World Chess Championship 2008

The World Chess Championship will be held from October 14 to November 02, 2008 in the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn , between Viswanathan Anand ( India ) and Vladimir Kramnik ( Russia ).

The match will consist of twelve games, played under classical time controls, in the period from October 14 to October 30, 2008. If there is a tie at the end of these games a tiebreak will be played on November 02, 2008. The prize fund, which will be split equally between the players, is 1,5 million Euro (approximately 2,1 million US Dollars) including taxes and FIDE licensee fees.

Viswanathan Anand (38) and Vladimir Kramnik (33) are the two outstanding personalities in chess today. The world championship match between them is keenly anticipated by chess fans all over the world. It is part of a 120-year tradition of chess history, which includes matches like Capablanca-Alekhine, Fischer-Spassky, Kasparov-Karpov and Kramnik-Topalov.

The reigning and undisputed World Champion Anand won his title in September 2007 at the World Championship tournament in Mexico City . Kramnik, who was undefeated in his three world championship matches, became second in this double round robin event.

The World Chess Championship 2008 takes place under the patronage of the German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück, who is himself an enthusiastic and ambitious chess player.

The main sponsors of the World Championship are Evonik Industries and Gazprom.

The World Chess Championship 2008 in Bonn will be organized with the full cooperation of the World Chess Federation FIDE and it’s President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. FIDE has its main office in Athens , Greece , and is the head of 161 national chess federations with 40 million active chess players, making it one of the world’s largest sporting organizations.

The organizer of the World Championship 2008 is Universal Event Promotion (UEP), which is located in Dortmund ( Germany ) and has received all rights for the event from FIDE. UEP staged the World Chess Challenge between Vladimir Kramnik and the chess program Deep Fritz in 2006, an event that drew worldwide media attention and was very successfully commercialised.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Picture taken from the official site.