Sunday 29 November 2015

Comparative chess interviews

The Telegraph newspaper has done a large piece on Magnus Carlsen. It is both a profile and interview, and has already attracted some comment, mainly due to his comments on past World Champions (he could beat Tal 'easily'), and the quality of his current rivals.
Of course he isn't the first chess player to attract attention for such claims, with a young Bobby Fischer making similar claims in his infamous 1962 interview with Ralph Ginzburg. Of course Carlsen is more measured (and polite) in his comments, but is still an interesting exercise to read both interviews side by side. While both interviews show the level of confidence needed to reach the top in international chess, I am sure that Carlsen's interview won't have the same end result as Fischer's interview, which was Fischer refusing to do interviews ever again.

1 comment:

Mark Patterson, Esq. said...

Please don't refer to it as the Telegraph. We have a noble publication of the same here and to only give proper noun credit to another may be taken as defamation.