Chess - The Scotsman, 28/02/13

FROM Italy to Eastleigh, voters are left wondering whether to laugh or cry at the state of all political parties.

And now the increasingly wacky president of the world chess federation, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, wants to get in on the act of “show business for ugly people” by creating an international political party to promote the game.

The “Chess Party” would run candidates for office around the world and attract supporters across ideological lines, he recently told the Russian paper Izvestia. “One of the first steps of the new movement will be to organise a chess tournament between North and South Korea,” he said. “Then a similar tournament of children from Palestine and Israel.”

Ilyumzhinov, the former president of the Russian state of Kalmykia, is sure to win votes with his bizarre claims, such as when he described how he was abducted by aliens in 1997 and taken to their spaceship and “flew to some kind of star.” And he’s no stranger to propping up faltering despots either: He supported Saddam Hussein, was the last person photographed in public alongside Colonel Gaddafi in Libya, and turned up in Syria last year to support president Bashar al-Assad, as both signed a schools chess initiative while kids were being killed in the streets in the bloody civil war there.

My own contribution to the campaign, will be to give the Chess party its election slogan of “Yes we Caro-Kann.”

W So - M Dziuba

Reykjavik Open, (9)

Caro-Kann Defence, Advance variation

1 e4 c6 2 d4 d5 3 e5 Bf5 4 Nf3 e6 5 Be2 Ne7 6 0–0 c5 7 c4 Nbc6 8 Na3 dxc4 9 Nxc4 Nd5 10 Bg5 Qd7 11 Rc1 h6 12 Be3 b5 13 Na3 a6 14 dxc5 Be4 15 Nc2 Nxe3 16 Nxe3 Be7 17 a4 Qb7 18 Nd2 Rd8 19 axb5 axb5 20 Nxe4 Rxd1 21 Rfxd1 Nxe5 22 c6 Qc7 23 Bxb5 0–0 24 Nc4 Bd8 25 Nc5 Nxc4 26 Rxc4 Qe5 27 Rc2 Bc7 28 g3 Rb8 29 Ba4 Ra8 30 b4 Qf5 31 Rdc1 h5 32 Bb5 Bb6 33 Bf1 h4 34 Nd7 Bd4 35 c7 Rc8 36 Rd2 hxg3 37 hxg3 Qg5 38 Rxd4! Qxc1 39 Nf6+ Kf8 40 Rd8+ Ke7 41 Ng8 checkmate 1–0