of some changes.
3. The possibility to postpone the first game of the match for one day to Saturday April 24 need to be discussed with the Chairman of Organizing Committee– Prime Minister of Bulgaria Mr. Boyko Borissov. This will take some time. We will inform you regarding our decision not later than latest afternoon of 20 April /Tuesday/
19.04.2010
Sofia
Signed: President of Bulgarian Chess Federation and member of the Organizing Committee for the match Dr. Stefan Sergiev
End of official text. Note: statement published without changes. Here is a timeline of the events which led to tension in the afternoon of April 18th.
Stay tuned for updates with Chessdom.com! Expect interviews with the organizing committee members at 15:00 CET.
I hope Anand wins the match 7-0.
Hey look, lets be reasonable here. If I were Anand….i would not request a delay…due to the situation..I would expect one. I understand that all the organizers plans are in the air as a result of some volcano in Iceland….so??? What’s he supposed to do?? What are the organizers thinking….are they drunk??
We MUST shoot all the beaurocrats! haha…
According to these idiots….Anand will start the match 0-2?? what a laugh.
Mike Magnan
FIDE should just say no. Anand should have been there long ago. He has no one to blame but himself.
Couldn’t he have caught a train from Germany to Bulgaria?
By the way, I’m rooting for Anand to defeat Topa
Force of nature cancellations occur in the US all the time, baseball games rain out regularly.
Obviously he would have been there sooner if he had known there was going to be a volcanic disruption, and there is no point ion trying to punish him for putting it off until the last minute, he gets it.
There is, in my opinion, much more to be gained by postponing than by leaving a stain on the entire event. If he should start out down 0-2 and go on to lose it will have no meaning. Should he opt to just not attend at all, still. (Although I don’t know how that would affect him ,it may not be an attractive option, even under the circumstances.)