Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Makes Chess Seem Sexy...

British GM Danny Gormally's fight at a nightclub with Super-GM Lev Aronian (FIDE) over the beautiful WIM Arianne Caoili at the recent Turin Olympiad has done more to put chess in the headlines than any story in recent years (including the Olympiad itself, of course). Some may see this as a sad state of affairs, but all I can say is "any publicity is good publicity." At least people are talking about chess. As Stephen Moss of the Guardian Unlimited puts it in his amusing essay "Sex by Other Means," the incident "is probably the best thing to have to have happened to this much-mocked pastime in a generation." And would it really be such a bad thing to have chess associated with beautiful women like Arianne? For the gossip minded, the story is also covered by the Telegraph, London Times, Sun Star, and Manila Standard. If we are lucky, it will make Entertainment Tonight....

2 comments:

The Closet Grandmaster said...

Check out http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/chess-beauty-triggers-gormallygate/2006/06/07/1149359787726.html

With a photo by yours truly

Michael Goeller said...

Thanks for the link -- here is a better version:
"Chess Queen Triggers Gormallygate"

I think you've also done a good job representing the story on your blog:
The Closet Grandmaster

And thanks for your great pics over the past year or so of Ms. Caoili -- whose name I had heard because of you quite a while back....