Gelfand: Vishy is not just an excellent speed chess player – he’s an excellent player in all time controls!

At the press conference after Game 11, the challenger explained why he had spent almost 40 minutes pondering the opening. “What can I say? We were playing a rare system, and you hardly ever see 8...Bd7. I knew it was an important moment – White had to decide what to do next. I had many options... I came up with a basic plan and started to play a lot quicker. The first critical moment arose at the 16th move. I spent a lot of time on this move as well because I knew that White had quite a few options once again. I needed to get my pawn to a5 somehow and play Ne5. I started by moving the knight. Perhaps 17.a4 would have been a more accurate move.”

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Game 12 Live Today 2012 Anand, Gelfand World Chess Championship 4.15 pm India Time

Day 19 of the World Chess Championship 2012 between India's Viswanathan Anand and Israel's Boris Gelfand is here with chess Game 12 - the final one - to be played today. If the world chess champion is still not decided today and the game ends in a draw, the tiebreak would be played on Wednesday. You can watch Game 12 Live on the official website from India time 4.15 pm onwards. In the commentary box would be 14th world chess champion (2000) Vladimir Kramnik of Russia and New in Chess editor Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam.

As you know, the world chess championship 2012 is being held in a most beautiful venue - the Tretyakov Gallery.

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Who Is Andrey Filatov? - Forbes Profile, Interview of 2012 World Chess Championship Main Sponsor

This is the English version of the interview with Andrey Filatov - the main sponsor of the 2012 Anand, Gelfand World Chess Championship in Moscow. It appeared in Russian in Kommersant.

The opening of the main chess event of the season – the world championship match between Viswanathan Anand and Boris Gelfand – is taking place at the State Tretyakov Gallery. The driving force behind staging this contest in Moscow and the main sponsor of the match, ANDREY FAILATOV, a shareholder in the N-Trans Group, told Kommersant’s correspondent ALEXEY DOSPEKHOV why he decided to invest money in chess and how he plans to change the economics of chess and link it to Russian art.

– I’m primarily interested, of course, in your motivation. Why finance a world championship chess match? Is it to boost your own image, a desire to help the sport you were very seriously involved in when you were young?
– A country that fights for all the major international events – the APEC summit, the Olympic Games, the FIFA World Cup, the Universiade – simply cannot ignore a competition which at one time was one of its main symbols. When Boris Gelfand, who was a student friend of mine, won the candidates’ tournament, he said that the venue for the match had not been decided yet, but there were various rumours going around that it would be either in India or somewhere else. It turned out that there had indeed been no application from Moscow, so I had a think and decided we had to try.

Click on photo to see
Andrey Filatov's Forbes profile

– You realised there was a good chance of winning?
– On the contrary, I wasn’t sure we would win the right to host the match. But I could see that in any case one way or another there would be a winner. If Moscow’s bid failed, Boris Gelfand would earn a bigger prize fund, because the rival bid would have to beat it with money. And if it won, so much the better: the country would gain a serious competition that had not been staged here in the history of modern Russia. You’ll agree that’s a simple and understandable motive. Then it started to develop in terms of the current situation with chess, a new economics of chess, and the main points on which it could be based.

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Candidates Chess Matches 2011 - The Grischuk Game That Brought Gelfand to Moscow

What brought Israel's Boris Gelfand to the World Chess Championship 2012 in Moscow? Israeli Boris Gelfand won the last - sixth game - in the FIDE Candidates Matches 2011 final in Kazan against Russian Alexander Grischuk to become the challenger for the World Champion Viswanathan Anand from India and is therefore, now playing in Moscow.

In the press conference immediately after the sixth game Gelfand had said he was lucky when Grischuk chose a variation in Gruenfeld which was very familiar to him. With novelty in move 13 white really surprised Russian GM and after move 16 the clocks depicted a very unusual picture: black had spent exactly one hour more than white: Gelfand – 9 minutes, Grischuk – 1 hour and 9 minutes. It was a great game for the Israeli Grandmaster Boris Gelfand as it was the biggest success of his chess career. 

Tomorrow - Monday, May 28, is Game 12 of the Anand, Gelfand World Chess Championship 2012 in the classical control. You can watch Game 12 Live from India time 4.15 onwards at the official website of the world chess championship. 


You can replay the Grischuk-Gelfand chess game 6 from the Kazan Candidates Matches 2011 in our Chess King applet.

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