Perhaps you have noticed that the FIDE Candidates Tournament is in full swing, having ten rounds been already played. The field is packed like squared wheat over fields on a long summer’s day -you could also say they are closely bunched. Whoever emerges victorious can look forwards to a healthy pay check, dazzling limelight, many questions, months of preparation but not much else.
Let’s be honest, no matter who wins through, they will lose when they face Magnus -agreed? So how are we meant to take an interest in proceedings exactly? You could argue that both Nepo and Fabi have scores to settle and that both Liren and Firouzja have both beaten Magnus in recent months…but all that aside, as if anyone has any real chance of becoming the world champion any time soon…and so clinching the right to challenge may well be seen in retrospect as a pyrrhic victory in itself one with the media presenting to us a crestfallen opponent.
On a personal note, I find GM Rapport to be both charismatic and enigmatic, so it is him whom I hope the challenger is but condemned to view the final in the context of the result, it matters not one iota. And it must not matter one iota because I do live for my chess fanatically, and in the last match whirring round in my brain each day ‘I hate myself and want to die’ all day because the match was predictably one-sided. I don’t want to be killed off by chess, and so ‘it matters not one iota’…it must not matter.
Mark. J. McCready
00.43, Wednesday June 29th
Laksi, Bangkok
McCreadyandChess 
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