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CHENNAI: India would most probably host Viswanathan Anand's world chess title match in 2012. India's decision to join the fray came after London withdrew its bid to host the match last week.
Though the FIDE (world chess federation) had not confirmed the venue because the qualifying matches (Candidates phase) to identify the challenger to Anand were still in progress, the London organizers wanted an agreement to be reached by January 29, 2011.
FIDE had its presidential board meeting in Turkey last weekend which was attended by All India Chess Federation secretary DV Sundar. "The meeting did not discuss any bid in detail," Sundar told TOI. "But we offered to host the match in India," added Sundar, who is also the vice-president of FIDE.
London was projected as the city to host the match since 2009 but the sponsors found it difficult to finalize the deal with FIDE. At the moment, only Anand is the sure candidate for the match and his challenger would emerge from a series of Candidates matches to be held this year. "FIDE can't finalize any venue before the Candidates matches are over in May because the venue should be acceptable to the challenger as well. So the bids would be finalized only in May. Unfortunately, London said they could not wait that long," said Sundar.
All the qualities that have contributed to Viswanathan Anand becoming a multiple world champion were on full view at the Chinnaswamy stadium on Sunday. NIIT’s brand ambassador was in the City to interact with participants and winners of their corporate chess championship, hand over prizes, take questions from the media and play simultaneous chess.
Anand said he would be delighted if his World Championship match next year too could be hosted in India. “I would love to play in India, I hope something like that happens sooner rather than later,” he remarked. “The decision on where to host the next Championship match hasn’t been made yet, let’s just wait and watch. The last time I played in India was the 2002 World Cup at Hyderabad and I really enjoyed the experience.”
