Enter Your Reply The Comment You're Replying To Thomas McElmurry wrote on Tue, Aug 15, 2006 10:39 PM UTC:The Mainz Chess Classic has begun today (or perhaps yesterday, since as I write this it's already tomorrow in Germany), but according to the official site, the Chess960 championship won't begin until Thursday. Of course this match alone can tell us only about Svidler and Aronian, but this match is not taking place out of the blue. Lékó became the first Chess960 champion by defeating Adams in 2001. Svidler won the title from Lékó in 2003, and has defended it against Aronian in 2004 and against Almasi in 2005. I've read that the challenger must qualify by winning an open tournament, but it's harder than it should be to find such information from official sources. It seems to me that Svidler's status as Chess960 champion is more legitimate than that of either Kramnik or Topalov as Chess champion. Edit Form You may not post a new comment, because ItemID FischerRandomnew does not match any item.