Chess is often considered a mind sport and just as most other "sports", there is also a chess world championship. This years chess world championship is special in two ways: First, it is supposed to determine the first undisputed world champion since 13 years. It is not that there have been no chess world champions since Garry Kasparov. In contrary, there have been two: the "official" FIDE champion(s) and Vladimir Kramnik, the "natural successor" of the last undisputed world champion, Garry Kasparov. This year's match between Kramnik and FIDE champion Topolev is supposed to reunite the crown of chess. Second, it is the first world championship since I started playing chess which made me personally looking forward to it.

Unfortunately, the chess games in Elista are overshadowed by some "strange behavior" of the participating teams. I won't get into the details of the "pottygate" affair - you can find detailed accounts of it (and the games) on many chess blogs such as Susan Polgar's site. However, it reminds me a bit of the famous 1972 chess world championship match between Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer. Like today, in 1972, new demands were made every day and both sides accused each other of unfair practices. This caused many observers at that time, particularly chess players, to describe the happening in Reykjavik as "disgusting". Today, however, these events seem to be more hilarious and quite interesting if they are viewed in the historical context of the cold war as detailed in the book "Bobby Fischer goes to war" by David Edmonds and john Eidinow (see my review of the book).

All this led me to the personal decision to ignore the current chess world championship. I am sure that I will read about it in a few years if the players actually manage to play some really brilliant chess games. Otherwise, it seems just too much of a waste of time to follow a discussion that is dominated by issues like "who said what" and wild cheating accusations. It seems to me that things similar to the story that I actually enjoyed to read about in the case of the Fischer-Spassky match in 1972, are not that much fun if they are happening right now. Sometimes, things look simply better and at least much less seriously when viewed in retrospective - so let's simply play some chess!

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/Hide comments

Show/Hide comment form

Name

Website

Comment

Write the displayed characters

Add Comment