2018 Carlsen - Caruana, Online

I closed the previous post, 2018 Carlsen - Caruana, Schedule, with:-

Looks like I waited too long to get tickets, but I'm glad to see that the match is so popular. Maybe I'll look at online viewing options in another post.

My page on the 2018 Carlsen - Caruana match points to london2018.worldchess.com, which redirects to worldchess.com/london. A screen capture of that page is shown below.

The info on the left says,

FIDE World Chess Championship Match 2018 starts in
44 days : 08 hours : 59 minutes : 29 seconds

With online access, you will have the best seats in the house! Multi-camera view, commentary, access to behind-the-scenes, interviews and press conferences, advanced chat options and more. It's 2018 and chess is spectacular!

Of the options on the bottom of the screen, I tried the first ('get the ticket') in the previous 'Schedule' post. The other two options ('get my 12-month pass' and 'get my online ticket') both go to the same page: worldchess.com/paygate.

Given that there are currently no more Agon/Worldchess events on the agenda after the Carlsen - Caruana match, there is no apparent advantage to the $25 '12-month pass' over the $20 'online ticket', so I opted for the less expensive access. This brought me to a panel to enter my Worldchess login credentials and my credit card info ('secured by STRIPE'). Since I've never used STRIPE for payments, I thought I should look into the company before I give them any credit card credentials. In the meantime, this past weekend I received a newsletter from Worldchess.com saying,

Introducing ChessCasting! Welcome to the new World Chess Broadcasting Platform! • Dear chess fans! We are pleased to introduce the new official chesscasting platform: it’s well-designed, has great features that appeal to non-professionals, has the best chess chat ever, will be available for all chess organizers shortly to broadcast events for free (and even make money with it), and it works well. [...] You can follow the 43rd Olympiad in Batumi on Worldchess.com. The games start this Monday! Based on your feedback, we'll add and improve the broadcasting before the World Chess Championship Match, the biggest event in the sport, that takes place in November of 2018 in London.

The link for the 43rd Olympiad went to a Worldchess.com page, Olympiad : Open Section, with an announcement 'Round's pairings will be available soon'. Tomorrow the fourth round will take place. I'll look at some of the rounds and report on the broadcast for the next post on this blog.

2018 Carlsen - Caruana, Schedule

It's already been six weeks since I posted News about 2018 Carlsen - Caruana, where I quoted a press release,

The much-anticipated match will be held in London from 9th to 28th November.

It's high time to decide whether I want to travel to London to see the match myself. First, what's the schedule? The official site, FIDE World Chess (worldchess.com/london), only informs,

FIDE World Chess Championship Match 2018 starts in
51 days : 10 hours : 35 minutes : 18 seconds

but 'Watch live at the college : get the ticket' leads to World Chess 2018 | Official Ticketmaster UK Site, which displays a useful calendar. Here's a copy in reverse black & white, which is easier to read in this reduced size.

The small print in the bottom line, which applies to rounds 10 through 12, says,

* : Sales will be open after the end of the 3rd and 4th round.

Second, what about tickets? Details for the first game are at Tickets: World Chess Championship - Round 1, London | Fri 9 Nov 2018 @ 3:00 pm:-

Best Available
Price : £600.00
Section : VIP Area

Ouch! The info button says, 'Event Info : General Admission Only', which probably means there are no numbered seats. The rest of the info informs,

VIP Tickets - with the VIP ticket you will get: separate entrance to the venue with VIP reception and separate coat check; comfortable VIP area with seating zones; bar with free drinks; priority entrance to the Players area; possibility to book seats in the first rows during the games and press-conference; memorable souvenirs.

General Admission Tickets - if you are buying this ticket you are getting: access to the Players area, where you can watch the two best world chess players compete for the chess crown; live commentating of the games by chess grandmasters; entertainment area, where you can try to beat your mate in chess; chess cafe where you can buy snacks and drinks; chess shop with chess souvenirs.

How about round 2? A page similar to round 1 informs,

General Admission Tickets : £70.00
VIP Ticket : £500.00

The related 'Find tickets' button informs, 'Tickets not currently available from Ticketmaster', which is the same message I received for round 3. The first available tickets I could find were for round 4 at £45.00 per ticket. Rounds 5 and 6 were also marked 'Tickets not currently available'. Looks like I waited too long to get tickets, but I'm glad to see that the match is so popular. Maybe I'll look at online viewing options in another post.

Three Candidates in Three Weeks

With the FIDE presidential elections due to take place in three weeks, let's return to the subject of 2018 FIDE Election Tickets (July 2018). Last month the Association of Chess Professionals (ACP) endorsed one of the three candidates:-

• 2018-08-06: ACP Supports Dvorkovich
• 2018-09-02: Why ACP SUPPORTS Arkady Dvorkovich

That second link, 'Why', listed seven areas of concern:-

• The work of FIDE ['utterly ineffective for quite some time now']
• Anti-cheating issues
• World Championship Cycle [*]
• Women's chess
• Helping veterans
• Calendar of official events ['dates of the major events are regularly shifted']
• FIDE General Assemblies and Terms ['no President should be serving for more than two consecutive terms']

Given that this blog is named the World Chess Championship Blog, the area marked '*' is of particular interest. The ACP board stated,

This is a very troublesome area. To start with, the last title match saw the highest budget for such an event ever but also one of the lowest prize-funds in modern history. That is simply ridiculous. Restoring transparency and respect for the players is a very much needed action. It is not irrelevant to mention that the Grand Prix series suffered a major blow in recent years, mainly due to FIDE’s inability to attract corporate sponsors.

FIDE is composed of national federations. Although the federations are political bodies that don't pay much attention to the thoughts of their strongest players, the ACP endorsement is the strongest statement to date by any single chess organization. The FIDE election has also attracted attention outside chess circles.

Who will be king? Three-way battle for control rocks international chess
(2 September 2018; theguardian.com)

Of Dvorkovich, the Guardian article said,

The Russian bid sees one of the Kremlin’s most capable and modern lieutenants unleashed on a sport that, frankly, seems small fry for him. Dvorkovich was Russian deputy prime minister for six years and chaired Russia’s World Cup organising committee, which spent an estimated £10bn on the tournament. By contrast, the Fide’s annual budget is just £2.3m.

The article also quoted Chess.com's Peter Doggers, recently seen on this blog in Peter Doggers on Chess Politics (August 2018). His most recent post on the election was FIDE Elections: 'Fake News' And The Call For Transparency, from which we can conclude that GM Short is already the odd man out. For more about the three candidates, see their Wikipedia pages:-

• Arkady Dvorkovich
• Georgios Makropoulos [in German]
• Nigel Short

The winner in the election will shape FIDE policy for the next decade and probably longer.