American Web Entrepreneur Paulsen Runs Show for FIDE

[Scott Tortorice]

This is a fascinating development:

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Paulsen: 'World cities will glorify chess'[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]

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FIDE recently transferred the rights to its World Championship cycle to a company called Agon, an action that sent shock waves through the chess world. The man behind Agon is Andrew Paulson, and American born media entrepreneur working in Russia, who is not well known in the chess world. That changes radically now, since GM Raymond Keene sent us this very outspoken interview.

I like this idea:

Second, the events will be held in World Cities which will glorify chess, rather than in small towns that see chess events as an opportunity to promote themselves or local players on the world stage. The theme of the first year is a European Tour: Moscow, London, Lisbon, Madrid, Paris and Berlin. Each succeeding year we will take the cycle to a different continent so as to make it easier to mobilize national/regional enthusiasm, thus eventually bringing chess to the whole world on a regular basis.