Alternate Reality Game

The countdown has started. The World Chess Championship match will be held at the South Street Seaport in the New York City borough of Manhattan, United States, from 11 to 30 November 2016. The reigning Champion Magnus Carlsen from Norway will defend his title against Sergey Alexandrovich Karjakin from Russia. Ilya Lvovich Merenzon, Agon Limited’s CEO, invested heavily in technology and innovation, and for the first time in chess history the World Championship will be a state-of-the-art virtual reality game, as Merenzon himself told Allen “A.J.” Steigman: “This is going to be the first Championship for the smartphone generation. Chess is primarily an internet sport these days and we have invested heavily to make the Championship as accessible as possible for a truly global audience”. Behind, in the background, there is the money – €600,000 €uros – guaranteed by financial holding pyramids such as EG Capital Advisors, while in the foreground, on virtual stage, a plethora of celebrity testimonials have been already announced. Virtual reality makes miracles. The two chess superheroes, who are gonna seat alone in the pneumatic vacuum monitor, will have to fulfill all expectations put on them. It won’t be easy. Like Achilles Magnus Carlsen is almost invulnerable, his only weakness being the “tedium” of his invincibility itself. But he has good friends and can incarnate himself in an icon of the West, at least until the end of the month. Under such circumstances his challenger Sergey Alexandrovich Karjakin is apparently doomed to be the designated underdog against an adversary who has “practically no weaknesses”, as he himself told AFP. So what’s Karjakin’s plan? “He has to prove that he’s better than me”, he told AFP. “If he tries too hard, I can beat him on the counter-attack. That’s my plan”. If this were true, Magnus could well save time and money as well as youthful energy by simply not trying too hard in all games.

A rendering of the Fulton Market building in the South Street Seaport in the New York City, United States. Image cortesy of southstreetseaport.com.