This is a Facebook post I wrote today, and I decided to post it here too. (It’s very short!)
One of my Facebook friends, Mike Zaloznyy, started a thread asking why there was so much rejoicing over Fabiano Caruana’s qualifying to play a match for the chess world championship with Magnus Carlsen. In particular, Mike wondered, did it have to do with the fact that there aren’t any Russians playing?
I don’t think so, but I think I have figured out the reason for the jubilation. It is our pent-up longing for an American challenger that we can be proud of. Fate dealt us a really cruel blow when the one great American chess genius, Bobby Fischer, turned out to be a paranoid bigot who dragged the whole game into disrepute. We were prepared to embrace Fischer, but he turned out to be someone you wanted to get as far away from as possible.
With Caruana, we have an American world championship contender who is (as far as I know) a sportsman, a gentleman, and completely sane. That’s all we’ve wanted for the last 46 years. Now, there’s one other thing that the news media will surely want: They will want Fabi to win. Otherwise, the non-chess-playing world will forget him and move on. But that’s something to worry about another day. For today, we can rejoice in his great accomplishment!
