hess politics

The Karpov-Kamsky match for the FIDE world championship will take place. Not in Baghdad, as had previously been announced by Fide President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, but in Elista, the capital of the Russian republic of Kalmykia (president: K Ilyumzhinov). Baghdad, the double president said, was just a joke.

Elista (population 94,000) will also host the Chess Olympics in 1998, by which time an Olympic village of 180 cottages, a hotel and a chess palace will have been built, as well as an international air terminal. That will improve on the "one mediocre Soviet era hotel with intermittent water and broken lavatory seats," and one wartime aerodrome referred to in a recent report as the best Elista can offer.

Broken lavatory seats or not, Rustam Kamsky, father of the challenger, has visited the venue and pronounced himself content with the arrangements. Off the board, however, the Dutch grandmaster Jan Timman, one of the most highly respected figures in the chess world, has announced that he is willing to stand against Ilyumzhinov for the Fide presidency.

Prepare for battle.