15 OCTOBER 1994, Page 52

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CHESS

Trouble at t'mill

Raymond Keene

THE CHESS WORLD is facing an upheaval almost as momentous as that which last year removed control of the world championship from the World Chess Federation (Fide) and delivered it into the hands of the Professional Chess Associa- tion (PCA). Indeed, many might see Fide's current troubles as being the logical exten- sion of the decision by Kasparov and Short last year to play their title match outside the jurisdiction of the world body.

When Kasparov and Short broke away, Fide organised its own title match, locating a venue and raising a prize fund, but only with immense difficulty. From. this Karpov emerged as the Fide champion. Still, the exercise badly dented Fide's credibility with both sponsors and organisers. Now Fide has problems with the chess Olympiad, the biennial competition for the national teams of all chess-playing coun- tries. This had been scheduled for Thessaloniki, Greece, in December, but three weeks ago that arrangement, and the accompanying organisation of the Fide congress and elections, collapsed in bitter acrimony. At the end of September, Georgios Makropoulos, the Fide general secretary, president of the Greek Chess Federation and candidate for the Fide presidency, wrote to the Fide president Florencio Campomanes: 'Mr President, the Greek Chess Federation expresses its intense displeasure at the manner in which Fide has handled the contract between the Greek government and Fide and we con- sider that you have created very serious problems in relation to our co-operation with the Ministry of. Sports and in respect of our efforts to organise the 31st Chess Olympiad ... The Greek Chess Federation declares that it is unable to proceed to the organisation of the 31st Chess Olympiad in December 1994 ... You created this tragic situation because of your intense interfer- ence in the presidential elections of Fide.'

Makropoulos's rivals in the December presidential election are the Portuguese master Durao and the French grandmaster Kouatly. The latter has the full support of Campomanes and, if elected, is expected to create a substantial new post for Campo within the Fide hierarchy.

So, with two months to go, Fide had no Olympiad. Enter Garry Kasparov. In a totally unexpected move, Kasparov, who had set up the Professional Chess Association as Fide's rival in the running of the world championship, offered to finance and run the Fide Olympiad in Moscow to be precise, in the gigantic Cosmos Hotel.

Fide's headquarters are currently in Athens, but with the breakdown in their relations with the Greeks, that location is clearly no longer tenable. Kasparov, there- fore, additionally offered to relocate the Fide headquarters in Moscow, while simul- taneously holding out the bait of his sup- port to Makropoulos in the Fide election. The likely benefits to Kasparov would be that Makropoulos, as president, would reinstate both Kasparov and Nigel Short on the Fide rating list, while simultaneously aborting the Fide world championship cycle, thus leaving the field clear for the PCA.

A surprise casualty of these grand manoeuvres has been Nigel Short. Originally, when the Olympiad was sched- uled for Greece, Short had declared him- self unavailable for the English team. The British Chess Federation then selected a team of Michael Adams, Jon Speelman, John Nunn, Tony Miles, Julian Hodgson and David Norwood, with Murray Chand- ler as captain. Given the dramatic change in venue and the rescue of the Olympiad by the PCA, of which Nigel is a leading light, Short felt that he could now play and informed the BCF of his decision. Short's condition, though, was that Chandler should stand down as captain. David Nor- wood, with immense good grace, had already conceded his slot in the team to Short, but Chandler stood firm. Meanwhile, the Guardian had described Short as a 'prima donna' for wishing to alter Chandler's captaincy. The main prob- lem between the two men lay in a series of articles published by Chandler's British Chess Magazine, written by Lubosh Kavalek, the second Short had sacked dur- ing last year's championship against Kasparov. Short believed that these articles descended to the level of personal insult against him. The following passage from the October BCM, written by Kavalek and published by Chandler, would have particu- larly annoyed him: 'Rea [Nigel Short's wife] sometimes invited older friends to the matches. This fooled some of Short's oppo- nents, who thought of them as a collection of Nigel Short's Mothers Anonymous. They sat there through all the games, not understanding any of them, and watched Short as mothers watch little boys playing in a sandbox.'

Added to this, there was Short's belief that the BCF owed him a favour. After all, until Kasparov and the PCA had stepped in, there would have been no Olympiad to go to. The BCF ultimately rejected Short's pleas, leading Short to exclaim: 'I could not play under Chandler, who has published material that is both offensive and damag- ing to me professionally. The BCF obvious- ly consider Chandler's contribution off the board to be of more value than mine would be on it.' Chandler, on the other hand, could plead in his defence that the rest of the team wanted him as captain and that any change, once the initial selection had been made, would have been disruptive and damaged team spirit. Chandler said: `There has to be some balance in the selec- tion. All the other team members contact- ed me and asked me to stay on as captain. From my point of view, it wasn't an either/or situation. I would have been delighted if Nigel had decided to play in the team under my captaincy. I did not want him out.' In any case I find it sad that no compromise could be found to satisfy all parties and ensure that Britain's strongest ever player would be in our team.