World Championship Yahoos 2024 (2/2)

At the end of last month's Yahoo post, World Championship Yahoos 2024 ('1/2'; November 2024; see the footnote for an explanation of Yahoos), I explained the title:-

I'm titling this post 'WCC Yahoos 2024 (1/2)', because I'm expecting another deluge of WCC Yahoos at the end next month.

I was not to be disappointed. This month I counted 93 chess stories, of which 57 were WCC stories (World Chess Championship stories, of course). What I didn't expect was to find 57 stories about the World Rapid and Blitz championships currently being played in New York City and only six stories about the Singapore event which was the subject of 100% of the November stories.

Even more surprising, of the 57 R&B stories, 44 were about Magnus Carlsen wearing jeans, then not wearing jeans. Even more surprising than that, the six stories about Gukesh and company amounted to only half of the dozen stories about NBA star Victor Wembanyama playing chess in New York City's Washington Square Park.

Where to start? How about with the old, nearly forgotten news.

• 2024-12-27: The Drama and Suffering of the World Chess Championship (thenation.com; J.C. Hallman) • 'A dispatch from the pivotal Game 11 in Singapore that helped make Gukesh Dommaraju an 18-year-old chess champion.' • 'J.C. Hallman is the author of [...] The Chess Artist: Genius, Obsession, and the World’s Oldest Game.'

Now let's have some jeans stories ... from both sides. The problem with 43 of anything is choosing the right one(s).

• 2024-12-28: FIDE statement regarding Magnus Carlsen’s dress code breach (fide.com) • 'FIDE regulations for the World Rapid and Blitz Chess Championships, including the dress code, are designed to ensure professionalism and fairness for all participants. Today, Mr. Magnus Carlsen breached the dress code by wearing jeans, which are explicitly prohibited under long-standing regulations for this event.'
  
  
• 2024-12-30: Magnus Carlsen Makes U-Turn, Confirms World Blitz Participation With Jeans Approval (chess.com; TarjeiJS, bona fide 'FOM', a 'Friend of Magnus') • 'GM Magnus Carlsen has made a sensational U-turn and confirmed that he will participate in the 2024 FIDE World Blitz Championship in New York. The seven-time World Blitz Champion has now received the green light to play with jeans.'

Meanwhile there was a tournament taking place. How was that going?

• 2024-12-27: FIDE World Rapid and Blitz Chess Championships 2024: Carlsen struggles on first day... (espn.com.au) • 'The 2024 FIDE World Rapid and Blitz Championship began with quite an upset as Magnus Carlsen, the World No 1 and defending World Rapid champion, was stunned by 18-year-old GM Denis Lazavik and managed just 2.5 points out of 5.'

Carlsen is known to be a sore loser and he quit the next day. Remember the events leading up to Steamin' Niemann (November 2022)? I'm sure this will all settle down by next month's Yahoos post.

Meanwhile let's move on to the chess playing 'NBA star'. The dozen stories about him started near the top of Google News with a special section and its own headline, 'Spurs center Victor Wembanyama plays chess with fans in NYC'. For manifest reasons, I'm not going to link to a sample story. Let's look instead at a story that doesn't fall into any of the categories already discussed.

• 2024-12-31: Vladimir Kramnik is worse than dirt: Daniel Naroditsky • 'Cheating, in my mind, is probably the worst crime a chess player can commit, says Naroditsky.'

That story appeared twice on the Google list, both from Indian sources. After all the positive press that chess has received over the past five years, it's curious that world class chess players are using their new-found status to struggle with dress codes and to call each other names.

[Yahoos (mainstream news stories about chess) are derived from Google News top-100 (or so) stories from the past month.]

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One detail that I hadn't noticed while preparing previous Yahoo posts is shown below. Mark Crowther's The Week in Chess (TWIC) was granted a prominent seat at the table (see upper right).

e.g. World Rapid & Blitz Championship 2024
(theweekinchess.com)