Vladimir Kramnik, who?

By Our Chess Correspondent

ISTANBUL, NOV. 10. The Russian public still does not know Vladimir Kramnik and the new World chess champion suffers from an identity crisis, says Marina Makarytcheva, a journalist of Russian Television.

In the streets of London their television crew asked the public and none of them seemed to know the event was held there nor remember Vladimir Kramnik, this journalist said. She said everybody knew who Garry Kasparov was, some of them remembered the Karpov-Kasparov clash in London (in 1986) and a few of them knew that Kasparov played Nigel Short (in 1993).

The situation among chess players in Russia was different from the expert opinion. They were all rooting for a Kramnik victory, she said.

Makarytcheva is covering chess for the past decade and her husband is a Grandmaster and was the trainer of Garry Kasparov in the 1991-94 period. They parted ways since Linares 1994.

She says her cameraman likes Kasparov very much and will miss him from the centrestage. ``Kasparov is so expressive comparing all other players and particularly scores over Kramnik in this respect,'' she said.

``It was one of the biggest surprises, the result overturned all the expert opinions given in our channel,'' said Makarytcheva. She started by saying that both players spoke exclusively to their channel before the match. Recalling expert opinions, she started with former world champion Anatoly Karpov. ``It will be an interesting match with the usual result,'' was Karpov's pre- match opinion predicting a Kasparov victory. Then, Alexander Roschal, editor of `64' magazine downwards to plenty of Grandmasters had Kasparov as the firm favourite.

The indications from London and elsewhere say that most post- match press conference questions are directed to Kasparov like before and the match result has not seriously changed anything.

Fearing isolation or otherwise, Kasparov appears to have mellowed a bit. At London last week, Kasparov had given an exclusive interview to an European journalist whom he even refused to reply in a press conference question during the 1995 Anand match at New York. Kasparov has this unusual habit of wanting to talk when he does not win and does not speak when he wins.

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