At World Chess Championship, Familiar Overtones of East-West Politics - New York Times
The contest, held in New York for the first time in 21 years, comes at a time of escalating tensions among Russia, the United States and Western Europe, including a warning from President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to NATO countries about increasing their military presence in the region.
“We are forced to take countermeasures — that is, to aim our missile systems at those facilities which we think pose a threat to us,” Mr. Putin said in a documentary by Oliver Stone that was broadcast last week. Russia has raised military spending 10 times since Mr. Putin became president in 2000, and Norway has noted a rise in the number of Russian combat planes flying along the 100 miles of shared border. Dmitri S. Peskov, a press secretary to Mr. Putin, has appeared at the match in the venue’s V.I.P. lounge; Mr. Putin, he said, receives constant updates on the match.
Russia and Norway are hardly on the brink of war, and the geopolitical overtones are mild compared with 1972, when the American maverick Bobby Fischer met the Soviet-supported Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland, in a match that was covered in real time on television in the United States with live commentary. Russia and Norway have longstanding diplomatic relationships, and Soviet troops helped liberate parts of Norway from Nazi occupation in World War II.
But the political backdrop to the match, including Mr. Putin’s military buildup and support for the Syrian government, has been anything but sportsmanlike.
Mr. Karjakin has been a vocal supporter of Mr. Putin and Russia’s annexation in 2014 of Crimea, which led to sanctions from the United States. The chess player was born in Crimea and at 12 became the youngest grandmaster ever, before moving to Russia in 2009. “I switched because I didn’t have any support, nothing,” he said before the match.
That the championship is in New York only raises the emotional temperature. The World Chess Federation’s leader, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, is barred from the United States for ties to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. Mr. Ilyumzhinov, a Russian multimillionaire who withstood a 2014 challenge from the former chess champion and Putin critic Garry Kasparov, believes he was abducted by aliens, and that chess came to Earth from another planet.
Credit
Misha Friedman for The New York Times
President-elect Donald J. Trump has expressed interest in strengthening American ties with Mr. Putin and criticized NATO, which he says has been a bad deal for the United States. Jens Stoltenberg, a Norwegian, is NATO’s secretary general. Mr. Trump said during the campaign that he would consider lifting United States sanctions on Russia imposed for its aggression in Crimea. Some opponents of Mr. Trump attribute his victory to Russian attempts to undermine the election.
Even before the match began, the British newspaper The Telegraph reported that Mr. Carlsen had hired Microsoft Norway to protect him from Russian hackers, who might give Mr. Karjakin an edge by tapping Mr. Carlsen’s preparations or Skype conversations with his coaches. At the match’s opening news conference, however, Mr. Carlsen said he was not worried about Mr. Karjakin spying on him.
No Russian has held the title of world champion since Vladimir Kramnik in 2007, a grievous drought in a country where chess is part of the national character. Russians held the title from 1958 to 2000, except for a three-year period when Mr. Fischer won it and then refused to defend it. Mr. Karjakin came into the match in the unaccustomed position of underdog.
“For Russian chess, it is a chance to restore its status,” Sergei Shipov, a prominent Russian grandmaster, said in Moscow last week. “Perhaps we won’t be able to reach the Soviet heights, but the fact that leading media outlets pay attention to the match is very positive. We haven’t seen it for 30 years. Russia and Norway do not sleep right these days.” However, he added, “For all normal people this is a chess match, not a political game.”
Lev Alburt, a Soviet defector and grandmaster who was at the world championship match, said the ardor to reclaim the title was especially impassioned this year because Russian athletes had been barred from the Summer Olympics and Paralympics for using banned substances, which Russians saw as an insult perpetrated by the West, especially the United States.
Credit
Misha Friedman for The New York Times
Mr. Carlsen in particular heralds a new, post-Soviet image for chess, with his own marketing company, chess app, and ads for Porsche and the Dutch fashion company G-Star Raw, which paired him with the actress Liv Tyler. A documentary called “Magnus” opened in New York this month, and has already moved on. A review in The New York Times called it “insipid and uninformative.”
Yet in Norway, where Mr. Carlsen’s matches are broadcast live, he is “sort of a rock star,” said Hans Olav Lahlum, a chess commentator, who added that people stop him on the street to talk about chess. But he did not see geopolitical passions aroused by the match. “Putin uses chess for his sports nationalism,” he said. “But I don’t think common people in Norway see this match as a West versus East.” The first question asked at the match’s opening news conference was whether Mr. Carlsen was making chess sexy. His answer cast doubt on the suggestion.
For American chess fans, Mr. Karjakin, 26, was largely unknown before he beat two higher-rated Americans and five other grandmasters in a qualifying tournament in Moscow in March. Considered an underdog against Mr. Carlsen, 25, he has shown poise and tenacious defensive skills throughout the match, several times overcoming a disadvantage to eke out a draw.
The match’s first seven games ended in draws — some exciting, some short on drama — before Mr. Karjakin drew first blood in the eighth round, applying pressure until Mr. Carlsen made a series of errors and had to concede after 52 moves. Mr. Carlsen skipped a required postgame appearance, for which he will probably be fined.
After that, Mr. Karjakin just needed to play even for the next four games to become champion. But after a draw in Round 9, he missed a chance for a draw in Game 10, and Mr. Carlsen inflicted a six-and-a-half-hour, 75-move grind to surrender. Afterward, Mr. Carlsen smiled and said the eight draws and one loss were the longest he had gone in a match without a win.
Now it all comes down to Monday’s game. Unless it ends in another draw. As in global geopolitics, contests are not always decided on schedule.
Correction: November 29, 2016
An article on Monday about the World Chess Championship referred incorrectly, in some editions, to the television coverage in the United States of the 1972 match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky. The match was covered in real time with live commentary, not broadcast live.
Continue reading the main story
No comments :