Word: chess
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Ilyumzhinov also launched a campaign to make chess an Olympic sport, a process that will involve, as per International Olympic Committee regulations, mandatory drug testing. In Kalmykia's capital city of Elista, he erected a $30 million chess coliseum called Chess City, a bizarre extravagance in a place where hot water is still a luxury. Last spring he staged a fashion show featuring flirty chess uniforms modeled by Alexandra Kosteniuk, a curvaceous grandmaster who may be the chess world's answer to Anna Kournikova. Kosteniuk then proceeded to play eight simultaneous matches. On Rollerblades...
...Apparently, in order to save chess, it must be destroyed," American grandmaster Yasser Seirawan observes wryly. Ilyumzhinov, naturally, takes a different view. "All is quiet in the chess kingdom," he says. "Everything is clearly structured. Everything is predictable and runs smoothly...
...every sports commissioner needs his Michael Jordan, and the game's only superstar isn't playing along. Garry Kasparov, ranked No. 1 in the world for the past 17 years, has called Ilyumzhinov's version of the game "the end of chess as we know it" and urged his fellow grandmasters to boycott FIDE events. "If the leading players do not organize themselves soon," Kasparov told TIME, "classical chess will all but disappear." (Ilyumzhinov, for his part, has called Kasparov "unbalanced...
...knows. Few think Ponomariov has what it takes. But Kasparov doesn't have FIDE's stamp of approval, and, besides, he lost to Kramnik in a non-FIDE championship match two years ago (since then Kramnik has managed to avoid a title rematch). "There's this terrible rift in chess," says Seirawan, who is also boycotting FIDE events. "The world chess championship is a disputed title...
Seirawan, the top-ranked American player, may be the game's last best hope. One of the few voices of reason in a game full of mad geniuses, he has been circulating a compromise proposal: create separate world championships for classical, rapid and ultra-fast blitz chess and appoint a chess commissioner to mediate between players and organizers. His plan will be discussed at a players' meeting in Prague...