FIDE World Chess Championship postponed for one day

World chess champion Viswanathan Anand will square off against his Bulgarian challenger Veselin Topalov in Sofia Saturday in a marathon final starting a day late due to Europe's volcano crisis.

Anand will take his seat for the first of 12 games after having had to travel by road from Frankfurt airport after being stranded there by the shutdown of Europe's airspace because of volcanic ash from Iceland.

The 40-year old grand master finally made it to the Bulgarian capital by bus on Tuesday, four days later than planned.

The international chess federation FIDE agreed to a one-day delay to the match, less than the three days Anand had sought but hopefully enough for him to shrug off the worst of the travel fatigue and stress.

Full AFP article