I AM STILL surprised by the speed of the Internet. A fortnight ago, within hours of my article appearing in The Star Online, I received an email from British grandmaster Nigel Short. He disagreed with the one-liner in which I had mentioned him. So we both agreed that I should cite his email in this week’s column to set the record straight and put this matter to rest. Here is Short’s message:
Dear Quah,
I strongly take issue with your comments in The Star that Garry Kasparov and myself “committed an unthinkable crime” by taking the World Championship outside Fide. The fact is that Florencio Campomanes abrogated our right to vote on the venue of World Championship. It was this illegal action, totally contrary to the Fide statutes, which prompted the split. If you wish to talk of “the chess crime of the century,” then this was it.
Your comments have damaged my reputation publicly in Malaysia. They are totally unfair and do not give even half the picture. I ask you to print a retraction immediately.
Regards,
Nigel
Thank you, Nigel, for the clarification. Okay, with that out of the way, let us return to the world chess championship in Elista, Russia, where the unification match had developed many twists and turns.
I thought Vladimir Kramnik would be able to coast home with his two-point lead over Veselin Topalov but I was wrong. Soon after the fourth game was played, a bizarre series of protests and counter-protests threatened to bring the match to an abrupt halt.
Toiletgate was how chess journalists everywhere were describing the developments in Elista.
It all started with the Topalov camp complaining that Kramnik was spending too much time in his relaxation room’s toilet, walking in and out and spending time inside. Each player has his own private toilet and since the toilets were the only places without surveillance cameras, the insinuation was that Kramnik could be accessing some electronic devices there.
Gasp! Cheating at the world championship match? There was no proof but the Appeals Committee decided to lock both private toilets and requested the two players to share a common, designated toilet.
This time, it was the Kramnik team’s turn to protest and Kramnik refused to play the fifth game until his private toilet was reopened. Well, it wasn’t and so, he forfeited this game.
This prompted a crisis in Elista with the whole unification match threatened with a meltdown. World Chess Federation (Fide) president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov was forced to cut short a meeting with his boss, Russian president Vladimir Putin, to deal with it.
After some protracted negotiations, Kramnik’s right to use his private toilet was reinstated and the original Appeals Committee was replaced. In return, Kramnik had to accept that he had forfeited a point in the fifth game.
He agreed to continue with the match but made it clear that he was playing under protest and he reserved the right to pursue this point later in court.
So after a dramatic four days, the match resumed. At first, Kramnik held on with two draws. Then disaster struck for him when he lost two consecutive games – the eighth and ninth. For the first time in the match, Topalov was leading 5-4.
However, with only three games remaining, it became Topalov’s turn to buckle under the pressure. He blundered in the 10th game and the score levelled at 5-5.
This is as far as I know as my deadline loomed earlier this week. If you have Internet access and had been following the games nightly, you will know that the match either ended yesterday with a decisive victory to one of the players or went right down to the wire with a critical tie-break today.
Remember, if there is a tie-break, you can follow the games live beginning 7pm this evening from the official world championship website http://worldchess2006.com or you can visit Susan Polgar’s excellent blog at http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com
About the author
Quah Seng-Sun has been writing about chess in The Star newspaper in Malaysia since Aug 1980. This article originally appeared in the Lifestyle section of the newspaper on 13 Oct 2006.