Moscow outbid Chennai: FIDE
Explaining the circumstances that led to the World chess championship match between Grandmaster V. Anand and challenger Boris Gelfand of Israel being allotted to Moscow, FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, in a letter to the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, J. Jayalalithaa, said: “after due evaluation of respective bids, we have awarded the event to the Russian Chess Federation which had bid just under $400,000 more than the AICF.”
It may be recalled that Ms Jayalalithaa had readily consented to organise the event, and even sanctioned an amount of $4.4 million which included $2.25m as prize money, when a FIDE delegation led by Mr. Ilyumzhinov called on her to discuss the possibility of Chennai hosting this prestigious match.
In his letter, the FIDE president also noted that he was impressed with the Chief Minister’s interest in sports, and chess in particular, and offered the 2013 World championship match to Chennai.
An AICF press release said this was perhaps the first time that FIDE was offering a title match to any one directly.
Source: http://www.thehindu.com
Absolute crap! Since when is the only criteria the size of the prize fund? Even if you understand that FIDE gets 20% of it which is unlike any other sport!
If chess wants to be taken seriously just see the award of Olympics, FA World Cup Finals, etc. where many other factors including promotion of the game is taken into account.
Even the tough Bulgars ( Topalov and Danailov ) could not fight the Russians ( Toiletgate affair ). Poor Anand! He has no chance. After all Gelfand was once a premier member of the Soviet chess machine.