Newsblog WCC Carlsen-Karjakin, 2016-11-19

For political nerds I guess Tigers comment would be easier to swallow if instead of Nazis prison we have a prison in a communist state. But I guess you then would believe Tiger to be politically right wing.

However, one could argue that Tiger would choose this every day of the week rather than to watch the Swedish television. I guess he has no TV and therefore have the honor of being harassed by the Swedish authorities trying to enforce the state fee for being an owner of a TV set. That fee only the Socialdemokrats (Labour party;I Think Magnus is a member of that political party) could come up with they even have it in the UK. But now pls forget my comments and go back to this intresting full of action chess match...

@FOffermann

Fernando, my comment was not directed against Tiger Hillarp Persson. It was directed against specific comments, the most important of them is the nazi thing. The nazis were defeated in WWII and though there are some people now who think like them, they are a dwarf minority. The other Rightists however, in many cases are labeled with the term nazi by propagandists who still seem to be fighting WWII. I will not enter into the details of why someone who thinks in nations is not necessarily a socialist and therefore not necessarily a nazi, as it would be unelegant from my part to start debates on political phylosophy here, however, political propaganda is not elegant in chess comments. This is what I was pointing to and I maintain my point of view. If Chessbase is ok with an author writing comments which perfectly fit into this phenomenon, then I will have to acknowledge that. However, I certainly hoped that such a great news site like Chessbase would at least try not to be politically biased and if it cannot avoid bias, at least avoid offending comments.

Karjakin has a huge advantage. They are playing on the same level. (Don't tell me about the Elo mathematics.) However, Karjakin is in good spirits, whereas Carlsen is annoyed, upset and disappointed. The Russians may finally get the title back.

@ turok, it's "couldn't care less". Saying "could care less" means you actually care somewhat, whereas "couldn't care less" means you don't care at all.

I believe 12 games for the world championship chess is too little since a lot of people have great interest in chess. I think 24 games chess is more appropriate and it can be played 2 games a day, one in the morning and another in the afternoon. Since there are only two people playing chess, scheduling of 2 games a day will not be difficult and if the first game in the morning drags on, the second game in the afternoon can be delayed. I am not sure people would like to reintroduce Bobby Fischer's draws does not count and only wins count method. The games can drag on for months in Kasparov-Karpov world championship match. I believe Karpov was winning and would likely win if the games continued but it was postponed and Karpov lost it.

*YAWN*

I could care less about his Nazi comments etc I just do not like his analysis as it is something to be desired.

I really enjoyed the notes by Tiger on the game.

Why can't we see the World Championship live on the site ? Why need us pay for it ? It was free before.

I give Persson a break on misspellings and political comments because he wrote the best book ever on the Modern Defense! Anyway, the rest of his comments are very informative and easy to understand, so let's let 'em slide, guys. Also, I'm in a good chess mood because I was lucky enough to go to game 3 and enjoy the endgame complications up close and personal!

I think you guys are way to sensitive. Tiger always writes with alot of wit and humour. Ofcourse he knows how the Italian is written, he's just writes that way. I don't know Tiger personally but I've met him a few times and he does not strike me as a person who would write about his political views and tell others what to think. He is simply writing with alot of with, sarcasm and humour. I really appreciated his annotations because they were fun indeed!

Hello FOffermann,

thanks for the detailed explanation. Thinking again about the reactions on Persson's game analysis, it seems to me that the term "Nazi" is a red flag for many people (not only here). Of course I know that he did not want to put Peter Swidler and the Nazis in one pot - but having both names in one sentence is already "more than enough" for sensible souls.
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By the way: I like Hillarp Persson's large horizon. For instance, in August he participated in the European Go Congress (in St. Petersburg) and played impressive exhibition matches both in Chess and Go.

Flachspieler, I'm Editor-in-Chief of ChessBase News and I speak for the editorial staff. We'd like to ask you to be polite and respectful in your comments because we prefer an elaborate way of discussing on our site.

Of course we are living in a pluralistic society, and everybody has the right for his own opinion. Nevertheless, for me one game commented in this style is enough for the event. Please, give me others commentators for the forthcoming games!
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@Foffermann: Who are you ...?
EDIT: I just learned that Fernando Offermann is the new director of "ChessBase.com News". I did not know that when I wrote my original comment an hour ago.

I agree with FOffermann. Unless a contributor is too absurd (which is not so in the case of Hillarp Persson), let's take it easy and enjoy the reading, and be grateful to the contributor. The contributor is not debted to us.

its really unfortunate that we have so less annotated games this championship. the sochi one had so many!

We are happy to have Tiger Hillarp Persson's comments and we think it's fully acceptable to write like this, because it reflects his own personal view on things. Our authos kept clear of explicit attacks and all the criticism so far is based on interpretation turned into attacks against the results of the interpretations. For us, it's all about chess and we support our author to tell us how he is seeing the game. He didn't attack anybody and he made a joke about the Giuoco Piano, which might or might not be seen with a humorous viewpoint. Not everyone likes everybodys text, that's what publishing with names is all about, but we strongly support the idea of a pluralistic system in publishing. The more we are going to publish texts of prominent and elaborated authors, the more reaction there will be. As experience shows, the audience which is happy with the result seldom remarks this via comments, but the ones who are unhappy with it complain more often.
We are interested in your reactions, we like to know your point of view and we support lively discussions on our site - this is a great way to do it via the Internet, but please do not incriminate our author for crimes he has not committed and please be fair in your comments.

lajosarpad You got the point! Kudos for that polite reply to that ignorant in-game commentary!

I managed to refrain myself from making a comment on that because I knew, that I can not be that moderate!
I still can not believe that I would ever read something like that in an ongoing world chess championship game commentary!

"[...] is the starting position of the above mentioned Marshal Attack. I'm too old to get familiar with it. Perhaps I would, if jailed by nazis and left with only a monograph (written by Peter Svidler) to fend for my own sanity, eventually be able to say something sensible about this position. And although the likelyhood of this scenario has increased lately, I'm afraid you'll have to wait until some time next year, at least. (Seeing the draw looming twenty moves ahead, you'll have to excuse me for trying to pump up the drama a bit.)"

You could pump up the drama without mirroring your highly political frustration possibly coming from Donald Trump's election victory, possibly coming from the Right getting closer to power in Europe. A Leftist can feel frustrated about that, no doubt and I, for one can understand you with enough empathy, but please, do not offend your readers who might be Trump voters or European Rightists. They are decent people as well, who were as frustrated as you are now when the Maoist Barroso became a powerful figure in the European Parliament. You could not hear about Gulags, KGB and stuff like that when that happened for several reasons. One of those reasons was that there are either no Rightist commenters, or, if there are, they were elegant-enough to not project their political frustration into chess comments. But more importantly because we, chess enthusiasts would like not to read political propaganda from chess comments at all. I, for one am tolerant with political propaganda in chess comments, but if there is any, I would expect it to be witty and not offensive to anyone. This comment sees nazis somewhere, either in the U.S.A. or in Europe, which are voters like you and me. This is offensive to them and I believe you will be elegant and apologize more seriously than in your comment, where the apology was meant to be "funny" and "whitty".

"In a sense the Ruy Lopez is a little more ambitious than the G-whatever Piano (In Swedish we call it "The Italian", so I'm excused for not acing the spelling bee)."

What kind of commentary is that? Proudly ignorant of the name of an opening? Come on, it is not so hard, Google is your best friend.

Before talking chess, let's start by spell "asymmetry" right, shall we? I understand typos of sorts. I do them as does everyone else, but get the crucial word - as it seems to be - wrong twice in the opening statement, it's a bit embarrassing.

Hmm. Does Hillarp Persson want to be funny with his comment relating the opening and Svidlers nice book to Nazis and Stefan Zweig's "Schachnovelle"? Then he might take a more current example: WikiLeaks boss Assange, sitting in a London embassy for years already to avoid being extradited to Sweden - and reading chess books not to get crazy.