The Blunderful Chess Match of 2021
The not so grand chessboard and the match that wasn’t (Part 1)
Last year, in order to escape the hysteria and stupidity of the previous twenty months, I watched, via the internet, the World Chess Championship match between Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi . But there was no distraction to be had. Instead, I soon realized that it was as rigged and scripted as everything else in the current inverted reality. I knew instantly (but didn’t know how to adequately explain how I knew) that the match was a fraud.
After the match, Nepomniachtchi told reporters that he has never made so many blunders in one tournament. If we inhabited a world in which logic and reason prevailed and in which critical thought was as popular an activity as playing chess or watching TV, admitting that patently obvious fact would be superfluous. No chess player in more than a century has made that many obvious blunders in a single world championship match. Period.
Brief aside: it’s only fair to point out that I am predisposed to an incurable disease that causes “critical thinking.” I realize that to use one’s mind in this manner is a terrible thing but, unfortunately, I can’t stop. Because I have this rare disease (Or is it a disorder?) I’m not prone to the common ailment known as mass hysteria. Therefore I’m not now, nor ever was, in the cult of co-vid. Frankly, I’m not by nature cult material. This defect prevents me from joining any collective. Again, I was born with and cursed by a thinking mind, a working brain, or possibly both items.
If I were to join a cult it wouldn’t be a death cult. Death is what it is and this little essay will not address the metaphysical. But I have always considered suicide a private matter and not a group activity. If fate had deposited me in Guyana at the time of the Jonestown Massacre I would not have joined the festivities. I might have, at gunpoint, drunk the Flavor-Aid, exactly in the manner in which I would accept the injection of the deadly concoction that recently became all the rage. Minus threats and force, my annoying propensity for thinking would have again gotten in the way. Of course I don’t think those simple folk in Guyana happily ingested the poison du jour. The event was said then to be a mass suicide. Still it was recorded as a massacre. Those who critically examine the wacky world of current events realize that suicides are frequently murders.
Let’s return to the game of chess. It would appear to any reasonable person that the 2021 Word Chess Championship match between Magnus Carlsn and Ian Nepomniachtchi, or at least the portion from Game 8 to its premature conclusion, was scripted. But chess commentators and chess fans alike tacitly agreed to be as credulous regarding this as they are regarding everything else. Thus, the silence regarding all things scripted and suspect remains deafening. We inhabit after all the golden age of the false: false narratives, false positives and false idols. Paranoids are the only ones who notice anything anymore.
I don’t suggest that the match was rigged because the idea appeals to me for its narrative value, but rather because the alternative explanation is outlandish: a chess player skilled enough to be in the world championship match suddenly makes not one nor two but three obvious errors. The challenger didn’t play consistently bad chess; that might have appeared suspicious even to naive fans. But he made decisive, game losing blunders in three out of the eleven games of the match. While great players have blundered throughout the history of the game and have been known to blunder in championship matches, no player has until now turned that rarity into a routine.
A chess match matters little in the greater scheme of things. Not even a suspicious one does. Likewise, recognizing that which is obvious apparently is of no practical value in today’s world. But if it’s true that the match from game 8 to its early conclusion was a sham and if the widespread failure to recognize that which is patently obvious has become the norm, what then does this say about the current state of discernment? And what does this say about the individual’s contribution to that state. If discernment is now just a rarely used word and seldom used process, then what kind of world does this yield? Well, simply stated, it yields the kind we currently inhabit.
Greg Shahade, a chess player of the IM (international master) status published an editorial more than ten years ago under the heading “Chessplayers are not always honest” in which he asserted that "...cheating occurs in chess tournaments on a regular basis. I have personally witnessed and heard about dozens of such cases and they continue to occur regularly, including some of the most prestigious tournaments in the world...Prearranged decisive results also happen a lot more often than you'd like to believe. There are even players ranked in the top 20 today whom are well known by their peers to have bought/sold games. There is a bit of a code of silence at the top levels of chess, so you probably don't hear about it much.”
This acknowledgment of the obvious is far from rare and the history of chess is far from squeaky clean. Ample accounts exist of unscrupulous play, outright cheating and fixing games. Even the frequently dubious and often deceitful Wikipedia (aka the bathroom wall of the internet) contains an article of considerable length titled “Cheating in chess” that includes three paragraphs under the heading of, simply stated, “Collusion.”
There have also been matches marked by intense hostility between players and between their nations. The World Chess Championship of 1978 was just that kind of match. It pitted Analoly Karpov (who became the 1975 champion by default when Bobby Fischer refused to defend his title) against Viktor Korchnoi. It was a particularly, famously dirty, match, conceivably the dirtiest ever, but it was nonetheless a tightly contested albeit contentious contest between talented well-matched opponents.
But in this recent more or less amiable match, meanwhile, Nepomniachtchi made decisive blunders in two consecutive games, game 8 and 9. In game 11, on move 23, he made the final fatal pawn move g3. One straight-talking commentator said this: “And here we see a huge blunder from White. Unfortunately Nepo does it again.” Yes, the challenger for the world championship did it again.
Chess players earn titles based on and indicating their level of skill and success in competition. Those titles, in descending order, are grandmaster, international master, master, candidate master and expert. Carlsen and Nepomniachtchi are both grandmasters, as would be anyone playing in a world championship match. Carlsen’s peak rating was 2882 and he achieved that rating about six years ago. His rating en route to the 2021 championship was 2856. Nepomniachtchi achieved a rating of 2798 in the past year and entered the match with a rating of 2782.
Although the challenger had a somewhat lower rating than the defending champion he was nonetheless a nearly 2800 player who entered the a tournament with a 4-1 positive record in classical play (meaning games with the longest time allotment for moves) against the champion. Nepomniachtchi had won four games against Carlsen and lost only one. Nonetheless this same high level player then proceeded to play like a “patzer,” blundering in three of the eleven games after playing competitive chess for about two thirds of his life.
Before I continue, I need to point out that no person or corporate entity pays me to write about chess or in any way provide commentary about it or any other matter. I am not, in other words, a so-called expert. This is a distinct disadvantage given that we inhabit now the golden age of “expertology’” a realm in which “experts” financially connected to and dependent upon the very entities about which they bloviate and meanwhile are regarded with trust by a population that for decades has valued entertainment over discourse. So, by the flawed logic of this time and most of its occupants, I am not “qualified” to evaluate a lofty and esoteric subject such as chess. But no reasonable person believes this, even as reasonable people become harder to find each day.
Prior to this recent farce of a match, the challenger enjoyed a winning record against Carlsen in games of the so-called classical time format. In the famous Fischer-Spasski battle in 1972, that challenger (Fischer) entered the match with a perfect losing record. But he was in no way considered an underdog. Still he had never actually defeated the defending champion. After a shaky start in which he lost the first game by way of a bad move and forfeited the second by way of failing to show up, Fischer won the match decisively by a score of 12 ½ to 8 ½. And to his ever deserved credit, Fischer waited until after that confrontation before self-destructing.
End of Part 1
I am a writer, photographer and craftsman in a theme park called Montclair, New Jersey. I am also an autodidact and a devout epistemologist. I have written poetry and nonfiction for a couple of decades but have only recently begun submitting my work. I can be reached at jerrybernini@gmail.com and https://twitter.com/JerryBernin