Tag Archives: prize-at-stake

The most hotly contested leadership vote of the season will take place next week in the small Siberian city of Khanty-Mansiysk. Delegates from more than 100 countries will choose between two Russian candidates after a lengthy campaign filled with acrimony and allegations of corruption. The prize at stake is the top position in world chess – president of the World Chess Federation (Fide) – and the contest is being fought between former chess grandmaster Anatoly Karpov, and the current president, the eccentric Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, a millionaire and the leader of Kalmykia, an oil-rich Buddhist region on the Caspian coast. Mr Ilyumzhinov is no normal politician. He counts among his friends the American actor Chuck Norris and the late Saddam Hussein, has made chess lessons mandatory for all schoolchildren during his two decades in power in Kalmykia, and has built the largest Buddhist temple in Europe. Oh, and he also believes that chess was brought to Earth by aliens, and that if not enough people take up the game, the aliens might destroy our planet. Author of an autobiography with chapter headings that include “Without me the people are incomplete” and “It only takes two weeks to have a man killed”, Mr Ilyumzhinov has combined his political job with running Fide since 1995. Mr Ilyumzhinov met with The Independent in Moscow to put forward his platform for the Fide elections, and to share his views on life. First, though, he wanted to talk about his latest grand plan. Perturbed by protests over the “Ground Zero Mosque”, he has written to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, offering $10m (