Chess Strategies News

Last week, Chess Base posted this article by Susan Polgar, criticizing ESPN's coverage of Bobby Fischer. At the time, I disagreed with many of her comments, but didn't have time to write it all down in a post.

Well, now William Shea of Hawaii said it for me in a comment on the chessbase site!

I can't believe you published only the articles supporting Susan Polgar's criticism of the ESPN story. The story was fair, and when Fischer called the interviewer's father a "snake Jew" it was unprovoked. We don't need to criticize the interviewer. Do we really want to hide Fischer's comments simply because they are full of hate? It is newsworthy and it is the biggest story in chess. I was thrilled that chess made it to the mainstream sports news. I don't want candy-coated stories about chess, I want to hear the big stories, and I am glad that our non-chess fan friends get to see a little of what is going on in the chess world. Congrats ESPN for bringing chess to the forefront.

This article gives more perspective on the whole issue of chess in mainstream media.