Jogo Bonito

Quick, in which country will Kasparov, Anand, and Karpov be playing next week? We're back with another edition of "great events with zero PR." That country is Brazil, but Kasparov won't be playing Anand and Karpov. As part of the Sao Paulo 450th anniversary festivities, a rapid tournament will pair the best of Brazil against Anand and Karpov in a rapid chess double round robin. Milos, Vescovi, Leitao, and token Chilean Morovic round out the field of the four-day "Desafio de Xadrez" event. It begins on August 20 and ends on the 23rd.

The day before that begins there is a giant simul with ten titled players. On the 21st Kasparov will give a 20-board simul at the Morumbi Hilton site, but he's not playing in the rapid. After the simul there is a launch event for the Portuguese edition of the second volume of his Predecessors series. Most of this I learned from this official event page, the only info I could find on it after Garry told me there was a rapid tournament with Anand and Karpov at the same time as his simul. I've got some info from the organizers so we'll be covering this event daily at ChessBase.com.

Another interesting thing is that the organizers seem to be selling spots for the Kasparov simul. Usually these all go to celebrities, government officials, local players and juniors, and other people the organizers want to favor or use for publicity. I'm sure most spots were reserved for those ends, but it's still strange to see an online sign-up request form with a $500 registration fee! A few days later Kasparov will be giving lectures on strategy at a management event. "Part I: Don't get involved in dot-com bubble."