"Match of the New Century" features World's Best!

INCREDIBLE is the only word that can be used to  describe the "Match of the New Century" taking place at the Kremlin in Moscow, September 8th - 11th. The 10-round rapid match pits the most prominent chess players from Russia against the most prominent players from the rest of the world.

If the Russia Olympiad team [Kasparov (2838), Bareev (2726), Morozevich (2716), Grischuk (2702), Khalifman (2690), Svidler (2690)] isn't amazing enough, they have stirred up some "home-cooking" to field quite a powerful line-up which adds Kramnik (2807), Karpov (2687), Dreev (2676) and Motylev (2634). However the "Rest of the World" will have the services of Anand (2755),  Ponomariov (2743),  Leko (2717), Ivanchuk (2711), Gelfand (2710), Shirov (2697), Short (2682), Polgar (2681), Smirin (2676)  and Radjabov (2618). Even without Veselin Topalov or Michael Adams the World side is quite powerful!

These novelty matches have taken place since 1945, but aren't held with any regularity… "only after the change of generations," remarked FIDE President Kirsan Ilumzhinov.  The last match took place in London (1984) and saw the Soviet Union team edge the World team 21-19. The 1984 Soviet team featured Vassily Smyslov, Mikhail Tal, Anatoly Karpov and a young Garry Kasparov. The World team was lead by Viktor Korchnoi, Jan Timman, and Ljubomir Ljubojevic.

Match of the New Century website

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Posted by The Chess Drum: 8 September 2002