World Chess Championship Begins in Sochi
Nine months after the Winter Olympic Games, a different but equally fierce competition is going down in Sochi, Russia the World Chess Championship. On Saturday the current champion, 23-year-old Norwegian Magnus Carlsen, will begin to defend his title against Viswanathan "Vishy" Anand, a 44-year-old, four-time world champion whom Carlsen beat last year, the Wall Street Journal reports. The championship's opening ceremony took place Friday., Their face-off will be the first back-to-back rematch for the top title since 1990, when Garry Kasparov beat Anatoly Karpov in a best-of-24 showdown. Carlsen is the first Western-born world chess champion since Bobby Fischer took the title in 1972 after beating Boris Spassky of Russia. WSJ