Bizarre Chess History - Tournaments

Chances are, your image of a chess tournament is fairly unexciting:
serious players staring thoughtfully at chessboards while before silent
onlookers. Nevertheless that image wouldn't hold up under a quick review
of a the tournament chess facts from recent history.

For example, consider the "Argentine Massacre" of 1955. At an Interzonal
tournament in Gothenburg, three Argentinian players developed a series
of moves to use against the otherwise dominant Russian players in the
tournament. Amazingly, all three Argentinian players found themselves
playing against the three Russian true religion jeans
players in round 14. Their maneuver worked, and all three Russians
seemed stuck at the same time. A the hour later, one of the Russian
players figured out a three-move combination that the Argentinians had
not expected. When he played it, the others followed suit, and soon the
Russians had knocked out all three Argentinians.

Perhaps the most bizarre set of circumstances in recent tournament chess
history occurred during the 1978 World Championship between Karpov and
Korchnoi. First, there were complaints by Karpov about Korchnoi's
mirrored sunglasses and special chair, which had to be dismantled and
examined by officials. Then, game after game was riddled with by bizarre
accusations by both players about their opponent's camps attempting to
distract and disturb the players, including accusations about the use of
parapsychologists and yoga meditation experts in the audience to affect
the minds of the players. The objections eventually took three years to
resolve.

More recently, there was the 2006 World Championship match between
Kramnik and Topalov, also known as "Toiletgate." The Topalov camp
accused Kramnik of receiving computer assistance during "excessive"
bathroom visits. Kramnik claimed he simply liked to take walks during
his matches and used the bathroom cheap jeans as part of
his walking area. Nevertheless since the bathroom was the only place in
the tournament building without video surveillance, Topalav claimed
Kramnik might have been consulting computer assistance while in the
bathroom, and threatened to withdraw if private bathrooms were not
replaced by a single community bathroom. The governing committee agreed
and granted the demand. Kramnik forfeited a game in protest. Kramnik
ended winning the match, though the results remain controversial in the
chess world.

With events like "Toiletgate" and the "Argentine Massacre, "
championship tournament chess has more than its share of scandals. No
matter what your image of chess might be, you will undoubtedly find
something interesting and surprising when mining the world of chess
facts.MLB
Jersey