Averbakh on the World Championship

In yesterday's post on my main blog, Friendly Chess Players, I introduced Averbakh's 'Centre-Stage and Behind the Scenes: A Personal Memoir'. The book is filled with stories about the World Championship, some of them new to me, many of them in more detail than I've seen before. Here's a list, each entry starting with its first page number in the book.

059 : 1950 CT
063 : 1951 19th USSR Chp semifinal (pre-zonal)
064 : ---- Pen portraits (A)
070 : 1951 19th USSR Chp (zonal)
071 : 1952 IZ
078 : 1953 CT
092 : 1955 22nd USSR Chp (zonal)
100 : ---- Sparring partner to MB
108 : 1958 25th USSR Chp (zonal)
110 : 1958 IZ
112 : ---- Early rules for WCC
120 : 1959 CT
129 : 1962 CT
147 : 1968 IZ playoff
154 : 1971 CM: TP-VK, RF-TP
157 : ---- Baturinsky
163 : 1972 WC: RF-BS
164 : 1963 VS & zonal
166 : 1974 CM: TP-LP, VK-TP
169 : 1977 CM: VK-TP
171 : 1974 FIDE Congress: AK-RF
175 : 1974 CM: AK-VK
178 : 1976 VK defection
185 : 1978 WC: AK-VK, Sevastianov
190 : 1982 IZ
193 : 1972 WC: RF-BS, Euwe
194 : 1982 FIDE President Campomanes
199 : 1982 CM: VS-RH, VS-ZR, GK-VK
214 : 1984 WC: AK-GK I
220 : 1985 WC: GK-AK II
221 : 1986 WC: GK-AK III
223 : 1987 FIDE Presidential election, GMA
223 : 1987 WC: GK-AK IV
224 : 1988 USSR Chp, GK-AK playoff
227 : 1988 USSR vs. World charity match
229 : 1990 Women's CT, Krogius
232 : 1972 Graz, Huebner - Rogoff (B)
233 : 1990 FIDE Presidential election
235 : 1987 GMA
236 : ---- Chess psychology (C)
240 : 1982 OL: Manila
242 : 1993 Schism, PCA, GK-NS, AK-JT
247 : 1994 OL: Salonika -> Moscow
250 : 1994 FIDE Presidential election
251 : 1995 FIDE Congress, Paris, Ilyumzhinov

IZ: Interzonal
CT: Candidate Tournament
CM: Candidate Match
WC: World Championship
OL: Olympiad (esp. Congress++)

AK: Karpov, BS: Spassky, GK: Kasparov, JT: Timman, LP: Portisch, MB: Botvinnik, NS: Short, RF: Fischer, RH: Huebner, TP: Petrosian, VK: Korchnoi, VS: Smyslov, ZR: Ribli

(A) Zubarev, Blumenfeld, Duz-Khotimirsky, Rabinovich, Verlinsky, Romanovsky
(B) A little known story about the future IMF Chief Economist; nothing to do with WC
(C) Incl. six categories of player as in 'Friendly Chess Players'

Although Averbakh's book deserves a review on my blog, this summary will have to do for now.

2012-2013 Grand Prix, Beijing

These days it seems I'm spending half of my WCC time documenting Grand Prix events. Only a month after 2012-2013 Grand Prix, Thessaloniki ended, the 2013 Beijing event started. As usual for the current GP series, I added it to my page 2012-2013 Grand Prix.

Catching up with FIDE

It's been a while since I last reviewed FIDE announcements, so I spent a few hours catching up with the last few months. I added links for relevant announcements to my pages on the 2013 World Cup and the 2013 Anand - Carlsen title match. Most of the other announcements relative to the World Championship were for future years. Here's a list of those I found most important.

• 2012-11-28: Working visit of FIDE delegation to Baku • 'A delegation from FIDE led by President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov successfully concluded negotiations for the 2015 World Cup and 2016 Chess Olympiad in Baku, Republic of Azerbaijan.'
• 2013-02-15: Organizing Committee for 2015 World Chess Cup and 2016 World Chess Olympiad
• 2013-02-21: List of Decisions of the 2013 1st quarter FIDE PB • 'To decline the proposal of Mr. Danailov to cancel the contract with Agon.' • 'To organize two Women’s FIDE Grand-Prix tournaments in Tashkent and Khanty-Mansiysk (2013 and 2014).'
• 2013-02-25: WCOC recommendations approved by the Presidential Board
• 2013-05-13: List of Decisions of the 2013 2nd quarter FIDE PB • 'To approve the proposal of Mr. Makropoulos to authorize the FIDE President to take the personal decision as to whether to terminate the contract with Agon.' • 'To award the organization of the 2013 World Championship match Anand - Carlsen to Chennai, India (one abstention).' • 'To award the organization of the 2013 Women’s World Championship match Ushenina - Hou Yifan to Tai Zhou, China.' • 'To open a bidding procedure for the 2017 World Cup.' • 'To approve the 2014 Candidates Tournament regulations.'
• 2013-07-08: Bidding Procedure for the FIDE World Women's Championship 2014

I also found many announcements relevant to the current Grand Prix series -- both men's and women's -- but I ran out of time to consider them properly. I'll tackle those another time.

Site Translation

The site translation function on my main page, The World Chess Championship, has been broken for some time, so I upgraded it to Google's current standard. It's considerably more complicated than previous versions and it remains to be seen how well it works in practice.

I also added a mention of the official site to my page on the 2013 World Cup. The event starts one month from today.

2013-2014 Women's Grand Prix, Dilijan

I added the crosstable and PGN for the 2013 Dilijan (Armenia) event to my page on the 2013-2014 FIDE Women's Grand Prix. Four of the last five posts on this blog have been to add the latest results from one of the two concurrent Grand Prix series. The Dilijan event started only a month after the previous women's event -- the 2013-2014 Women's Grand Prix, Geneva -- ended.