Friday, September 12, 2008

Humpy got dumped

Humpy Koneru lost the semi-final match for the championship of the female chess world to Hou Yifan, a 14 year-old girl. Sorta elimanates "nurture" from the nature vs nurture question, does it not?
It was a close match, with the players splitting the "standard" and "rapid" sets of two game mini-matches. The teen "proved" to be a better player in "blitz." For that she gets a chance to become a world champion of inferior players.
I cannot help but wonder why they played the "standard" games at all. Why "waste" all that time on long games when one can have a world championship elimination tournament one day and then have the world championship the next! The chess world could crown a new champion every month! Chess would constantly be in the news, and not for something as sordid as cheating in the toilet. Chess fans would have to have a scorecard to keep up. Think of the sales of scorecards! The new motto for chess would become: Don't think-MOVE!
Humpy winning the women's world championship would have meant that India would have had all four reigning world champions - the men's world champion in Viswanathan Anand, men's world junior champion in Abhijeet Gupta, who won the world Under-20 title in Gaziantep, Turkey last month, and the women's Under-20 champion in Dronavalli Harika. Alas, it was not to be...

No comments: