Tuesday, August 17, 2010

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."

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