World intellectual champ due in Baku

Baku is expected to host the first international championship of intellectual game “What, Where, When” in summer of 2002 after the International Association of Intellectual Games Clubs (IAC) voted the privilege to Azerbaijan. It was announced by a member of the "What, Where, When" elite intellectual club, the laureate of the best player prize “Crystal Owl” for 2002, Rovshan Asgarov in a news conference at the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Tourism in Baku Monday.

The idea of holding the world championship was thrown out by Baku’s “Ateshgah” club of intellectual games. It is proposed to conduct the first world championship under the auspices of the IAC with the organizational backing of the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Tourism and the National Olympics Committee of Azerbaijan and the information support from Russia’s “Igra” TV company.

National teams, members of the Association, from Russia, the Ukraine, Byelorussia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Georgia, Turkmenistan, the Baltic nations, Germany, the US, Canada, and Israel are expected to take part.

Founded by renowned Russian intellectual Vladimir Voroshilov in 1972, this intellectual game is unique in the world. It is often dubbed as a new sport. But, it could be unanimously claimed as innovation in the world culture.

The idea of setting up an Azeri intellectual team, Baku’s intellectual club “Ateshgah” belongs to renowned scholar Hikmat Hajizadeh. The club was founded in 1988 on the basis of the National Academy of Sciences. Elin Suleymanov was elected the first president of the club.

“Ateshgah” is the winner of the first international tournament of intellectual games in Mariupol, the Ukraine, the double champion of the Brain Ring intellectual game in 1997 and 1999 and the first champion in the Caucasus in Batumi, Georgia, in 2001.