‘Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it yet’ -LM Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
The year 2014 is closing. It has been described as an annus horribilis. The list of horrors spans the globe, but chess, in contrast, was soothing to the mind. During the year, we were fortunate to play the royal game cheerfully, amidst the turmoil of a corrupt world. A light shone brilliantly for 2014 when FIDE, the World Chess Federation, brought 170 nations together in August to Tromso, Norway, for an Olympiad. It was a wonderful sight to behold in a restless, and otherwise reckless, universe. Some of those participating nations at the Olympiad were engulfed in wars or controversies, like Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Syria, Pakistan and Iraq, among others. Yet they made strenuous efforts to compete fully. Guyana was also present at the Olympiad following 34 interminable years of non-participation.
The world championship title did not change hands and Magnus Carlsen is still the reigning champion. Vishy Anand came better prepared this time around, but he failed in his bid to dethrone the champ. Anand struck powerfully in game three, outplaying the Norwegian grandmaster. He blundered, however, when given an opportunity to surge ahead at the halfway mark as India held its breath. Anand proceeded to lose the game, and ultimately, the match. Analysts have contended the 12-game match is too short to facilitate any serious comebackwhen a player is down. At one stage, Anand was required to win two from three, a hugely improbable task. In 1974, Bobby Fischer wanted his match against Anatoly Karpov to go over ten wins, not counting draws, to which arrangement FIDE did not agree. Fischer had played a 24-game match with Spassky in 1972. His reason for calling for longer matches was to determine who the better player was and to eliminate accidental wins through unsuspected novelties. Fischer would have never agreed to a 12-game match, says his friend and columnist Lubomir Kavalek.
I sought Karpov’s views over dinner in Nassau on such a development if the match had come to fruition and he disclosed that he had been prepared to play Fischer at any time. Carlsen’s next world championship challenge comes in 2016. Who will be his next opponent? He named Caruana, Grischuk and Aronian as probable contenders. He failed to mention the forty-something group consisting of Anand, Kramnik, Gelfand or Topalov. Carlsen skipped Hikaru Nakamura who won a US$100,000 match against Aronian last month in St Louis. Carlsen’s high profile, No 1 ranking and lucrative sponsorship deals, have pushed him beyond the world of chess into the world at large.
Mention should be made of the Las Vegas millionaire chess tournament which was held during the year. The Philippine grandmaster Wesley So won the tournament and based on his performance, he was catapulted into the elite top 10 of grandmasters worldwide. The tournament boasted the largest prize fund (US$1 million) in history. Mention should also be made of Caruana’s unprecedented seven consecutive victories in the St Louis tournament. His scalps included that of the world champion and those of other top ten players.
While FIDE was busy hosting tournaments internationally, the Guyana Chess Federation was modest in its approach to engineering competitions for local players. At the back of my brain, an incohate thought is whispering to me that we can be affected by our failure to host regular local competitions. In the famous sentence from the 1908 novel quoted above, Lucy Maud Montgomery says that tomorrow is always fresh. We can make 2015 a good year for chess. As chess players, we have been trained to think ahead. International competitions should be tethered to local tournaments. We cannot have one without the other. I respectfully concede that Guyana has been without international competition for years, and therefore, I stand proud to be awakened by the development of attending international competitions and bringing international tournaments to local players through the capability of Irshad Mohammed and his team. Thanks to Michael Benjamin for his in-depth coverage of the Umada Chess Cup on behalf of local chess players and in a larger sense, the Guyana Chess Federation.
A male and female chess player surprised me pleasantly with Vladimir Nabokov’s Laughter in the Dark, a favourite novel, and Guy de Maupassant’s short story, The Necklace. Thank you folks. I intend to enjoy the entertainment, the intrigue, the disillusionment and the inspiration which comes generally from reading. A happy and prosperous New Year to all local and foreign chess players!
