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Russian, Norwegian battle for crown
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REIGNING world champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway and Russian grandmaster Sergei Karyakin were clashing in the first game of a battle to determine the world’s top player.
The match starts in New York at 2pm local time yesterday and consists of 12 games, with the winner taking home 60 percent of the 1-million euro (US$1.1-million) prize and the loser the rest.
It is billed as the youngest ever in terms of the players’ cumulative age: Carlsen is 25 and Karyakin is 26.
The match is also the first between players who came of age in the computer era, representing a generational shift in the game.
In another first, the world championship will be broadcast from its trendy Manhattan venue using virtual reality, organizers said.
The tournament has prompted comparisons with the iconic 1972 showdown between American Bobby Fischer and the Soviet Union’s Boris Spassky, two rivals in the Cold War-era whose showdown was dubbed the “Match of the Century.”
This match comes as Moscow and Washington’s relations have plunged to their lowest point since the Cold War due to disagreements on Syria and Ukraine.
The Russian president of the World Chess Federation, or FIDE, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov is unable to attend the championship after being denied a visa, possibly because he has been on a US Treasury blacklist since 2015 over financial ties to the Syrian government.
“This is the first time in the history of the world championships when the (FIDE) president is not at the match,” Ilyumzhinov said in Moscow on Thursday.
Carlsen, who will play white in the first game, has been called the “Mozart of Chess” and has inspired wide interest in chess in Norway since first winning the title in 2013. He has picked up endorsements worth US$2 million a year.
Karyakin, currently ranked 9th in the world, was born on Ukraine’s Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, annexed by Moscow in 2014. He struggled with finding sponsors before moving to Russia in 2009 and becoming a citizen.
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