On 3rd and 4th of August several meetings were held at the Royal Olympic Hotel in Athens with the participation of FIDE Deputy President Georgios Makropoulos, FIDE Treasurer Dr. A. Siegel, FIDE Vice-President Israel Gelfer, FIDE Executive Director Nigel Freeman, FIDE CEO Geoffrey Borg, Moscow Executive Director Berik Balgabaev, Tournament Director of the Olympiad and Chairman of the FIDE Arbiters’ Commission Takis Nikolopoulos, Agon’s CEO Ilya Merenzon, Executive Director of Intersuez Capital Limited Vikas Gambhir, Executive Director of the Chess Rating Agency (International) LTD Evgeny Tkachiov, Managing partner of the Sport Rating Technologies International DMCC Evgeny Ponomarev, member of the Turkish Chess Federation Projects and Sponsorships Commission as well as Technology commission Tamer Karatekin.

The participants discussed issues of the preparation for the upcoming 42nd World Chess Olympiad and FIDE Congress in Baku and the World Chess Championship Match in New York. Ilya Merenzon, Agon’s CEO, updated the participants as to the progress of the preparation to the World Championship Match, which will take place in New York from 8th to 30th of November 2016. During the meeting the future venue of the championship, the schedule and the new way of broadcasting have been discussed.
A number of development projects as well as commercial projects were presented and discussed at length over the two days workshop. Detailed presentation will be made in Baku accordingly.