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"We are barely a month into the second presidential term of Donald Trump and he has made his top priorities clear: the destruction of America’s government and influence and the preservation of Russia’s." Garry Kasparov on the Putinisation of America.

Noah Berlatsky and Ilana Gershon argue that undemocratic workplaces sowed the seeds of Trumpism: "Many American workplaces are hierarchical. Decision-making is opaque. Mechanisms of accountability are either nonexistent or weak and deceptive. Yet, at the same time, many workers are enthusiastically told how democratic their workplaces are, much to their frustration. Workplace culture in the US teaches employees that arbitrary rule is normal and that democracy is a deception and a lie."

John Elsom reminds us that, before Volodymr Zelenskyy became president of Ukraine, he played the president of Ukraine in a television comedy: "Vasyl is played by the comic actor, Volodymr Zelenskyy, with a gift for deadpan humour. As president, he cycles to work every morning to avoid the official car, but shyly takes off his cycle clip before entering the government building. He is instructed on how to behave by an apparatchik ... in the pay of the global oligarchs. Vasyl is taught how to take photo-calls, answer press conferences, wear suits and greet ambassadors."

"I have been a doctor for more than 30 years and a neurologist for 25 of those. I have recently grown particularly worried about the large number of young people referred to me with four or five pre-existing diagnoses of chronic conditions, only some of which can be cured." Suzanne O'Sullivan questions the trend of detecting health issues in milder and earlier forms, and the assumption that is always the right thing to do.

Peter Conrad believes Dickens is a greater writer than Shakespeare.

"Hall needs to know more about what Sharpey and the other chaps were up to. In the lecture theatre we see a student played by Edward Fox, before getting in to the original footage of the French scientist played by Roger Delgado who did pioneering experiments on isolation and sensory deprivation." Discontinued Notes watches Basil Dearden's 1963 film The Mind Benders.

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Luke Clements says everyone should be talking about Tash Ashby. "Tash Ashby was 21 years old when she died. At the time of her death, she was street homeless, living in the undergrowth around Hereford bus station. Her lifeless body was found in her tent. Tash Ashby was taken away from her birth parents in 2011. Both her birth parents were at her inquest, along with her sister. Their pain was evident."

Chris Grey looks at the new year's Brexit news: "So this, coming up to five years since the day we formally left the EU, is the level to which the grand promises of Brexit have brought us: arguing over just how bad the damage has been. Not a single leading advocate for Brexit has ever apologized for the promises they made."

Over the past three years, Garry Kasparov has repeatedly argued that any chance at Russia becoming a democratic country not only requires its total military defeat but a shedding of its imperialistic legacy — a stance not widely embraced by other Russian opposition figures. Read an interview with him by The Kyiv Independent.

"For a decade now, liberals have wrongly treated Trump’s rise as a problem of disinformation gone wild, and one that could be fixed with just enough fact-checking." Facebook fact checks were never going to save us, argues Natasha Lennard, they just made liberals feel better.

Simon Taylor reflects on the ideas about public health and landscape design shared during a recent symposium.

"It’s one of the genre of midcentury English novels that feature little boys (usually travelling home from boarding school) who must bridge the gap between the pagan and the Christian in the haunted English landscape." I just wanted to share this comment by Katharine May on Lucy M. Boston's The Children of Green Knowe.

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"When I retired from professional chess in 2005, I channeled all of my energy into preventing Russia from sliding back into the hands of the KGB, the Soviet Union’s secret police and most sinister spy agency. Unfortunately, those efforts were unsuccessful: Vladimir Putin consolidated power and rebuilt an authoritarian state in the image of the Soviet regime under which I was born. Facing imminent arrest, I was forced into exile and have lived in New York since 2013. I never thought I would need to warn Americans about the dangers of dictatorship." Garry Kasparov endorses Kamala Harris.

James Chapman argues that, by backing Donald Trump, senior Conservatives have shown how far their party has fallen.

Anna Merlen says this Presidential election has seen some of America’s richest people promote - and apparently believe - ludicrous hoaxes.

"About a quarter of Europe’s bird population has been wiped out in the last four decades – that is half a billion fewer birds in the sky today compared with 1980. Four in 10 European tree species are classed as threatened, butterfly numbers are down by about a third, one in 10 bee species are dying out, and two-thirds of the habitats of ecological importance are in an unfavourable condition. A fifth of European species face extinction." Fiona Harvey shows how farm subsidies have wrecked Europe's landscapes.

"When November the 5th disappears, it will not be because of any ecumenical or secularist wisdom that consigns all potentially sectarian anniversaries to an atavistic scrapheap - it will, rather, be going the way of Opal Fruits and the Marathon Bar.  A holiday so close to the globally marketable Halloween is less than completely efficient from a multinational corporate perspective and streamlined advertising demands the obliteration of purely local celebratory occasions." Conrad Brunstrom ponders the future of Bonfire Night.

Joseph Earp remembers the last second-hand bookshop in Nottingham: "The Mansfield Road was once renowned for the number of 'antique' and specialist bookshops. By the 2000's only one of these bookshops would remain, Jermy and Westerman."

Garry Kasparov visits Bobby Fischer's grave

Bobby Fischer's victory over Boris Spassky in their 1972 match in Reykjavik put chess on the front pages of the world's newspapers. And, though Spassky was always his own man, the contest was seen as a symbol of the Cold War.

Fischer never defended his title, and his life was to become a long descent into paranoia. He and Spassky played a second match 20 years after their first - Fischer won this too, but neither player was the force he had been,

The match was played in the short-lived Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which was under United Nations sporting sanctions. For this reason, the United States issued a warrant for Fischer arrest. He was never to return there.

Eventually it was Iceland that stepped in to offer Fischer asylum, in both senses of the word. He died there in 2008.

This film shows a later world champion, Garry Kasparov. visiting Fischer's grave. 

Writing this, I realise that these two players represent two strikingly different kinds of chess genius. 

Fischer's play was so clear and logical that he made you feel that you could play that way too, whereas Kasparov's brilliant sacrifices seemed to come out of a clear blue sky. You had to play over his games more than once to work out what had happened.

Kasparov held the world title for 15 years, which is one reason I rank him above Fischer. But I wonder if their two different kinds of genius can be found in other fields - the arts as well as sport?

Want to win public support for green policies? Learn to present them more clearly

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I was still playing chess in the county league in the 1990s. Many of the matches took place in school classrooms in the evenings, and if I was on top in my game, I would copy my hero Garry Kasparov and prowl the room while I waited for my opponent's next move.*

This gave me the chance to read the children's work that had been pinned up on the walls. It was often about the environment, and it usually revealed that the issues of greenhouse gases that cause global warming and chemicals that damage the ozone layer were tangled together in the children's minds.

As their teachers thought this work worthy of being honoured, I assumed that the issues were entangled in their minds too.**

I thought of those days when I read this in a report on the Guardian website this morning:

Tom Burke, the co-founder of the green thinktank E3G, predicted that those within Labour who are antagonistic to green measures will seize this moment. He said: "There will be pressure inside Labour – some people will take fright from this.” Some trade unions have deep reservations about the transition to a low-carbon economy, and some in the party are fearful over Tory attacks on climate policies.

But Burke warned that Starmer should not listen to these concerns. He said: "They should be very careful in generalising from this to climate policy more generally. What Starmer should do is not attack his own side, but communicate far more effectively what the consequences will be of climate policy failure. That’s what’s missing from this debate."

Because ULEZ isn't about climate change: it's about reducing air pollution London and so reducing its serious effect on health - children's respiratory health in particular.

If Labour*** had presented ULEZ to voters as a health measure it might well have won more support, because threats to your children's health are urgent. But most voters probably assumed the measure was something to do with climate change, which seems a more distant threat.****

So campaigners need to do what those children and their teachers didn't do: untangle these issues so they are better understood by the public.

* In his Chess for Tigers, Simon Webb advises you to keep an eye on an opponent who is having a long think while you prowl. If they start shifting in their seat as if they are about to move, you should, he says, go back to the board and make a show of thinking hard about the position. This will make them think even longer about their move and increase the chances they will lose the game on time. I tried this several times and it works.

** In case you see this as political indoctrination, the idea that children should be interested in nature and care about it was central to 20th-century children's literature. And no one would call Enid Blyton woke.

*** Yes, I know it's a policy of the Conservative government.

**** The psychologist David Smail used to talk about 'proximal' and 'distal' threats. I think this is useful jargon.

Former world chess champion who called for an end to Putin's war is in hospital in Moscow

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Mystery surrounds the condition of the former world chess champion Anatoly Karpov, who is widely reported to have suffered multiple head injuries and to have been placed in an induced coma.

He is variously reported to have fallen over or been attacked - ChessBase has a page with the various reports. There is even one quoting his wife as saying the whole story is nonsense. 

It may be no coincidence that Karpov has called for an end to the war in Ukraine:

He told a TV channel in Kazakhstan: 'I wish [the war] would end sooner, so that peaceful people would stop dying.'

He added: 'In the end ordinary people are the victims. Ordinary people fight, politicians and generals decide, and ordinary people fight, civilians die.

'I am not even talking about soldiers and officers. No, I could not imagine at all that Russians and Ukrainians would go to war. I have many friends in Ukraine.'

Karpov became world chess champion in 1975 when Bobby Fischer declined to defend his title and remained champion until Garry Kasparov defeated him in a match in 1985. 

As a young man Karpov was seen by the regime as the ideal Soviet citizen: the son of a worker from a city in the Urals and not Jewish. 

Before the Soviet Union dissolved, he served as a member of the Supreme Soviet Commission for Foreign Affairs and the president of the Soviet Peace Fund,

He later reappeared as a supporter of Vladimir Putin and has been a member of the Duma since 2011. He backed the annexation of Crimea.

Chess and anal beads in the media? Blame Magnus Carlsen

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Things have moved on and things have got worse since I blogged about the accusation of cheating against Hans Niemann by the Norwegian world chess champion Magnus Carlsen.

You may recall that the 19-year-old American Niemann defeated Carlsen in the opening rounds of a tournament, whereupon Carlsen withdrew from the event and posted a tweet that was widely taken as insinuating that his opponent had cheated.

Since then Carlsen has said nothing, despite the former champion Garry Kasparov's headmasterly advice that:

"The world title has its responsibilities, and a public statement is the least of them here."

So Niemann has been left trying to clear his name when it's not clear even what the charge against him is.

In the resultant vacuum speculation has flourished. The wackiest theory, boosted by a tweet from Elon Musk, is that Niemann was receiving outside help from someone with a computer and that the moves to play were passed on to him by vibrating anal beads.

Quite how the moves would be signalled has not been explained and it all sounds very uncomfortable. Imagine if you got into a time scramble!

I was going to say this is not the image of chess that anyone wants to see in the media, but Rolling Stone has published an article headed "Vibrating Butt Toys Are Exactly What Chess Needs."

Nor did Niemann do anything to calm journalists when he offered to play chess naked to prove he is not cheating.

But in the continuing absence of any clear charges, let alone proof, I shall go on regarding Carlsen as a sore loser - "sulky up the fijord" as my Stanley Unwin speech on Europe speech once put it. 

And I shan't regard Niemann as a sore winner either.

The world of chess has been rocked to its foundations

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Absolute scenes in world chess. First, the Georgian former women's world champion Nona Gaprindashvili has won a settlement in her suit against the producers of the television drama The Queen's Gambit. There she was described, quite wrongly, as "a female world champion, who has never faced men".

Meanwhile in men's chess, the world champion Magnus Carlsen has withdrawn from a top tournament after losing to the young American Hans Niemann, Announcing his move on Twitter, he added a video from Jose Mourinho in which The Special One said "If I speak I am in big trouble," when referring to a referee during a post-match press conference.

This was widely taken to be an accusation of cheating against Niemann, but no evidence for this has come forward. Niemann has admitted to a couple of youthful offences in the Wild West that is online chess, but it's hard to see how anyone could cheat in a major over-the-board tournament, given the precautions that are now taken.

The former world champion Gary Kasparov, sounding magisterial, got it right:

Carlsen's withdrawal was a blow to chess fans, his colleagues at the tournament, the organizers, and, as the rumors and negative publicity swirl in a vacuum, to the game. The world title has its responsibilities, and a public statement is the least of them here.

— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) September 8, 2022

Carlsen has said no more and unless he does this blog will support Hans Niemann.

Magnus Carlsen, incidentally, is not a happy bunny these days. He recently announced that he will not be defending his world title.

Finally, to return to the subject of the day, here is an article on chess and the royal family.

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Garry Kasparov says we must prepare for the worst from Donald Trump: "We cannot know exactly what Trump will do in these final days, only that whatever it is, he will be thinking only of himself. If he declares victory on election night, regardless of the uncounted ballots, what then? What if he calls the entire election a fraud, a hoax, and demands that the counting stop? Or if armed Trump supporters heed his call to intimidate voters at the polls? What if he takes to Twitter with "LIBERATE AMERICA!" and his MAGA zealots respond?"

"In Nebraska I walked the main street of a former town district where the street and the curbs and the lines for angle parking were still there, but the rest of the place was just foundations and neatly tended grass. In western Kansas I drove through a boarded-up town with a sign along the highway asking passersby to pray for the town." Ian Frazier calls on the Democrats to reconnect with rural America.

Political decision-making is failing our urban green spaces, argue Nicola Dempsey and Julian Dobson.

Corinne Silva and Val Williams are studying the collaboration between the local history pioneer W.G. Hoskins and the photographer F.L. Attenborough (father of Richard and David): "Attenborough ... depicted the remoteness of the Leicestershire Hills and the edge of Rutland, the expanses of heathland, fragmented buildings, and the ridges and furrows of medieval farming."

A sensitive young rebel before James Dean and a 'Method' man before Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift has a complicated legacy. But why isn't he remembered like those burning out young and beautiful? Brogan Morris investigates.

Manfred Mann remembers the kindness of Burt Bacharach.

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April Preston thinks you should join the Radical Association.

Brexit, not Trump, is the real threat to the 'Special Relationship' says former US State Department adviser Max Bergmann.

"Of all the talented directors that Green Alliance has had, Tim Beaumont - or, to give him his full title, the Reverend Lord Beaumont of Whitley - was surely the most extraordinary." Green Alliance blog remembers the late Liberal and then Green peer.

Tony Robertson looks back on Nottinghamshire and the miners' strike of the 1980s.

Richie Unterberger tells the story of the record producer Joe Boyd and his company Witchseason: "Like some other Americans who made an impact on the British rock scene - such as producer Shel Talmy, famous for his work with the early Who, Kinks, and Pentangle - Boyd wasn’t inhibited by expectations of how things should or shouldn’t work overseas."

"'Draw death' seems to loom over the game, much as it did in the 1920s, when José Raúl Capablanca, the great Cuban player, proposed making the game more technically challenging and draws less likely by expanding the board and including two new pieces ... Gone are the days of Kasparov’s dynamic attacks, the story goes. Instead, thanks to computers, we have entered a period of solid, overprepared chess, doomed to draw after draw." Ben Jackson reviews two books on chess.

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Stephen Bush says it was not Theresa May who killed Brexit but her adviser Nick Timothy:

Stephen Fry’s Brexit video repeats Remain’s 2016 mistakes, says Bobby Duffy.

"After painstakingly scrutinising the evidence, and crunching the numbers, Christophers arrives at this extraordinary estimate: since 1979, no less than 10% of the land area of Britain has been sold by the state - in all its various guises and incarnations - to the private sector." Will Self reviews The New Enclosure by Brett Christophers

"The system of institutions that functioned for two and a half centuries has rusted through, and we have to figure out how it’s all going to work in the twenty-first century." Mahsa Gessen interviews Garry Kasparov, the political activist and former world chess champion.

Sabrina Rau explains that those pop-up ‘I agree’ boxes aren’t just annoying: they’re potentially dangerous.

"Move It was going to be the B-side. This is where the luck comes in. Norrie found us a song called Schoolboy Crush and that was presented in adverts as the A-side for about a week. They played it to Jack Good who was just about to embark on [TV show] Oh Boy!, and he played both sides – the luck! He played both sides! Then he said, 'If your boy is going to be on my show it’s not going to be with Schoolboy Crush, it has to be with Move It.'" Cliff Richard talks to Record Collector.

Carlsen and Caruana have played an underwhelming match

Tomorrow the world chess championship will be decided in London by a succession of games played at increasingly fast time limits.

It's an unsatisfactory to decide the game's ultimate honour - rather like deciding a drawn Ashes series with a Twenty20 game.

And there have been several problems with the match between the reigning champion, Norway's Magnus Carlsen, and his challenger, Fabiano Caruana from the United States.

Carlsen has seemed out of sorts, particularly after failing to convert a favourable position in the first game. In the final game he offered the draw that took the game into a fast play off rather than press for victory in another good position.

All 12 games in the match were drawn, which was disappointing for the chess enthusiasts watching around the world. Games between top players often do end in draws, but this was an unprecedented streak of them.

A 12-game match seems too short to me, making players afraid of losing. Fischer and Spassky was a 24-game match and that length makes it possible for a player to take a risk, lose and still come back to win the match.

And there were complaints about the expense of tickets and the facilities offered to spectators who went to watch live.

Carlsen is the favourite to win tomorrow as he is a significantly stronger at fast speeds than is Caruana. But note the words of a former champion.

In light of this shocking draw offer from Magnus in a superior position with more time, I reconsider my evaluation of him being the favorite in rapids. Tiebreaks require tremendous nerves and he seems to be losing his.

— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) November 26, 2018

Whoever wins tomorrow, I suspect the match will have dented Carlsen's aura of effortless invincibility.

And the number of draws has been in part a reflection of how hard it now is to surprise your opponent in the opening when everyone has access to powerful computers.

A good new move used to be played and debated round the world for months or years. These days everyone (apart from the player facing it) knows the best reply as soon has it is played.

The Great Chess Movie (1982)

When this documentary was made in chess was dominated by the Soviet Union and world championship matches were hate-filled affairs between the model Soviet citizen Anatoly Karpov and the dissident Victor Korchnoi.

No one foresaw the collapse of the Communist system, though the games of a teenager called Garry Kasparov were already attracting attention around the world and computers were beginning to pose a threat to all but the strongest players.

The film provides a great picture of chess in that era and its leading personalities.

And there is a sad moment for English chess fans right at the start. The name card right at the 1981 Lone Pine tournament saying "Wells, England" is for Ian Wells.

Regarded as our best prospect after Nigel Short, he was to drown the following year aged only 17.

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The Liberal Democrats should nurture their young candidates, says Sophie Thornton.

Joe Bourke welcomes the launch of the all-party parliamentary group on land value capture.

"The Today Programme is undeniably an institution - 60 years after Radio 4 broadcast the first edition, over one in ten people in the UK still tune in every morning. Unfortunately, I am no longer one of them." Neither am I, and for just the reasons that Ed Jefferson gives.

"I write, because in doing so, I learn how to articulate my thoughts; indeed, I learn what my thoughts are. I learn to comprehend the world, and to shape my view. I write because writing changes me." jfefleming explains why he blogs.

Garry Kasparpov on Bobby Fischer: "There is no moral at the end of the tragic fable, nothing contagious in need of quarantine. Bobby Fischer was one of a kind, his failings as banal as his chess was brilliant."

Backwatersman reconsiders the cricket writing of Neville Cardus.

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I would make more of Six of the Best reaching this landmark if something had not gone very wrong with the numbering a few hundred posts ago.

Garry Kasparov, who knows a thing or two about opposing authoritarian leaders, says the key to opposing Trump is "making him look like a loser".

"The recent political earthquakes have found us intellectually and emotionally underprepared, even helpless. None of our usual categories ... and perspectives ... seem able to explain how a compulsive liar and serial groper became the world’s most powerful man." Pankaj Mishra recommends reading Václav Havel as a way of understanding our current difficulties and the way out of them,

Greg Satell and Srdja Popovic explain how some protests turn into successful social movements.

"Watching Brass Eye back today, you are reminded of what a talent Morris is – and how much we could do with him back on our screens today." Dave Fawbert marks the programme's 20th birthday.

Bobby Seal explores the East End townscapes of Arthur Morrison's 1896 novel A Child of the Jago.

"This is a landscape of religious significance, we can see why the Augustinian priory was established here, building on a tradition of religion which is  associated with past significance of St David himself." William Tregaskes takes us to Vale of Ewyas and Llanthony Priory.

Chess: A State of Mind (1986)

This BBC documentary was made just after Garry Kasparov won the world title, which he was to hold until the year 2000.

Many of the people interviewed here - Bobby Fischer, Viktor Korchnoi, Bent Larsen and the first British grandmaster Tony Miles - have since died.

Michael Stean had already retired from chess by the time it was made and Boris Spassky is now an old, old man.

Chess: A State of Mind also offers unexpected treats in the shape of a glimpse of an 11-year-old Nigel Short and of Ray Keene jogging.

One quibble... Bobby Fischer certainly was an oddball, but he did not take part in the 1965 Capablanca Memorial Tournament by telex out of eccentricity. He did so because the US government would not allow him to travel.

And I am not sure Korchnoi is right when he says you have to hate your opponent to play well.

Because the best chess he played during the time when he was Karpov's closest rival was in a match against Spassky, whom he liked and respected. He seemed to relax and the moves just flowed from him.

Finally, a word in defence of Anatoly Karpov. Yes, Korchnoi and Spassky mock him here, but for the decade before this film was made he had clearly been the world's best player.

Then a serious rival arose in the shape of Garry Kasparov, who would be many people's choice as the strongest chess player ever. Yes, he took Karpov's title, but over the course of five matches Karpov all but matched him.

You sense the current world champion, Magnus Carlsen, also needs a great rival to make him lift his game. At present he gives the impression that he always does just enough to win but no more.

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"Just look at them. Professional bloggers, Lords, media historians, 'social tech entrepreneurs'. People who have their own columns in the Guardian. These aren’t ordinary voters. They’re people who have never even *met* an ordinary voter, except the one behind the counter serving them their overpriced lattes." I think it's fair to conclude that Andrew Hickey is not impressed by MoreUnited.

Garry Kasparov finds that Donald Trump reminds him of Vladimir Putin - "and that is terrifying".

A shocking miscarriage of justice reveals the fallacy that we can always spot a liar, says Matthew Scott.

"As Hilaire Belloc wrote, 'When you have lost your Inns, drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England.'" Gavin Stamp mourns the loss of Britain's pubs.

Cinephilia & Beyond celebrates Wim Wenders' wonderful  film 'Paris, Texas'.

"Behind the cladding is an art deco cinema frontage that has not seen the light of day since the late 1960s. The former Dominion remains one of London’s hidden gems — one that is crying out to be restored," Londonist takes us to Harrow and an unexpected gem.

Sergey Karjakin: Putin's challenger for the world chess title

Like all sports, chess has a way of mirroring the conflicts in wider society.

The Fischer vs Spassky match of 1972 was a wonderful metaphor for the Cold War, even if the gentlemanly, quietly dissident Boris Spassky was never a cypher for the Soviet Union.

In the 1980s the volatile Garry Kasparov was a perfect symbol of glasnost and perestroika against the model Soviet citizen Anatoly Karpov.

"We already have a world champion: we don't need another one," the young Kasparov was once told by the authorities.

Now Segey Karjakin's qualification to challenge Magnus Carlsen for the world title brings another conflict into the limelight.

Because Karjakin was born in Crimea's capital, Simferopol, in 1990 and represented Ukraine until he was poached to play for Russia. In July 2009, President Dmitry Medvedev made Karjakin a Russian citizen by decree.

Which makes him a sort of chess-playing Zola Budd.

Since then, as Radio Free Europe shows, he has become a born again Russian:

From his adopted home, Karjakin has been a staunch supporter of the Kremlin and Russian policy in Ukraine which has seen Moscow forcibly annex the Crimean Peninsula following the ouster of former Russia-backed president Viktor Yanukovych and then support a separatist conflict in the east that has claimed more than 9,100 lives. 

Following the Russian operation in Crimea in 2014, Karjakin posted a photograph of himself on Instagram wearing a T-shirt bearing an image Russian President Vladimir Putin and the caption: "We don't leave our guys behind."

The only time I seem to lose my cool on Twitter is when people who ought to know better show sympathy for the Putin regime. He is all but a Fascist dictator and on the borders on Europe.

He was allowed to annexe territory in Georgia and then Ukraine with barely a word of condemnation from the British left.

Yes, the situation in the Crimea is complicated. Historically, it was part of Russia but was transferred to Ukraine as part of his programme of blurring ethnic boundaries to discourage nationalist risings against the Soviet Union.

So you can make a case that the Crimea should be Russian. But the idea that shared race and culture justify military action that breaks international law is an odd one for the left to embrace.

Meanwhile, I suspect Karjakin has a good chance against Carlsen. At the very least we shall find out how good Carlsen really is,

His challenger in the last two world championship matches, Vishy Anand, never gave the impression that he believed he could win.

Kasparov loses to man who believes chess was invented by aliens

Bad news for world chess: Garry Kasparov has failed in his attempt to become president of FIDE - the World Chess Federation (or Fédération Internationale des Échecs).

He was defeated by the incumbent Kirsan Ilyumzhinov.

Let the New York Times introduce you to Mr Ilyumzhinov:

Mr. Ilyumzhinov, 52, a native of Kalmykia, a poor Russian republic on the Caspian Sea, has led the chess federation since 1995, but not without controversy. He cultivated friendships with Saddam Hussein, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, and claims that he was abducted by space aliens one night in 1997. He also claims the game was invented by extraterrestrials.

But why did national representatives from around the globe vote for such an obvious fruitcake?

In part because Kasparov is a liberal critic of the Putin regime, so the Russian government lobbied against him.

But largely because, in the words of a sensible British player and journalist:

I just did BBC World Service interview "FIDE makes FIFA look like pure transparent organisation" #4moreyearsinwilderness
— Malcolm Pein (@TelegraphChess) August 11, 2014

Garry Kasparov on how to deal with the Putin regime

The former world chess champion and brave liberal wrote as follows for the Wall Street Journal in March after Vladimir Putin had seized the Crimea from Ukraine:

If the West punishes Russia with sanctions and a trade war, that might be effective eventually, but it would also be cruel to the 140 million Russians who live under Mr. Putin's rule. And it would be unnecessary. 

Instead, sanction the 140 oligarchs who would dump Mr. Putin in the trash tomorrow if he cannot protect their assets abroad. Target their visas, their mansions and IPOs in London, their yachts and Swiss bank accounts. Use banks, not tanks. 

Thursday, the U.S. announced such sanctions, but they must be matched by the European Union to be truly effective. Otherwise, Wall Street's loss is London's gain, and Mr. Putin's divide-and-conquer tactics work again.