The NBA and March Madness are cancelled, the premiere league is off, NHL is done for the season, goodbye to the Boston Marathon, even the European Poker Tour in Monaco and National Scrabble Championships are postponed. But you do not push chessplayers into a corner. Or their knights at least. Euphoric knights right now, who have never had a bath in their whole lives, now enjoying elaborate spa treatments every single day, as chess clubs all over the world email membership to detail cleaning techniques. You bet that pawn is getting baptized.
The chess pieces spent so much time getting ready, it would be rude not to watch the only game in town: The Candidates tournament in Russia. Self isolate like a chess champ and hook your monitor up to one of the many venues streaming as Grandmaster commentator Maurice Ashley calls it, “Eight hungry chess players desperately playing to demolish each other for a crack at the World Champion.” Think of watching chess as a service to the world and yourself. You won’t touch or breathe on anyone and you’ll come out a little smarter. Not a shadow of yourself, roots showing, muscles evaporated, brain drained from too many episodes of Love is Blind and the Bachelor. You’ll be a better, wiser and more sophisticated version of yourself when peering out of a bunker.
I named my son Fabi, and in a pure coincidence not at all related to me being a crazy chess parent, the top contender is an American named Fabiano “Fabi” Caruana, who is impossible not to like. He’s the type of person to offer you his last French fry at a formal dinner where you dumbly ordered a limp salad. This was BCV- Before Coronovirus. Now the CDC officially recommends you eat French fries with a fork that can double as a weapon if someone tries to approach the plate with a finger.
Fabi is considered a favorite as he won this event two years ago. Not my son though. He’s only three. The youngest ever player to become the #1 player in the World is Magnus Carlsen, who did it at 22. When Fabiano played Magnus for the World title in 2018, I’d like to tell you the match was thrills and spills. Actually there were 12 draws, aka split decision, aka tie aka no one actually won a single game until the playoffs. Then Magnus simply crushed Fabiano, so badly it seemed inevitable.
Whoever wins will be an underdog again to Magnus. The Norweigian genius has a photographic memory, brilliant psychological insights and is in peak physical condition. He also has chiseled good looks and a wickedly sharp sense of humor. Yes, it’s OK to hate him.
The other favorite is Ding Liren, who left China weeks ago for quarantine. He has the rare distinction of beating Magnus head to head in a playoff at one of the top events of the year, the Sinquefield Cup. Playoffs in chess are structured with increasingly faster games, a format that Magnus has an even wider skill edge in. When Ding Liren defeated him in that format, fans started to fantasize about a 2020 World Championship match.
Another crowd favorite is the dapper Frenchman Maxime Vachier Lagrave, better known as MVL. MVL missed out on playing in this tournament a couple times by a whisker and 2020 seemed to offer the same fate. He was a last minute addition when one of the underdogs in the competition, Teimour Radjabov of Azerbaijan, dropped because of the rapid spread of Coronovirus. On March 8th, he wrote: “I became a victim of the situation, but there should always be the one who suffers, before everyone understands what’s going on.”
My brother Greg, the commissioner of the PRO Chess League, and a popular handicapper gave Ding Liren and Fabiano a combined 64% to win. Garry Kasparov said the top two players were over 2:1 to win the event. Various betting markets also gave hefty odds to the duo.
I think Garry, Greg and the markets are wrong. We’re in uncharted territory, and this event will be even wilder than expected. At times like this, why listen to experts when I could go with my gut?
A chess legend dating back almost one thousand years shows the folly of intuition in estimating growth.
A subject invents chess, which delights the king, who asks how he can pay for this brilliant new game. The inventor requests a doubling of rice for each square on the board: one grain of rice for the first square, two grains of rice for the second square, four for the third square and eight grains for the fourth. Day 9 is only 256. What a deal! The king laughs and quickly accepts. Then as the growth curve becomes steeper, he shudders to realize that by day 18, it’s 131,000 grains of rice, and there is not enough rice in the world to reach the eighth rank.
The difficulty of grasping exponential growth and large numbers applies to warding off disaster, such as the global catastrophe we now face. It also applies to accumulating wealth. I mean just take a look at the DOW or your 401k and see how the projected output defies… wait, actually, don’t look at your 401k. Or think about how you don’t have one and need it more than ever. Really, just turn on the chess instead.
Chessplayers all start with the same sixteen pieces. Mistakes compound even at the highest level, and as the saying goes. “He who makes the last mistake loses.”
Another chess cliché is one Grandmaster’s reply to
“How many moves do you see ahead?”
“One, but it’s the right one.”
That’s not going to be enough to win the Candidates this time.
