Friday, January 27, 2012

Never happened before

Very strong player in their time. History of disputes with the national chess federation. Undoubted ability in the popularisation of chess. Widely distrusted by well-informed people in the chess community. Despite that, has a lot of fans, particularly on social media. Also has some iffy associates. Not everything that appears under their name is necessarily written by them. Not everything they say is necessarily to be believed. Much prefers to blog rather than write books.

I don't read a lot of Susan Polgar's blog - who did you think I was talking about? - and I'm not usually tempted to. Its claim may be "updated, timely, fair, and objective chess daily news and information from around the globe" but it might be more accurate to say that they recycle chess stories from wherever they can find them (not always with perfect literacy) and then acknowledge their sources as barely and inadequately as they can.

But chacun à son goût. At least they're not writing blog pieces every week about what they've just read on bloody Twitter.

Not that I am either, mind - I'm writing about what I read on her Twitter account in December.


Big and very exciting.

Never happened in chess or any other sport before.

Personally, my reaction to this apparent news was to try and imagine what, possibly, could have never happened in any sport before, and what it would look like if it - big and exciting as it was apparently going to be - were to happen in chess. Regrettably my imagination failed me, though in all fairness I didn't try to exercise it for very long, what with the big and exciting news coming up the following week when we would all see for ourselves.

So I settled down to wait. And wait....and wait....

....and it's now five weeks later. So did I miss it then, or what? You have to do a lot of scrolling to get through Paul And Susan's Other People's Chess News and I have scrolled through five weeks' worth of it. Is it possible that something extraordinary happened in the world of chess - and in all that scrolling, it passed me by?

You wouldn't think so. I mean at the very least, if it had, somebody else would surely have written about it. And their report would have been borrowed by ChessDailyNews.com.

8 comments:

Tom Chivers said...

Something to do with TV I reckon, maybe a reality show.

Jonathan B said...

A happy coincidence:

I told EJH last night that I was planning a series of posts called "Susan Polgar's bullshit" and in reply he told me about the post he'd just written for today.

Jonathan B said...

Susan Polgar recently started following me on twitter, btw. 'Susan Polgar' if you prefer.

(I'm @Berlin_Endgame should you be interested)

hylen said...

Giddins

Huesca (scroll down)

Off topic? I suppose so.
 

Anonymous said...

No one is *really* interested in the Berlin Endgame. Not really.

Mark Weeks said...

Who intimidated Chessbase?...

Pinocchio's nose and Susan Polgar
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.chess.politics/browse_thread/thread/51564bca6f00f480

...Be careful what you write about certain chess personalities. - Mark

Jonathan B said...

Mark,

The link you've posted appears truncated on my screen and doesn't work. Blogger has a tendency to do this I'm afraid. As soon as I've worked out what it's supposed to be I'll repost it so all can follow.


Hylen,
I agree that Giddins link, his customary writing style notwithstanding, is well worth a look.

Anony,
How rude!

Jonathan B said...

OK,

I think Mark's link is probably this one.