The Naked Truth of the Naked Grandmaster

By Lev Khariton

When in the early 90s, already living in Paris, I saw Kasparov's
picture with strippers from "Lido" on the cover of "Europe Echecs" I
thought of Napoleon's famous words 'This is the beginning of the end!'
Today, more than 10 years later at www.chessbase.com I saw the
'continuation of the end': WMG Maria Manakova's porno pictures and
ravings. Grandmaster in the nude!

Let the whole world accuse me of being a Kasparov-hater or an
incorrigible puritan for that matter. It seems, however, that there is
no limit to human indecency, this time the indecency and cynicism of
chess players, chess journalists and chess-site owners. Sure, they
have their own reasoning behind this show of vulgarity. When money
becomes man's only goal, all human values go down the drain and
everything turns to ashes.

When Kasparov said that 'chess is a good product that we have to
sell', he started his crusade against the art he seems - yes, he
seems!- to represent. It was long before Manakova's voluptuous
onslaught on chess and even before Kasparov's 'Come on, gals!' Dance
with the French super nudes. The same 'come on, guys!' we have been
hearing from Kasparov in the last year or two of his war on terrorism.
However, those who have their eyes wide open, know the face value of
his 'courage'.

Logically, seeing such an attitude to chess we have the right to
question whether some of the most important of Kasparov's games were
not fixed well in advance. I know that such questions and articles
from me are always boycotted by 'civilized' websites. Such boycotts as
any form of censorship run contrary to any democratic institution or
society Well, nothing can be downed.

However, as to myself, I will violate, for the first time in my life,
my approach to censorship, namely to the "presumption of innocence"
postulate. Those who put the blame on me for my suspicions regarding
Kasparov's fixed matches, say, with computers, have to prove to me
that Kasparov's chess conscience is sinless..

I am sure that today Chigorin and Steinitz, Schlechter and Reti,
Nezhmetdinov and Tal, Botvinnik and Keres are all turning in their
graves sending curses to those cheapos who are depraving the name of
our noble game.