07 May 2015

Business Insider Chess

I still don't get it. Why would anyone want to paste the head of Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis on to a photo of Magnus Carlsen, as in Playing Chess with the Euro? During the 2013 World Championship match I gave the offending site, BusinessInsider.com, a 'prize for bonehead chess reporting' in Anand - Carlsen, One Day to Go, but since then I have bookmarked several articles that were much bettter than your average mainstream news site normally serves up for chess. Just last month, we had

Sample paragraph from that last link:-

Carlsen has made chess about ten thousands times as popular as it was before he came along. Take nothing away from the previous generation, but the 24-year-old Norwegian has been electrifying for what [many?] had come to thought of as slow, boring game that computers played better than humans.

Yes, it's missing a word -- and similar glitches can be found in the other chess articles -- but there is a real excitement for the game that shines through brightly. The writer of these pieces, and many more, is Matthew DeBord, whose Twitter feed @mattdebord says,

Transportation Editor at Business Insider, covering cars, planes, boats, bikes, and anything else that moves us around. Also chess at times.

As for the domain, Wikipedia informs,

Business Insider is an American business and technology news website launched in February 2009 and based in New York City. Founded by DoubleClick Founder and former CEO Kevin P. Ryan, it is the overarching brand where Silicon Alley Insider and Clusterstock appear.

Yes, I like it, but getting back to 'Chess with the Euro', what does that Yanis/Magnus photo have to do with anything?

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