Mar-04-25
 | | An Englishman: Good Evening: Nezhmetdinov lives! What an attack. Baffling, unpredictable, never lets up, unclear if it's sound--checks all the Super-Nezh boxes. |
|
| Mar-27-25 | | fabelhaft: <I was still in fine mood eagerly awaiting presentation of beauty prize. Much to my shock and disappointment it was awarded to the game Kosteniuk-Tan Zhongyi> <I can't view their decision other than politically biased. The prize just "couldn't" go to russian player> <I find that decision insulting and humiliating and in view of that I refuse to play my final Grand Prix-stage in India> https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comm... |
|
Mar-27-25
 | | beatgiant: <fabelhaft> I agree it's easier to make a case for this game than the other one for the prize, but the political angle seems a big stretch. Lagno remains married to Grischuk, who publicly criticized the invasion. Then if "political view on the invasion" was a real criterion, why couldn't they give her the prize? |
|
Mar-27-25
 | | MissScarlett: My impression of Grischuk is that his politics are not readily reducible to a pro-Putin or pro-Western polarity. As for Mrs. Grischuk, if she doesn't want to go to India, she should just say so. |
|
| Mar-27-25 | | fabelhaft: <the political angle seems a big stretch. Lagno remains married to Grischuk, who publicly criticized the invasion> I wouldn’t be surprised if they just didn’t bother to look at the games properly and just picked one that seemed ok. Grischuk and Lagno are probably far from Kosteniuk politically though. The latter has written about how stupid she was to believe in nationalist propaganda, that Kasparov was right all the time, etc. She is very western in her opinions. Grischuk, on the other hand, has said that he has a positive view on Stalin since westerners have a negative view on him. He and Lagno have played their share of tournaments with Karjakin during his wilderness years. Maria Emelianova sees Kosteniuk and Lagno as very different: <Kosteniuk is never returning to Russia and, I can tell you from personal experience as another Russian who denounces everything my country is doing, it's VERY different from Kateryna's life and moral> That Lagno writes that they didn’t want to give the beauty prize to a Russian for political reasons also underlines that she doesn’t see Kosteniuk as Russian. I wonder if an Armenian that was in the same situation would say, if a prize went to Aronian instead of him, that they didn’t want to give the prize to an Armenian so they gave it to an American… |
|
Mar-27-25
| | MissScarlett: <Grischuk, who publicly criticized the invasion> Perhaps, echoing Talleyrand, <It is worse than a crime; it is a mistake.> |
|
Mar-28-25
| | beatgiant: <MissScarlett> <crime>,<mistake> In the well-known interview, Grischuk said, "In my view what we are doing is very wrong, from both moral view and practical view...." That covers both. |
|
| Mar-28-25 | | fabelhaft: Grischuk was among the players to say he thought it was wrong to invade Ukraine more than three years ago. But he does have a daughter in Ukraine, and it’s certainly a natural reaction for someone who has family in the country to not be enthusiastic when the bombs start falling. Grischuk has been playing a lot in the west and is less affected than many others by the propaganda about the invasion being unavoidable because the Ukrainians are Nazis etc. Having spent lots of time in Ukraine he had also seen for himself that it was maybe not as filled with satanists and gays that was claimed in the war propaganda. However, he has not said anything since, apart from complaining about Russian players being less welcome in western countries than before. He meant that he could understand if Ukrainians were against Russians participating, but not why others would be against it. Lagno is also her own person, and not only Emelianova but also Irina Bulmaga has written about her: <there is a big difference between staying silent and participating in tournaments organized by recognized war instigators (to put it mildly) like Sergey Karjakin> <What I understood was that they endorse in one way or another Karjakin's activity. It shocked me and the more I thought on it- the more it kept upsetting me. I expected the same reaction from most of my colleagues and they indeed felt the same way when we discussed it privately> http://irinabulmaga.blogspot.com/20... |
|
| Mar-31-25 | | Saniyat24: Unrecognized Beauty...! |
|
Apr-02-25
 | | Stonehenge: KLEPtomania |
|
|
|
|
Kibitzing
sac: 17.Ne5