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What move was that?

The "toiletgate" saga has ensured that the eccentricities of chess players are in the news again

PHOTO: AFP

NOT ALL BLACK AND WHITE Chess players are a strange breed and often their behaviour makes for entertaining reading

Chess players around the world are an idiosyncratic lot. The ongoing tournament to determine the undisputed champion of the world between Vladmir Kramnik and Veselin Topalov is not even half-way through but Topalov is alleging that his opponent has been visiting the toilet too often and suggesting that Kramnik may have a laptop computer stashed away in the can from which he's been getting external help. The Guardian has dubbed this match "toiletgate".

Apparently Kramnik has visited the toilet almost 50 times in six hours of the matches and that has peeved Topalov quite a bit. The matter has been resolved with the match committee closing the individual toilet for the players and opening a third loo for the use of the chess players only.

Whether Kramnik just had a bad case of dysentery or he gets his inspiration while sitting on the john or he's cheating, no one knows. But creative writers and brilliant men have often been inspired while in the bathroom. Remember Archimedes who also had his flash of brilliance in the bathroom (but then he was taking a bath not clearing his bowels).

A strange breed

Kramnik is not alone in his eccentricity. Chess players are a strange breed and their behaviour makes for interesting reading. Former World Champion Mikhail Tal is reported to have tried to enter a country without a valid visa and argued with the immigration officer saying: "I'm Mikhail Tal, World Chess champion. I have a dog named Chess and a cat named Chess, I don't need a visa." Whether the immigration officer was impressed is not known from this apocryphal story.

Another reputed chess player is reported to have been so upset at losing his match that he picked up his opponent and threw him out of the window (probably the ground floor), shouting: "How can I lose to an idiot like this."

TIME magazine in its cover story on Bobby Fischer told of an incident where a player purposely blew cigarette smoke into his opponent's face just to rattle him. And remember the epic title bouts between Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer that captivated the entire world when it was staged at Iceland in 1972. Bobby Fischer is quoted as saying that he was a loner as a young kid and found solace playing chess with himself. He would move both the black and the white pieces and say: "I always played straight and to be fair I always won."

It has been said that in Bangalore's Central College, in 1972-73, there was a craze for chess and two students, Jawad Basith and Sriram Srikantiah, flummoxed everybody in their class playing chess without a chessboard and without any pieces. Basith would open with a "pawn to queen four" line and Srikantiah would respond with a "knight to king's bishop three" and so the moves would go on. Most of us watching these two were convinced they were fooling us but years later a top State chess player said it was no great achievement as chess players could remember the moves and imagine the pieces clearly in their minds.

Once while reporting on a chess tournament I found a player upset by a report in a local daily. The reporter had mentioned that the player lost the match because of a blunder on the 33rd move. The player argued that his opponent played brilliantly but he did not "blunder". He wanted a correction in the paper, but that did not happen.

D. RAVI SHANKAR

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