Filatov: "Chess is a unique tool for promoting the country's culture"

Chess blog for latest chess news and chess trivia (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2012

Hi everyone,

Here is a nice interview from Russia & India Report with the main sponsor of the World Chess Championship 2012 between Viswanathan Anand and Boris Gelfand. The interview is by Alexei Dospekhov, for Kommersant.


Former chess player Andrei Filatov at a press conference in Moscow's Tretyakov Gallery for the upcoming FIDE world chess championship match between defending Indian champion Viswanathan Anand and his Israeli challenger Boris Gelfand. Source: ITAR-TASS

Last Thursday the State Tretyakov Gallery hosted the opening of the main chess event of the season: the match for the world title between Viswanathan Anand and Boris Gelfand. The initiator of this duel in Moscow and its main sponsor, Andrei Filatov, one of the shareholders of the N-Trans Group, told Kommersant correspondent Alexei Dospekhov why he decided to invest in chess, in what ways it’s going to change the economy, and how it’s linked to Russian art.

I am, of course, primarily interested in your motivation. Why are you financing the match for the world chess champion title? Is it a contribution to your image, a desire to help the sport that you were seriously involved in as a youth? A country that is fighting for all the major international events – the APEC Summit, the Olympics, World Cup, Universiade – simply cannot miss a competition in which it was once one of the main symbols. Boris Gelfand, my student friend, when he won the Candidates Tournament in Kazan last year, told me that the venue of the match had not yet been determined and that there were different rumors about whether it would go to India or somewhere else… It became clear that Moscow hadn’t applied. I thought about it and decided we needed to try. If Moscow’s bid won, the country would get a serious competition that hadn’t been held in modern Russia. Then later this theme evolved from the perspective of the current status of chess, the new chess economy, the main points on which it can be based. You can read the full interview here.

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Anand symbol of India's tech prowess: Russian sponsor of world chess championship 2012

Chess blog for latest chess news and chess trivia (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2011


Hi everyone,


"Anand ...can be rightfully considered the symbol of India's development into one of the mightiest technological powers of the modern world," says Russian Andrei Filatov, sponsor of forthcoming match for the world chess crown, according to media reports. "The current successes of Indian mathematicians and programmers in a way are the continuation of Anand's feat, which he has been demonstrating throughout his career beginning from the early 1990s," he said.


Filatov, a billionaire who co-owns railway and port operator N-Trans group, ranks 93 in the Forbes list of Russia's rich with $1.1 billion net worth in March 2011.


Born in Soviet Ukraine, Filatov, 39, graduated as a chess teacher and coach from the Academy of Physical Culture and Sports in the Belarus capital Minsk before he established one of the largest and effective infrastructure and logistics companies after the fall of communism and USSR's collapse.

Filatov credited Anand with amazing rise in the popularity of chess in Asia. "The credit for expanding the geography of chess in the East at the highest level, no doubt goes to Anand, he became the locomotive for the development of chess not only in India, but also China," Filatov said.


Filatov, who is sponsoring the Moscow match between Anand and Israel's challenger Boris Gelfand for the International Chess Federation (FIDE) crown carrying $2 million 550 thousand prize money, recalled that the two Grandmasters had for the first time locked horns in 1992 at the Alyokhin Memorial Tournament in the Russian capital.


"It was Anand's first triumph in a major international tournament. It's quite interesting that then in 1992 Anand had shared the first prize with Gelfand. And now the same grandmaster Gelfand will be challenging his chess crown here in Moscow," Filatov said.


And now after quarter a century FIDE would be again holding the prestigious match for the chess crown in Moscow in May 2012.


Filatov said he was sponsoring the chess championship match "purely out of love for the game".


"Anand and Gelfand are great chess players. I have no doubt that their match here will become one of the most interesting event in the modern history of chess," Filatov, the main investor for Moscow's bid said. You can read in English here.

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From Alexandra Kosteniuk's

www.chessblog.com

Also see her personal blog at

www.chessqueen.com