Wednesday 28 September 2016

A strange strange headline

I kept seeing the following headline in my newsfeeds "Chess Grandmaster takes on 11 opponents, all at the same time in Jersey City". The story itself was listed under to section "Hobbies and Interests", placing it alongside stories such as "Go Topless Day Parade in NY", and "New Jersey woman stabbed man for refusing sex".
Clicking on the story, you will find the headline understates what was going on. The GM in question was Magnis Carlsen, playing a 30 minute clock simul against players who had won a "Play Chess with Magnus" competition.  Also in attendance was Fabiano Caruana, who was there as part of the celebrations for the US team winning the Chess Olympiad.
But as they say in the media, all news is local, so it wasn't important that they might be the best players in the world, what was important was they visited Jersey City.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Jersey also had an eating contest won by Joey Chestnut around the same time. He's probably more well-known than some chess dudes. Probably the headline was more than "Man consumes 43 pork rolls at minor league baseball game", though I think I did see the results of a Sydney eating contest described like that once.