Anand-Gelfand: press conference & opening ceremony (VIDEO)
On Thursday, May 10th the World Championship match between reigning champion Vishy Anand and challenger Boris Gelfand was officially opened. At 18.30 a press conference took place in the press room, with Boris Gelfand, Vishy Anand, Mrs. Irina Lebedeva (Director of the Tretyakov Gallery), Kirsan Ilyumzhinov (FIDE President), Arkadij Dvorkovich (Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Russian Chess Federation) and Andrey Filatov (sponsor).
At 20.00 the opening ceremony started in the Vrubel hall of the Tretyakov Gallery. In the presence of many officials and other VIPs such as Mikhail Gorbachev, Anatoly Karpov and Yuri Averbakh, there were speeches, the drawing of lots and a piano / violin concert. The drawing of lots resulted in Vishy Anand having the white pieces in game 1 tomorrow.
Here is our first video from Moscow which reports on Thursday's events.
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
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