Move over darts, now chess is the game for real drama
As London hosts the world championship showdown, Alan Tyers checks out what all the fuss is about
As openings go, it was more Diana Ross penalty kick at USA 1994 than London 2012
Chess! Most savage and demanding of all the sports, with the possible exceptions of boxing and the arrers, the ancient and noble game’s attention is on Britain this month as Norway’s Magnus Carlsen puts his world title on the line against American Fabiano Caruana.
The event is taking place in London, and the ceremonial “first move” of game one was made by the actor Woody Harrelson.
Perhaps there had been a booking mix-up: they wanted The American from Chess the musical; they got an American from Cheers the sitcom.
Either way, few could have predicted how Harrelson would discharge his duties. He first knocked over Caruana’s white king, for a joke, and then advanced the challenger’s queen’s pawn forward two squares, to d4.
Caruana, a mildmannered fellow, looked confused and hurt, but shrugged and for a second it appeared that he would go along with the move and make the best of a bad job, before he plucked up the courage to say that well, actually, if Woody wouldn’t mind too much, he would rather prefer to send forth his king’s pawn the maximum amount.
“I’m sorry,” said Harrelson. “I couldn’t hear you. I thought you said, ‘d4’, not ‘e4’.”
As celebrity curtainraisers go, it was more Diana Ross penalty kick at USA 1994 than The Queen, or at least a creditable facsimile thereof, parachuting into the London 2012 Olympic Stadium.
Still, the Harrelson Gambit, like the rest of the game, was viewable online as chess attempts to extend its reach as an unlikely spectator sport, and intriguing stuff it is too.
In Norway, where Carlsen is a major national figure, they are showing hours of live coverage on the equivalent of BBC One, but for those of us who are pining for the fjords, online does well enough.
If you’re happy to part with $20 (£15.41), you can watch all of it at worldchess.com, with close-up cameras trained on the two combatants and commentary in various languages, including in English from the excellent Judit Polgar, a Hungarian grand master. If you just want to watch the pieces move silently and spectrally about on a graphic board, that’s free, and oddly thrilling.
Sorry to say, even chess is not safe from the relentless assault of gambling, with some bookie or other announced as “the official betting partner”, although at least there are no adverts with Ray Winstone growling at you or lads having a cheeky acca on the King’s Indian Banter Defence.
Aside from punting, another similarity chess has with other sports broadcasts is the conviction that you can never have too much technology. Football has Gary Neville being so good as to tell all the football managers exactly where they are going wrong via his big ipad; chess goes much further, with its battery of supercomputers.
The official match report of game one, for instance, said: “Carlsen decided that his best chance lay in a flight of his king to the other side of the board, but, according to the various computer engines analysing the position, that was a mistake,” and this, to my mind, is a shame, almost as if to devalue the astonishing intelligence and creativity of Carlsen by judging his decisionmaking to be inferior to that of something you can plug into the mains.
But with a possible 10 more games to come, the coverage of this is worth a look if you want to see the slow-burn drama of a pure battle of wills, and get a unique close-up of genius at work.