Today’s prizes

THERE’S NO MATCH FOR TODAY’S PRIZE $

By ANDY SOLTIS
NY Post

January 6, 2008 — CHESS THE price of championship chess is going up.

In October, Vishwanathan Anand will defend his title against Vladimir Kramnik in Germany, and each player will earn about $1 million, since they agreed to split the money.

The winner will defend his title against the survivor of a Gata Kamsky-Veselin Topalov match also planned for 2008. Bulgarian sponsors have offered $2 million to host that match, but Kamsky will unlikely be willing to play in Topalov’s homeland, where the Sofia GM is a national hero.

Bear in mind that when Bobby Fischer became the champ in 1972, he received what was considered a sky-high prize of $160,000.

The record prize fund for a chess match is the $3 million for the 1990 Anatoly Karpov-Garry Kasparov match – but prize funds have been sinking faster than the value of a subprime mortgage.

Since 1990, the most anyone has earned from a match is the $1.33 million pocketed by Kramnik in 2000, when he dethroned Kasparov. The total prize fund for the Kramnik-Topalov match that reunified the championship title in 2006 was only $1million.

Still, that’s a long way from the first world championship match, held at Fifth Avenue and 14th Street back in 1886. Wilhelm Steinitz got $2,000 – and loser Mikhail Tchigorin went home to Russia with nothing.

Source: NY Post