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Joel Lautier - on Chess, Shogi and Life
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12 June 2000
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On Chess
Q: How is the playing career going?
JL: Well, my playing career has taken a turn for the better, after somewhat of a slump. My provisional rating places me in the top thirty, and as in the Sisyphus myth, I'm still trying hard to climb that mountain !
Q: How is life in France with a new national prodigy? What do you think of Bacrot?
JL: The appearance of a new strong player in France has made things more interesting. It should help raising the level of interest towards chess in my country, and who knows, France might have a word to say in the not-too-distant Olympiads. Bacrot's perspectives seem excellent so far, however, as I have said many times, the coming years will be decisive.
Q: Is there a real future in chess with so much organizational farce at the top level? How does the title chaos affect your career or plans?
JL: The crash chess has been experiencing in the last two or so years is unparalleled in its long history. In 1997, Kasparov lost to a machine clearly weaker than himself, and together with his disgraceful attitude after the match, has done more harm to the chess world than we could possibly imagine. I believe the chess professionals should sue him in court for his 7...h6??? in the sixth game, together with the shameful declarations he made at the press conference.
In my mind, there isn't the shadow of a doubt that Kasparov psyched himself out to such an extent during that match, that anything playing chess and vaguely resembling a tin-can would have won that fatal sixth game. The result was a dramatic fall of interest towards chess from the general public, and as an immediate consequence, very scarce sponsorship from private sources.
Of course, FIDE's handling of both of its own world championships (men's and women's), has been nothing but disastrous. How on earth can you spend so much money (five million dollars) without getting any big-time TV coverage ? Any rank-and-file tennis tournament with a prize-fund five times as small made more news than our richest world championship ever (I'm talking about Groningen obviously).
Still, that was nothing compared to the world championship of Las Vegas. I won't recount all the ridiculous mishandlings that affected its scheduled time, with the devastating effect we witnessed on the holding of the remaining traditional tournaments: successively Hastings, Groningen, Wijk aan Zee, Frankfurt, Dortmund and others were close to being cancelled due to FIDE's mind-numbing handling of the dates. The best was still to come though: as a fitting conclusion, the deserving new champ Khalifman got a check that bounced as soon as he tried to cash it !
Not to mention the successive defaults in the women's cycle and the cancellation of the announced knock-out tournament in Moldova, the complete incompetency in the simple task of calculating the players' ratings, and so on. Let's also not forget the grotesque WCC cycle initiated by Kasparov and ending with another aborted match against Anand...
(Editor's note: Some details may have changed slightly since the course of this conversation.)
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