Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Chess news

Today, Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov find themselves in Peru to give a free chess exhibition to locals in order to promote the game in the country. And btw, Peru has a couple of young champions in the sister/brother double act of Deysi and Jorge Cori, who won their respective sub 16 and sub 14 groups in the world youth championships last year, so there is a base to work from already.

Then tomorrow The K+K chess roadshow is off to Bolivia, where the Russkies are due to play an exhibition match against none other than the President of Bolivia, Dr. Evo Morales. By all accounts, Evo is a fairly tidy club standard player too, having been a chess player since a young kid. And always good for a quote, evo sez:
"It's incredible that the great sporting scientist Anatoly Karpov wants to play a game with me. I hope he doesn't beat me in seconds or minutes, I'll put up a fight."

Oh, all this goodwill and upstanding promotion of chess in South America might just have something to do with Karpov's candidacy for the Presidency of chess world body FIDE and the way that he's been canvassing for the Peru and Bolivian association votes in this year's election. But hey....all good clean fun.