Ali Nihat Yazici Optimistic About ECU Elections

Ali Nihat Yazici: Feedback? Incredible... Amazing.. we will win this election by a very big margin in the first ballot. We do not underestimate our opponents, both have good teams of nice people, yet it seems that they are starting to attack me personally, lowering the tone of the campaign. Nevertheless, we continue to respect them.
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Chessdom: If you win the support of the ECU delegates, what will be your first moves after the election?
Ali Nihat Yazici: We will call an Extraordinary General Assembly in Istanbul early next year. We will cover all expenses for the delegates, and there, we will commence our revolution in budget, structure and procedures. There, we will also formally sign the first €300,000 sponsorship agreement.

Full interview with Ali Nihat Yazici

von Weizsäcker rejects Naiditsch's letter

The German Chess Federation and its President Robert von Weizsäcker took some time to gather thoughts after Arkadij Naiditsch's sharp letter, but eventually they came up with a statement that "rejects the non-objective arguments".

The federation claims that "two of the top four German players (Naiditsch and Meier) have received grants of totally 57,479 € in the period 2005 to 2010."

Some other numbers were also presented to the public - "It has been agreed to offer the players of the men’s team for the participation in this year’s Olympiad an honorarium of totally 15,000 € which means approximately 3,000 € each (depending on the individual result)."

Only few days prior to this statement, GM Ivan Sokolov of BIH, who is running for the ECU Vice President post on Robert von Weizsäcker's ticket, commented in an interview that - "It would have been fair to mention the offered fee in the open letter, because probably a considerable number of chess federations are offering less to their players."

Andy Murray defends Rogers Cup title

Andy Murray beat Roger Federer 7-5, 7-5 to defend his Rogers Cup title on Sunday.

The 23-year-old from Scotland overcame several rain delays to become the first man to repeat as champion since Andre Agassi in 1995. He beat world No. 1 Rafael Nadal in the semifinals.

"Winning a tournament is always great," Murray said. "This is the first time I’ve beat Roger and Rafa in the same tournament, which is probably the most pleasing thing. And I didn’t drop a set against either of them—so it’s good for the confidence for the next few weeks."

Full article at Yahoo! Sports

Arkadij Naiditsch Stuns German Chess Federation

Top German player Arkadij Naiditsch unveiled some shocking facts in his open letter titled "Why the German A-team will not participate in the 2010 Olympiad".

Let’s start with the fact that nobody from the German A-team is going to participate in the Chess Olympiad this year. These players are Georg Meier, Jan Gustafsson, Daniel Fridman and me, Arkadij Naiditsch. Why? The easy answer is that the biggest chess federation in Europe, about 100,000 active members, couldn’t manage to find money to pay the players.

As we know, Prof. Dr. Von Weizsäcker is running his campaign for the ECU Presidency, and many European countries are giving their support to him. Now, the logical conclusion would be since he could do absolutely nothing for chess in his own country in two years, or again had no time for it, which, of course, led to the same result, can he do something for Europe? I would say probably not.

The other candidates for the ECU Presidency, Silvio Danailov and Ali Nihat Yazici, did not jump on the opportunity to kick the German counterpart in the knee. Their statement posted on Chessdom are rather neutral.

How to "Sell" Chess

Though chess cannot compete with poker on television, it does rather well online. In fact, chess is almost ideally suited for the Web, which is one reason why chess sites and online activity have boomed. Reasonable estimates are that there are millions of people worldwide who play chess online.

Carol Phillips, president of Brand Amplitude, a Michigan marketing company, said that chess had something that marketers want. “In the marketing world, the buzz is all about creating community,” she said. “And chess has a natural community.”

Phillips compared chess to Farmville, the online game developed by Zynga. But, she added, chess “is the ultimate game, you don’t have to invent it.”

Given the popularity of live chess events, and the global and regional audiences for many of them, it would seem possible to sell advertising. One model might be the live telecasts of baseball games used by ESPN, in which every half inning, there is an advertisement.

Full article on the Gambit Blog