Climate, Man, and History

12th World Chess Champion Anatoly Yevgenyevich Karpov, in an interview to Sportbox.ru last April 2, pronounced himself totally against a “virtualisation” of the last seven rounds of the Candidates Tournament: “Niet! The Candidates Tournament should never be held online”, he thundered. “Of course, people are free to alienate themselves as they please, and I have nothing against rapid or online blitz tournaments, but no virtual reality or pseudo-reality can sublimate a World Chess Championship match with the physical presence of the contenders and the audience. Chess is a struggle of ideas on a board; chess is a human exchange: emotional, passional and psychological. For sure, online you can have almost everything, but fortunately chess it’s one of those things which still does need humans and their subjectivity”.