Wednesday, September 9, 2009

En Passant ... Out.

-Perhaps I should castle. Castle? New Castle? Beer? Mmmmm...-


RWPilk
Yeah, it's a chess move pun. Deal with it.

Since we're about to dive deep into full-on football mode in the next few months (with a garnish of Red Sox fist-shaking), I figured it might be fun to write about another sport, as we do here and there at SSFA!. Dunno if we can really consider this a sport or not, but it was covered by ESPN a few days ago.

Chess usually doesn't come to mind when you think about opportunities to play your rockstar card, but tell that to French Chess Grandmaster Vladislav Tkachiev. Ol' Vlad-face showed up to a big match in India so drunk he fell asleep after only 11 moves (11 moves and he hadn't won? What kind of grandmaster is this?) So sloshed was the Frenchman that the officials couldn't wake him and defaulted the win to India's player Praveen Kumar.

My favorite detail of the story is that the actual technicality that Tkachiev was nailed with was not completing his move in the allotted hour and a half. Jesus. Does that mean they had to try and wake him for 90 minutes before they could officially call it? Did Kumar and the audience have to just sit there all that time while this guy drooled all over his rooks?

I certainly hope so. It amuses me. Is it Thursday yet?

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