14 October 2020

'Tournir of the FIDE Applicants'

Spotted on the Russian language site chess-news.ru:-

If you're wondering about the English language titles on a Russian site, there's a simple explanation. I ran the orginal articles through Google's translation service. Here's how it translated the first few paragraphs of the first article, 'Wang Hao and FIDE':-

Wang Hao posted on his Facebook a letter from Arkady Dvorkovich to him. The FIDE President, according to the Chinese grandmaster, then asked him to publish all the correspondence. Wang Hao did that too.

The main correspondence is with FIDE lawyer Alexander Martynov . It is about the second round of the Candidates Tournament. From the letters it follows that FIDE is still considering two locations for the game - Yekaterinburg and Tbilisi, but is determined to resume the competition from November 1.

Today, October 5th, it is planned to make a final decision. However, Wang Hao (and possibly Ding Liren too) does not consider it correct to organize the tournament now for security reasons and suggests FIDE to postpone this matter until better, from an epidemiological point of view, times.

The rest of that article was a chain of emails written in English. As for the second article, 'Karpov to Dvorkovich', the translation was simpler:-

Anatoly Karpov sent a letter to Arkady Dvorkovich regarding the second round of the Candidates Tournament.

The rest of the article was a letter in Russian, in the form of an image, which Google didn't translate. I ran the letter through an OCR service, then ran the output Russian text through the Google translator. Here's what I got:-

TOURNf1R OF THE FIDR APPLICANTS. CHESS 2020
Axioms. Ssrligsvaya region, Yelagsriya, Surg
Prgzkhdeit of the International Chess Federation (FIDE) Dvorkovich A.V.

Dear Arkady Vladnmirovkhch!

In accordance with the Agreement between FIDE, FSHR and SHFSO, we had an excellent first part of the 2020 Tournament and went to a forced break due to pag1demiI at your decision. Ekatsriiburg has the unconditional right to host the rest of the tournament, which you noted in your letter to the First Deputy Governor of the Sverdlovsk Region, Chairman of the Organizing Committee of the Candidates' Tournament Orlov A.V. The continuation of the tournament in Ekatsrinburg was confirmed by the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation, chairman of the board of trustees of the FSHR D.S. Peskov.

We have never waived our right to host a tournament in Ekaterhiburg. Therefore, the actions of the FIDE representatives, who are holding underground negotiations and putting pressure on the participants to move the tournament to another place, are surprising.

If the epidemic situation in the Sverdlovsk region does not allow the tournament to continue from November 1, 2020, then it can be held at a later date. Before the World Championship Match between Mapgus Karpsen x the winner of the Pretsidegp Tournament, postponed to mid-2021, there is enough time to spend the rest of the tournament in the same place as x the first half.

As the plenipotentiary representative of the Organizational Committee of the Candidates Tournament in Ekatsrieburg, I express my readiness to hold the second half of the tournament in any eventuality.

Mnogokragg1 world champion.
Member of the Organizing Committee of the
Candidates Tournament in Eka erinburg-2020

A.E. Karpov

There are plenty of errors in that OCR translation, and if I were doing a more formal article than this current post I would try to correct them, but the text makes sense as it is. It helps to know that 'applicants' in the first line and 'pretsidegp' in the third paragraph both stand for 'candidates'. The nonsense word 'pag1demiI' in the first paragraph must be 'pandemic'. As for 'Mapgus Karpsen', also in the third paragraph , the phrase 'World Championship Match between Mapgus...' should eliminate any confusion.

Getting back to the sentence, 'Today, October 5th, it is planned to make a final decision', almost ten days have passed. My previous post on the subject, Yekaterinburg Candidates - 2nd Half Announced (September 2020), noted,

Fide.com: 'The 8th round has been scheduled for 1 November 2020.'

Something's got to give!

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