Eideard

Talking to aliens on his invisible cell phone?

[Kirsan Ilyumzhinov], who believes that chess was brought to earth by aliens was re-elected president of the World Chess Federation (FIDE) over [former World Champion] Anatoly Karpov in a vote that split the chess world…

“The vote showed that the overwhelming majority of countries support my work and my uniting of the chess world,” he told Ekho Moskvy radio station. “The main thing is that I have managed in the last 15 years to unite the chess world. We have one champion and one federation.”…

Earlier this year, Mr Ilyumzhinov, who only recently stepped down from another big job as president of the Russian republic of Kalmykia, claimed to have met aliens in his Moscow apartment.

He said he heard someone calling him to his balcony. “I went and looked. There was a semi-transparent pipe. I went into this pipe and saw people in yellow spacesuits. I was shown around their spaceship,” he said.

I remember when players were the news, not the bureaucrats.

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An extra morsel: Excavations have shown that chess was played with similar rules, in various continents, centuries ago, he says, adding: “There was no internet before, so how did it get across the world? It means that it was brought from somewhere.”

He also insists that there is “some kind of code” in chess, evidence for which he finds in the fact that there are 64 squares on the chessboard and 64 codons in human DNA. He then explains why he believes sweetcorn was brought to Earth by a different civilisation.

“Something is wrong… something is dead wrong.”

You can read more and see the video here: Something’s wrong in the world of chess.

Oh, what a delight, an interview fertile for comment — by me.

Is chess dead, or are we just making it irrelevant by the way we handle modern competition?

Where do I begin? I could revert to the irritation my high school physics instructor expressed when someone would want to know what the answer to a problem was. “It doesn’t matter,” he would blurt. “Did you understand the concept?” Most current players are obsessed with right answers– which is why they run to Fritz every time their brain hurts.

Then again, I could turn the topic to faster time controls, which have turned competitive chess from something almost sexy to sheer intellectual masturbation.

Or should I quote a certain American Grandmaster, who not long ago explained that the likes of Emanuel Lasker could teach him nothing?

Which.. reminds me..

Kasparov also said this: “Something is dead wrong, if nobody cares about everything else and everybody pays attention to a match of, okay, two old guys.”

The fact is, it’s not only more interesting to watch Kasparov and Karpov play now– because at least it reminds us of a day when a world title actually meant something– but it is more interesting still to study the games of.. Emanuel Lasker– you know, the really, really old guys… than the ever-increasing heap that has become the modern Grandmaster pool.

MADRID: Chess legends Garry Kasparov and Anatoli Karpov will face off on Monday in the Spanish city of Valencia for a five-day re-match, 25 years after their epic world championship duel.

The September 21-25 match will not carry the same suspense as the Moscow showdown between then world champion Karpov and challenger Kasparov, their first battle that dragged on five months before it was called off with no winner.

The new match will have only 12 games – four semi-rapid and eight rapid – with Kasparov, 46, and Karpov, 58, facing off under the watch of Dutch chess arbiter Geurt Gijssen, the Valencia regional government said.

Kasparov, who earlier said it would be more a “ceremonial tournament” with a time-limit on moves, has been training in the Norwegian capital Oslo with the 18-year-old chess prodigy Magnus Carlsen….

Karpov has secluded himself for the last week in an apartment on the Spanish coast, training with a group of world-class players and with a computer, according to organisers.

The matches will be broadcast live on the Valencia regional government website (www.gva.es). Organisers said they expect some 10 million web users to follow the event in this city known as the birthplace of modern chess, where the game has been played since the 15th century.

I realize that this story is about as interesting to most people as watching paint dry. And, of course, I don’t care.

It won’t be the match of the century. It probably won’t even be the match of the year. But for some of us who were watching in 1984, it will be interesting on one level or another.

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Updates:
Kasparov Wins First Two Games Against Karpov

“And then you s-q-u-e-e-z-e like THIS.”

For all the intrigue that had surrounded the mayoral elections in Sochi, Acting Mayor Anatoly N. Pakhomov managed to avoid confronting his critics — or even acknowledging their existence — until Friday, when he was outfoxed by a grandmaster.

The acting mayor of Sochi, Anatoly N. Pakhomov, listened as Mr. Kasparov spoke.

Mr. Pakhomov, who has the support of the Kremlin, appeared to sail to victory in Sunday’s election…. With little time left in the campaign, he attended a ceremony on Friday in a village near Sochi commemorating the Armenian genocide during World War I, a crucial gesture to the city’s large Armenian population….

But an animated gray-haired man had edged his way alongside the podium, and then he stepped onto it, sending whispers through the crowd. It was Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion, who was in Sochi promoting the campaign of Mr. Pakhomov’s archrival, Boris Y. Nemtsov.

Mr. Kasparov, born to an Armenian mother, had been sitting quietly, signing autographs, for nearly two hours….

Mr. Kasparov’s remarks began innocently enough. He made an offhand mention of Mr. Nemtsov, so subtle that it was easy to miss. Then he began to sling arrows at Moscow, saying Soviet Russia had supported Turkey at the time of the massacres.

Mr. Pakhomov, standing behind him on the podium, looked as if he had eaten a lemon.

Two minutes and 33 seconds into Mr. Kasparov’s speech, a local official stepped forward and said his time was up. Mr. Kasparov turned to the crowd with an incredulous look.

“What’s happening?” he said loudly. “I cannot speak? Maybe it’s better to be silent?”

They shouted “No!” and erupted into applause. He went on, at leisure, to criticize the rise of racist violence in Russia, saying that “genocide doesn’t just appear out of nowhere, and to put it mildly the government is doing very little to stop this debauch of nationalism.”

I’ve grown to respect Kasparov a great deal.