The Seattle Asian Art Museum is a fabulous place to hold a chess tournament, but that would cut out thousands of their visitors. Next best thing: hold the opening ceremony there in the evening.
Speeches. They must have been the impetus for the phrase Less is more. The Chess Summit is following in the footsteps of ping-pong diplomacy from the Nixon years. The most important international relations in the whole world are those between the United States (as the major power) and China (as the major developing country). Heady stuff. But after half an hour, I confess that my attention wandered. But thank you, Yasser, for being so succinct.
Aside from the sponsors (listed at the official site), most speakers praised Dato Tan Chin Nam of Malaysia. Who he? Once a big man in FIDE, he has been an advisor and sugar daddy to chess in China for almost a quarter century. He strongly pushed the idea of this match. Gufeld article.
What are the other elements of success? Idea, sponsorship, staff, volunteers, connections, Dato Tan Chin Nam, work and fun. Don't forget the work.
Check this out. It is a functional teapot. Tea is the
traditional drink of China. Its form was inspired by an article by
Dato Tan Chin Nam The Art of Pouring Tea. Seattle is the city
of glass. For example, Dale
Chihuly is one of the most famous glass blowers in the world.
Seattle is the Emerald City; jade has been treasured in China for
almost 5,000 years. Sandblasted on the front of the teapot are an
(American) eagle and a (Chinese) dragon, locked in passionate
embrace, er, mortal combat.
The final element of the trophy, the cross symbolizing the chess
king, may cause the odd ripple. The cross, especially with the foot
longer than the head, is often a symbol of Christianity, and each
team has members who are not Christian. If you like, you could
interpret the cross as the meeting of active and passive principles,
attack and defence, ranks and files, the two partners in the act of
chess creation.
SCF Executive Director Michelle Anderson and US captain Nick deFirmian look on as China captain Lin Feng removes a stick from the Jenga pile.
Major chess events have an unofficial rivalry to come up with new and amusing ways to draw lots. In a round robin event, the pairing numbers determine the order in which the players meet each other and, more importantly, who has White in each game. There are usually an even number of players in a round-robin. Each plays everybody else once, and thus has an odd number of games. So half the players will have one more White than Black, and vice-versa. Just as important sometimes is against whom you have the particular colour. Because of the importance of the drawing of lots, it is done in some truly random way.
For the Summit Match, the drawing of lots determines only the order of colours. On each board, each time will have two Whites and two Blacks. Nobody gains an advantage through it, and so the organizers had more leeway for fun: it could be a real contest.
What Ed Gwozda and Yvette Seirawan came up with was Jenga. You remove a stick from the pile and then put it on top. If the pile topples over, you lose.
As the assembled multitude crowded around, the team captains made the stack unstable early. A couple more turns and crash! Lin Feng had won the right to choose colour. He chose that China would play White on the first board in the first round. We joked with US captain Nick deFirmian that, if he had won, he would have chosen to play Black anyway!
GM Ye Jiangchuan
President of China Chess Association
Dato
Tan Chin Nam
China Consul General Wang Yunxiang
WGM Zhu
Chen
WGM Wang Lei
WGM Qin Kanying
WGM Xu Yuhua
GM Xie
Jun
GM Peng Xiaomin
GM Zhang Zhong
URL: This web page is:
http://members.shaw.ca/berry5868/smop.htm
Last modified March 16, 2001