By speeding up the cycle and giving it adefinitetime frame, Mr Ilyuzhinov's approach promises to increase media, and therefore public, interest in chess.
The early promise of unlimited cash from the Murdocks looks less definite at atime when backers consider cancer vaccines, which attracted a lot of money over the past decade, "dead as an investment, " in the words of Ivor Royston, an immunologist and a partner at San Diego venture capital firm Forward Ventures.