The Chess

 Unless you knew where to look or habitually look in such places, you'd be forgiven for not knowing that the World Championship of Chess is being played for right now. It's not like the football that even the least footbally person can't avoid and it's not like Fischer-Spassky in Reykjavik in 1972 when once, and only once, chess was front page news intense with Cold War rivalry, paranoia on a personal level beyond the global and political and drama like that caused when a genius thinks better of turning up and, rather than perform at what he also did well, George Best was said to be taking refuge in the London flat of the Irish actress, Sinead Cusack.

There is something one can't help liking about genius, whatever else comes with it. George Best was completely gorgeous, so I thought, and I didn't want to deny it when it turned out he was less than that. Bobby Fischer wasn't quite as easy to like but he had the arrogance to not turn up and go 2-0 down, I think, before putting himself on a similar level to the likes of Bach or Mozart and making the Soviet flag-bearer, Spassky, look pedestrian.

We have not been treated to any such melodrama this time with Magnus Carlsen not even needing to go to extra time to beat Nepo, whose name is Ian, yes, just Ian, but then Nepomniachti, from Russia.

Carlsen is 2-0 up after 8 of the 14 scheduled games and so it's not going to be necessary to go to the short course quick deciders at which he is so adept and would have won anyway after 14 draws.

It's hardly for me to say, with my preciously preserved, best rating at Lichess at 1972 and Carlsen having achieved ratings well above 3000 there but there wasn't much of a struggle. Carlsen will bore the living socks off you in an endgame if he thinks there's a fraction of a chance but having given Nepo the doubled pawns the next time, that looked like the sort of thing I'd do, at a level many fathoms below, and then pursue the win, which is what happened.

I like it and am impressed when champions retain their titles and continue to do so. I don't have many more reasons to like Magnus than that but I don't have any reasons to dislike him either. It's not his fault that he's good enough to repel all boarders but if that's the best the challenger can do, he's going to be in place for some time yet.