Peter Svidler supports FIDE's proposal

Wednesday, 27 December 2017 23:22

During the opening ceremony of the World Blitz & Rapid Championships, FIDE Deputy President Mr. Makropoulos proposed to His Excellency Turki bin Abdel Muhsin Al-Asheikh, Chairman of the General Sports Authority of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, that the name of next year’s event in Riyadh can be "King Salman Peace & Friendship Rapid & Blitz World Chess Championships" and that in the spirit of the FIDE motto “Gens Una Sumus”, chess players from all nations will be welcomed and able to participate. Read below the opinion of Peter Svidler in his interview after round 9: Q (A. Karlovich): Peter, you have attended the opening ceremony and heard the message of FIDE for next year’s event in Riyadh. Do you support the idea? A (P. Svidler): I think it`s a very important point. I was somewhat surprised and happy to see FIDE making this point. Generally speaking, the content level of official speeches during the ceremonies is not very high but in this case it is quite clear that FIDE wants to get this point across. I think it’s a good thing that they did. If the tournament is indeed held in Riyadh next year, I hope it will be fully representative because the current situation is clearly not great. Watch the full interview of Peter Svidler here. Other top Grandmasters including Magnus Carlsen, Nana Dzagnidze, Rauf Mamedov, Nigel Short, Stelios Halkias, Elina Danielian, Pia Cramling, Monika Socko, Le Quang Liem, B Adhiban and SP Sethuraman have also supported this proposal in their respective interviews. Grandmaster Peter Leko said: "If there is a chance that we can have next Championship here, and Israeli players can participate, that would be one of the greatest achievements."