Agence France-Presse
Last updated 09:17am (Mla time) 09/14/2007
MEXICO -- The 2007 World Chess Championship tournament got underway in Mexico City Thursday, with eight of the world's top players squaring off for the game's most coveted title.
On day one of the competition, defending champion Vladimir Kramnik of Russia was challenged by compatriot Peter Svidler, while world number one ranked Viswanathan Anand of India faced Israeli Boris Gelfand.
In other match-ups, Russian Alexander Morozevich faced off against Levon Aronian of Armenia, and Peter Leko of Hungary was to meet Russian Alexander Grischuk.
The four matches commenced simultaneously at a hotel in downtown Mexico before a sparse but engrossed crowd of onlookers. But a virtual community of some 40 million chess devotees are expected to follow the tournament via the Internet site www.chessmexico.com.
Each player will face off against the other seven players twice during the tournament, which is expected to run through the end of September.
The tournament marks only the second time since 1886 that a chess champion has been crowned via this week's four-way match-up, as opposed to a single head-to-head duel.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment