Friday, January 28, 2005

Appalling!

http://www.chesscenter.com/kingpin/Kingpin/confess1.htm

An international master thinks nothing about admitting
  • Then, realizing that it was not the one I wished to make, I retracted the move (after first looking round to see that there were no observers) and played another.
  • Clearly I had a good attack, but how was I to finish black off? So I went to Paul Durrant (my manager at the time) and asked him to go back to the hotel room and look up the article. Some time later Durrant returned, trailing the slip of paper guiltily in his hand, and tried to give it to me. ‘Go and look it up and find out what happens after 9 Nb5,’ I hissed. ‘That’s all it says,’ he said, ‘just 9 Nb5 with a good attack. The analysis stops there.’ Crestfallen, I returned to the board.
  • One of my games was with George Dixon and after about 36 or so moves we were in an ending and the game had to be adjourned. I sealed a move and arranged to resume the game a week later. As the sealer of the move, I kept the scoresheet and on my way home realized that my sealed move, Kf7, was not the best and would quickly lose; Kf6, on the other hand, gave me slight drawing chances. Perhaps if I could steam open the envelope, extract the scoresheet and make the slight alteration, I would have a chance to stay in the game. This I duly did...

It's bad enough that he would even consider doing any of these things. Even worse that he did them, ... but confessing them publicly without the slightest hint of remorse? He doesn't seem even a little sorry; he seems to think it's all very amusing. I'm sure his opponents don't think it funny. Should punishment not be forthcoming?


1 comment:

ALD said...

I've run into the occasional Kingpin article in the past, so I thought this might be tongue in cheek. If the facts in this article are not actually factual, then I give my sincere apologies to IM Michael Basman for (a) missing the joke of a very well-written humor piece and (b) besmirching his good name. However, nothing (other than the tone) indicates that the events did not occur exactly as he describes, in which case his jovial tone only makes things look worse in my eyes. I guess I don't have much sense of humor about cheating.