Anyone else got that bleak autumn vibe? The days are getting darker and colder, rent and mortgages are spiralling, Britain is an international basket case, and soon no doubt we’ll be battered by the season’s first storm (to be named Antoni — the indignity goes on).
It was surely for moments like this, when we’re barely halfway through the week, that sport was invented. So cometh the hour, cometh … chess?
Yes. Now before you say things like “I have zero interest in competitive chess”, let me point out: that makes two of us. But the brouhaha taking the world of chess by storm has something for everyone. And it illustrates two important truths about the value of sport.
One, you don’t have to have any interest in said sport to derive enjoyment from it because two, the juiciest bit of any sport is the drama.
This week Magnus Carlsen (that’s the Norwegian five-times Grand Master Magnus Carlsen to you) directly accused his rival, Hans Niemann, of cheating in a recent tournament.
If your first mental port of call is another great cheating scandal — the coughs that helped direct Major Charles Ingram to the jackpot on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire — think again. We’re a long way from home on this one, Toto. For the salacious rumour lighting up the normally staid world of chess is that Niemann may have cheated by using a vibrating device placed in part of his body that it would be uncouth to name in even an evening newspaper. Thanks to particular vibrations sent by a third party at particular moments, Niemann, the rumour runs, was able to beat Carlsen. Well, what would you do if you suspected that? Search him? Hmm, I’ll take the loss please.
But Carlsen doesn’t fold so easily. Niemann, 19, has history here. He cheated twice before in online chess tournaments as a child. He protests his innocence still. Carlsen has yet to provide any evidence — and from the posts I saw on online chess forums, more than a few people are grumbling that he’s being far too vague in his claims.
If Anya Taylor Joy and Netflix showed us chess can be exciting, this unexpected saga proves it’s a sport where rivalries simmer and participants are happy to get their hands dirty. That, for all the doubters out there, is the perfect illustration of the joy sports can bring.
