In 10 days, 16 of the top chess players in the world will assemble at the luxury resort of Cap St Georges Hotel and Resort in Cyprus for one of the most cut-throat tournaments on the chess calendar, the Candidates. Only, one of the top contenders in the women’s Candidates tournament, Koneru Humpy, may not be there despite qualifying.
Why? Because Cyprus, the island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, is within missile’s length of Lebanon, which houses Hezbollah, which is a proxy for the Iranian regime that is currently at war with Israel and the USA. While so far the idyllic island has largely escaped the excesses of war, there was a drone strike at an airforce base that the British have in Cyprus at the start of the month.
Humpy’s contention is simple: if things in the war do not improve, she is likely to skip the tournament rather than risk her life to play in the event.
The global governing body of chess, FIDE, on its part has said that it’s monitoring the situation on a daily basis and the tournament will go on.
Humpy’s stance and FIDE’s refusal to move the tournament’s venue will mean that the organisers might end up extending an invite to the tournament to Anna Muzychuk at the last minute. This is not the first time that FIDE has had to extend an invite to a player for the Candidates at the last minute. At the 2020 Candidates too, FIDE had to scramble for a last-minute replacement after Teimour Radjabov pulled out with FIDE refusing to postpone the tournament from Yekaterinburg in March of 2020 even though the rest of the world was shutting down for the pandemic. Frenchman Maxime Vachier-Lagrave was called in, and the tournament began, only to be stopped after seven rounds when Russia stopped all air traffic from the rest of the world to stem the flow of the COVID-19 virus.
The remaining seven rounds were eventually played one whole year later with Radjabov grumbling that he should be given a spot into the event because the reason for his withdrawal had been proved correct with the tournament’s postponement.
Of course, this is not to suggest that a global pandemic and the current war in the Middle East are comparable. But as opposed to the 2020 edition, the current Candidates could have been easier to relocate.
If Humpy eventually pulls out, the situation will end up leaving everyone unhappy. Humpy, who will turn 39 on the day the third round of the Candidates will be played, is understandably displeased. The rest of the seven players too will not be happy at the situation considering how much planning goes into drawing up war plans for every opponent at the event only to find out that a new wildcard challenger has been introduced in the mix.
Since only finishing first matters at a Candidates, players hunker down with their teams, preparing in gruelling training camps for months at a stretch. Each of the eight players in the women’s event would have drawn up detailed war plans for each of the seven opponents they will face twice at the event. Everything, right down from the openings they play against an opponent, and which game to push to a draw and which opponent to fight for a full point would have been on the players’ strategy boards. In the middle of all this, players might find a new wildcard contestant to face.
Ian Nepomniachtchi, who ended up winning the 2020 Candidates after playing the second half of the event a year later had told FIDE about the issues with having a last-ditch replacement.
“Usually, any last-minute replacement is always like a dark horse that can win the whole thing,” said Nepomniachtchi before pointing out how Maxime Vachier-Lagrave was joint leader in the standings with himself when the tournament was stopped.
“No one prepared for Maxime (Vachier-Lagrave). Everyone was getting ready for Teimour Radjabov, so they analyzed, let’s say, the Berlin Defence or the Queen’s Gambit. At the end of the day, Vachier-Lagrave is a completely different player with a completely different style and openings, he came as a replacement, so no one was ready to pose problems for him, and I guess this helped him a lot in the first phase,” Nepomniachtchi told FIDE in an interview.
Had the tournament gone ahead without being interrupted due to COVID and players did not have a full year to prepare for Vachier-Lagrave in the second half, the Frenchman might have even won the whole thing, a scenario which would have inevitably led to more protests from all the eight original players since Vachier-Lagrave had never even qualified for the event and was thrown in as an out-of-syllabus question.
In an interview with Russian agency TASS back in 2020, FIDE president Arkady Dvorkovich spoke about the “tough call” to postpone the Candidates.
“The situation in Russia is quite difficult right now. We could provide safe conditions for the tournament, but from a psychological standpoint, the players are under the pressure. Unfortunately, we can’t eliminate this negative factor,” Dvorkovich had said.
Five years later, Humpy is speaking about exactly this psychological pressure on players that exists while playing in the backyard of a raging war.
As she articulated: “You should be in a position to play the game in a peaceful and a good atmosphere. Not surrounded by bomb or missile sirens.”
Humpy’s contention is simple: if things in the war do not improve, she is likely to skip the tournament rather than risk her life to play in the event. (Photo credit: Anna Shtourman/FIDE) 
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