Thu 27 Nov 2008
Chess Players Can Be So Dumb
Posted at 14:48 +1100
I don't write a lot about chess here, since more than a small amount of national and international chess involves politics and it's all fairly nauseating. But, at times, it becomes a little hard to resist pointing out the obvious. I'm not going to discuss Australan national chess here, since I've more or less given up on the national organisation some years back and I can't see how that can be salvaged. I still follow international chess events for entertainment.
During the recently completed (finished a couple of days ago) Chess Olympiad in Dresden, there was a press conference with former (2005-2006) world-champion Veselin Topalov. He came up with some of the dumbest answers from a smart guy that I have heard for a long time.
FIDE (the world chess body) went through their almost traditional farce of announcing yet another change to the way they would determine the world champion. Topalov commented that he doesn't see why anything should change and how that is unfair and inconsistent. Such unfair and inconsistent changes, he conveniently neglects to note, is exactly why he is even involved in the current world championship cycle. Topalov lost to Vladimir Kramnik in a match in Elista in 2006 and the terms of the match were that he would then be out of the current cycle. FIDE then made a few shuffles (possibly redefining the term "cycle", it's hard to tell) and gave Topalov preferential treatment by giving him an automatic match against the winner of the last World Cup -- with the winner to play for the world championshp against the current title holder. Without that last minute two-card monty, Topalov would be on the outer for the current rounds. Sure, that would have been nominally unfair and brought on by the silly scheduling problems of the various matches (the loser of the 2006 match couldn't really participate in the World Cup to decide the next challenger), but those were the conditions he agreed to, and other players have been similarly disadvantaged. So Topalov's hypocrisy at the unfairness of changing conditions seemed a bit rich.
Then we have his proposal, which I first saw in Chess Today #2941, wherein he proposes people arriving late for Olympiad games should have been given a monetary penalty, instead of being forfeited and losing game points. How nice of one of the richest chess players in the world to decide that something he has a lot of is more relevant than something like the game point he is battling for. Topalov has made millions from chess and presumably is paid by his country to play in the Olympiad (even if not, he's still made out very well from a game that pays the average professional very poorly). Many countries (including Australia and many countries are far worse off than the Aussies) cannot afford to pay their players more than a token amount (or possibly at all), so increasing that cost is incredibly selfish. A penalty of $X is going to be a lot easier for Topalov to pay than, say, the guy from the Ugandan team who may well be staying at a lesser hotel, further away and who missed the bus to the venue or something similarly likely and unavoidable.
The current system, whilst farcical (if you were even one minute late, you lost on forfeit), at least levied the same penalty against everybody. No matter which team and what your financial, political or gender status, you lost the same amount: 100% of the score you were playing for.
Topalov's logic in those two answers just beggars belief. Particularly given his history of saying things in press conferences that really don't stand up to scrutiny. At some point smart guys have to learn not to repeat their mistakes. How can he really not have thought things through before answering?
Okay. I feel marginally better now that I've got that off my chest. There must be something more interesting I can write about next time. (Side note: I'm disappointed that I'm not in Los Angeles at this moment playing in the Thanksgiving Day long weekender they hold there. I've enjoyed playing there the last couple of years and am disappointed to be missing out this year.)