Matt posted an interesting comment on my post “The best of frienemies,” where he says that he has never actually hated an opponent. I totally agree. Maybe I’ve lived a charmed life, but I don’t think I have ever actually hated anyone, over a chessboard or otherwise. I don’t think that such feelings would be very productive, anyway — I think they would make the game a lot more stressful.
There’s a recent post on Chessbase that touches on this issue. Teimour Radjabov, one of the youngest grandmasters in history (he is still only 20), gave an interview to a Russian sports newspaper in which he discussed a match between the Azerbaijani team and the Armenians. Here is a quote from Radjabov: “Regardless of where we meet, the enemy is the enemy. We all have feelings of hate toward them. But you must suppress those feelings and not let them interfere. Chess must be played with a sober head.”
Radjabov’s remarks touched off a controversy, of course. Farther down the page you can read a clarification that he sent to ChessBase, which is something less than a 100 percent retraction. Radjabov concludes, “we all sincerely believe that common sense will prevail at the end and the conflict between our countries will be resolved peacefully and within international law.”
Let’s hope that Radjabov is right. For the time being, I think it’s a good sign that the Azerbaijan-Armenia chess match was actually played. The Azerbaijani and Armenian soccer teams recently were given a double forfeit in a world soccer tournament because they could not agree on a place to play. There’s no way to become “frienemies” if you can’t even agree to face each other.
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