Chess is brutal

Today I got the proof copy of my chess book that I was talking about on Monday. Before publishing the English version, I will have to read this copy in the original language to see if it contains errors.

In the emails they send me I found out that a visitor to this site likes chess and we even played a correspondence game last year. With that exception I don’t see many chess fans visiting The West’s Darkest Hour.

Non-fans ignore that the stress on the player is so great that it affects even world champions. In 1974 for example, in the candidates match between Korchnoi and Karpov—a virtual World Chess Championship for the title because Fischer would refuse to play the following year—due to stress Karpov (right) lost his weight and ended up weighing 47 kilograms (about 104 pounds).

I doubt that non-fan visitors have an exact idea of ​​what chess really is: for the mind, something tougher than the Olympics. I would like to add an anecdote regarding what I claim in my book.

I was a teenager when Karpov defeated Korchnoi but this just happened today. Pay attention to what Nigel Short says after the break. Chess players suffer when they commit a blunder that costs them the game. In this case, the Iranian who committed it lost the game, thus he was disqualified, and couldn’t pass to the semi-final of the tournament.

Unlike the physical sports of the Olympiads this is a brutal intellectual sport.