The ‘NOBODY GIVES A SHIT’ grand chess tour
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When the Grand Chess Tour was suddenly announced by former World Champion Garry Kasparov a little while back, not many people in the world took notice–despite the initial hoop-la from the tour founders. INFACT, not even much interest was shown by the players themselves…first Kramnik declined; then So declined; finally Ding Liren declined. Lack of foresight on the part of the tour organizers: they had not considered the possibility that some of the nine (9) players who were invited might have other commitments…
”I would have been happy to play in the Grand Chess Tour, but ideally, I would have liked to choose just two of the three events. But the rules are that I would have to play all three and that, unfortunately, I cannot do.”
Then, as far as the chess public was concerned, there was the issue that NOTHING new was being introduced into the chess-world’s elite chess circuit. IN REALITY, no new tournaments were to be organized: instead three already WELL-KNOWN tournaments were ENLISTED to incorporate the so-called NEW tour: Norway, St.Louis and London.
EVEN the name of the tour (GRAND CHESS TOUR) was a virtual copyright infringement of the already existing and very successful FIDE/Kirsan Ilyumzhinov GRAND PRIX TOUR. Probably few noticed. Poor V.Topalov can easily be forgiven for EVEN YESTERDAY not noting the difference:
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AND WHAT ABOUT MEDIA COVERAGE?
