LAUSANNE, July 16: Grandmaster Viswanathan Anand will be hot favourite to win the World Chess Championship to be held under the new format in the month of December later this year. The International Olympic Committee president Juan Antonio Samaranch will host the finals of at the headquarters of IOC at Lausanne in Switzerland.Kasparov's refusal to participate in the championship under new format is being viewed by the experts as a loss of confidence after his recent debacle in the hands of chess computer `Deeper Blue' in a short match. The world champion is never comfortable in short matches. Had it been a short match, Anand had a good chance against him in New York after taking a lead after nine rounds, argue Kasparov's detractors.Anand and Kramnik are seeded directly in the second round of the championship to be played in knock-out format of just two games till the semi-finals. The semi-final will be of four games while the final will be contested for six games. In case of ties, rapid games of twenty five minutes each will decide the fortunes.The tie-break of rapid games give an advantage to Anand, feels chess trainer Raghunandan Gokhale. The Indian blitz king recently defeated six computers simultaneously in a match held at the Hague. Interestingly, Kasparov believed that Anand had no chance against the powerful machines. Anand proved him wrong by playing faster than the machines.Though Vladimir Kramnik is five points above Anand, his play in matches is not strong, according to British journalist Mark Crowther. Moreover, Anand has psychological advantage of recently beating Kramnik 2-0 at Monaco and outplaying Anatoly Karpov at Frankfurt by 2.5-0.5 in rapid games.The World Chess Championship carries prize fund of $ 5 millions (Rs 18 crores) and the champion will be richer by $ 1.5 million (more than five crore rupees). Even the loser in the first round will get $ 6,000. Both Karpov and Kasparov have been offered a seat in the semi-finals.THE SCHEDULEThe programme of World Chess Championship is as follows:PRELIMINARIES: December 8 to Dec 12 at Gronigen, Holland (round 1 to 6)SEMI-FINALS: December 26 to Dec 31 at Elista, RussiaFINALS: January 1 to Jan 9, 1998 at Lausanne, Switzerland
