Carlsen’s manager: we expect FIDE to open bidding process

PanARMENIAN.Net - Espen Agdestein, the manager of Magnus Carlsen, still expects FIDE to open a bidding process for the Anand-Carlsen World Championship match. In a telephone conversation with ChessVibes, Agdestein reacted to a recent interview with Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. "It seems FIDE is trying to fix a mistake by making another mistake."

At the beginning of this month the All Indian Chess Federation (AICF) announced that they had come to an agreement with FIDE to host the World Championship match. This was possible because FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov had promised the Indians to hold the match after they lost the bidding process of the Anand-Gelfand match to Moscow, in August 2011.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa announced that the match would be held in Chennai between November 6 and 26 and that the state government would allot Rs 29 crore (290 million, about 4 million Euros) for the event. Ten days later FIDE Vice President Israel Gelfer signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the AICF.

“Just before Magnus and I went to New York, I was actually in Athens [at the FIDE office – CV] with my lawyer and there I talked to FIDE representatives, for example Georgios Makropoulos and Israel Gelfer. We made it very clear that we are not happy with the procedure. We were very surprised when FIDE made an agreement with Chennai right after the Candidates' Tournament. Of course they have not received a bid other than Chennai yet, because there hasn't been a bidding process! There should be,” chessvibes.com quoted Agdestein as saying.