Kamsky-Topalov Match May or May Not Happen at Some Time and Place

It's rapidly becoming difficult to figure out when or where to expect the Kamsky-Topalov Candidates Match to occur. The match, which is intended to determine the next challenger to Viswanathan Anand for the World Chess Championship, was originally scheduled to begin later this month. At one point, the match appeared to be taking place in Lvov, Ukraine; the Bulgarian Chess Federation has also been involved in the bidding throughout the process.

ChessBase has a good rundown of the politics behind the match. Given FIDE's history, it's impossible to so much as venture a guess as to where the match will take place -- if it is going to take place at all -- although it's probably a safe bet that all parties are unlikely to agree to start a match before the end of the year, given how little preparation time remains. The fact that Gata Kamsky and Veselin Topalov are both playing for their respective nations in the Olympiad probably says something about their confidence in the match being played as scheduled.

Sadly, this sort of uncertainty is all too common in the chess world. While many chess players are used to it, it really is shocking to compare how the "professional" chess world operates when compared to other competitions around the world. It's hard to imagine that players, organizers and fans of any other sport would put up with similar issues. If the National Football League were anything like chess, ESPN would spend the next day speculating on whether Monday Night Football would be moved to a new site and played on Wednesday, whether the Cleveland Browns should be replaced by the Chicago Bears if they refused to agree to the new conditions, and if we should be worried about Buffalo forfeiting the game in the 2nd Quarter due to the scoreboard being slightly larger than regulation. Then, when the game was finally played between St. Louis and Oakland on Friday, and the television ratings were surprisingly low, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell would propose that the long, 15-minute quarters were the problem, and that starting in Week 12, all games would be played at the new 5-minute quarter time control.

The scenario in the last paragraph was clearly ridiculous -- but only because it wasn't about chess. Shouldn't these sorts of things be impossible to imagine in the chess world too?