Re: "Kasparov Retains Title on a Draw":

Andy Walker <anw@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> David Richerby <davidr@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>> If the WC match is between Soviet GMs and held in the USSR, it's
>>> hard to argue that any other country should have had much of a say
>>> in the match conditions.
>> I disagree.
>
> But you seem to be agreeing; or are you claiming that "[not] much of
> a say" means "no say"?

Er...  To avoid our getting lost in a twisty maze of nested negations,
my position is this.  The international chess community should have
just as much of a say in the conduct of, say, a world champion****p
match between two Russians played in Russia as it would in a world
champion****p match between a Frenchman and a Brazilian played in
Japan.  This fact of being organized and regulated by an international
body is what distinguishes a world champion****p from a national
champion****p.

I wouldn't extend that to the fine details of the playing conditions
but it should, for example, be the international body that decides the
overall form of the match, who competes in it and so on.

>> If we're to call these people `world champions' rather than `Soviet
>> champions',
>
> [Note in passing -- many people did observe in the period of Soviet
> hegemony that the Soviet Champion****p was sometimes a stronger event
> than the Candidates' Tournament.]

Indeed.

> But when the WC, challenger and venue are all Russian, and so FIDE
> is talking to the Soviet Chess Federation (a) representing
> Botvinnik, (b) also representing Bronstein [or whoever], and (c)
> also representing the interests of the venue, and when [as until
> recently] FIDE is not the huge international cor****ation you might
> imagine, but rather the proverbial one-man-and-his-dog, FIDE's role
> as broker is somewhat limited.

Fair enough -- I'd not realised that FIDE was so small in those days
and was treating this as a largely theoretical question.


Dave.

-- 
David Richerby                               Mentholated T-****rt (TM):
it's
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/          like a fa****on statement but
it's
                                             invigorating!