'Candidates Matches moved to Kazan'

According to a report in Sport Express by chess journalist Yuri Vasiliev, the FIDE Presidential Board in Tromso decided that the Candidates will be moved from Baku in Azerbaijan to Kazan in Russia. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov retains his position in the Candidates as the Azerbaijani representative.

Last week we reported that FIDE was intending to move the Candidates Matches (scheduled for March-April 2011 to determine the challenger of World Champion Viswanathan Anand in the 2012 WCh match) from Baku, Azerbaijan to Kazan, Russia. This report focused on Veselin Topalov's open letter in which he stated that he 'would not participate in any stage of the cycle for the World Chess Title that takes place in Russia'.

Yesterday, Sport Express journalist Yuri Vasiliev broke the news that the FIDE Presidential Board, currently together in Tromso, Norway, have announced the move to Kazan. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov retains his position in the Candidates as the Azerbaijani representative. The players (and pairings) are:

Topalov vs Kamsky ( 1 vs 8 ) Carlsen vs Radjabov ( 2 vs 7 ) Kramnik vs Mamedyarov ( 3 vs 6 ) Aronian vs Gelfand ( 4 vs 5 )

So far it's not clear whether FIDE has responded to Emil Sutovsky's open letter of last week in which the Israeli Grandmaster suggested some changes. However, according to Vasiliev, FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov did respond to Veselin Topalov's open letter.

Sport Express mentions that Ilyumzhinov would send Topalov a letter 'asking not to take hasty decisions'. If Topalov still refuses to go to Kazan, he will be replaced by the third player in the final standings of the 2008-2010 FIDE Grand Prix Series, Alexander Grischuk from Russia.

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Update: as Colin mentions in the comments section, it looks as though Sutovsky’s proposal was rejected. On his LiveJournal page (http://emilchess.livejournal.com/) he says that it wasn’t FIDE’s fault, but one of the players insisted that there shouldn’t be more changes made during the cycle, even though the player accepted the changes were logical (no mention of who the player was). He also made it clear that his meeting Ilyumzhinov & being photographed with him in no way means that he supports Ilyumzhinov in the presidential campaign (he said he’s staying out of chess politics).

Update 2: Mr Sutovsky couldn't confirm whether his proposal was rejected, but did say that one player rejected it: Boris Gelfand, who said "I think that your proposal is very interesting for the next cycle, but I strongly oppose any change of official regulations while the cycle is in process. I hope you'll inform all interested parties about my opinion."