The owner of the Classical Jewelry House LOBORTAS Igor Lobortas came to Istanbul to hand in the Caissa Cup to the Women’s World Chess Champion Hou Yifan. He recollected the idea of creating the Caissa Cup.

After the Gaprindashvili Cup was accidentally broken in the Ukrainian airport, the Classical Jewelry House came out with their proposal to remake it. The World Chess Federation met the offer with gratitude and the Classical Jewelry House created the new Gaprindashvili Cup.

In 2009 Igor Lobortas participated in the FIDE Congress in Greece to introduce the Gaprindashvili Cup. At the same time Alexandra Kostenyuk proposed to FIDE to have the special award to a female chess player for the greatest results during a year.

FIDE decided to make the Caissa Cup for the best female chess player and asked the Classical Jewelry House to be a sponsor and creator of the Cup. Igor Lobortas and his team made a decision to start this project with pleasure.

Elena Kadyrova who was also present at the press conference is a leading sculptor of the company. She was the one to create the design of the Caissa Cup. As she said the Caissa Cup combines the components of a woman’s body, a chess piece and a sporting component as well.

The Caissa Cup is made out of silver, gold and it is embossed with few diamonds. There were 50 sketches of the Cup when a group of designers started to work on it. After that FIDE chosen three sketches and the final approved sketch was the one that Hou Yifan will receive tomorrow.

The Women’s World Chess Champion Hou Yifan was also present at the press conference. She said that she knew that she will receive the Jewels cup but she never expected that it would turn out to be that beautiful. Yifan expressed her hope that the Caissa Cup will encourage her for the new victories.

On behalf of the World Chess Federation the FIDE President Assistant Berik Balgabaev thanked Igor Lobortas and his team for the great job and their contribution to the chess development this way. He believes also that chess will not be considered only as a game but also as an art. It will attract a lot of attention from people all over the world who would have not only the goals to win the chess competitions but also who would like to be the owners of the jewels masterpiece.

Igor Lobortas in his turn expressed his gratitude to FIDE and namely to Kirsan Ilyumzhinov for their cooperation and he hopes that they will have a productive future in respect of chess development and promotion not only by sport component but also from the point of view of beauty.