In a move of astonishing self-confidence, Anish Giri and his legal team have petitioned to bend the rules around his upcoming first match with World Chess Champ Magnus Carlsen, to allow for increasingly outrageous handicaps.
“I don’t believe in time” Giri told our reporters. “Did Fischer arrive on time to play Spassky? Chess transcends space and time.”
We summarise for you, in short, the nature of the dispute—ever since his remarkable victory against Carlsen berserking in the Lichess Titled Arena, Giri has been increasingly impatient to try shorter and shorter time controls. And so, in a strange turn of events, he and his legal team have petition the organisers of the Legends of Chess tournament to allow him to berserk even there.
“Our argument is simple,” Giri’s lawyer told our reporters. “What if our client instead took a substantial nap for half of the time allotted to him, woke up, and played the rest of the game – totally in agreement with tournament rules. Isn’t this be the same thing?”
Apparently that was enough for the Chief Arbiter, who decided to allow Giri half the time. In the days leading up to the match, Giri and his lawyers further reasoned that if he should be allowed to halve his time, he should also be allowed to halve the remainder, and so on. A professional mathematician was consulted, and it was reasoned that indeed, by this logic, Giri should be allowed to have a infinitesimally small amount of time.
And then, in a flash of genius, Giri found a way to actually carry this out – he decided he would pre-move all the moves (with some surplus ones just to be safe) and pray that they were all legal and sound. As soon as the game began, he would send these over to the arbiter (who reasoned that this was entirely fair, and to his own peril), thereby taking no time to actually think or respond.
“Our client is a very busy man,” Giri’s lawyers told our flabbergasted reporters. “He keeps busy with his art, and other pursuits.”
Stay tuned for updates on this strange situation.
UPDATE: Remarkably, all 79 of Anish Giri’s pre-moves were entirely legal, and entirely sound, in his first match against Carlsen. Carlsen used up much of his time, often sweating profusely, while Giri merely sent over the moves and spent the rest of the afternoon sketching and doodling, or some such. Miraculously, this strategy worked – serendipitously, each of his pre-moves expertly parried those of Carlsen – which is why it is a shame that the 79-move game still ended in a draw.