The other day at the BCM Chess Shop we were all chortling at this photo which appeared on the cover of the latest New in Chess magazine. Vishy had just won the world championship and, after dressing him up like a market stall with various bits of local material and vegetation, all they could think to present him with was what looked like an unwashed baking tray. No wonder he looks slightly less than delirious.
We all had a go at dreaming up captions for the photo. One of the first was the traditional "I went to Mexico and all they gave me was this tea tray". Another was based on the speculation that a Post-It note had been attached to the reverse, which read "Dear Vishy, Many congratulations on nicking my title. I'm hanging onto the real trophy until you beat me fair and square in a match. In the meantime, you can have this tray which I took from my rest room in Elista as a memento of many happy hours spent there. All the best, see you next year - Vlad".
Maybe readers would like to volunteer their own caption...
Vishy Anand - winner of the 2007 FIDE World Chess Championship(Sponsored by McCain)
ReplyDelete"Damn, I wanted the frying pan."
ReplyDeletetres thoughtful
ReplyDeleteYou want to do something useful? Then give me Anand with this.
ReplyDelete"Well, it's a little superstition of mine. Karpov didn't wash his hair until he lost a game. This is my lucky baking tray. I take it everywhere with me and I don't wash it until I lose a game."
ReplyDelete"... and next year I'll deliver you Kramnik's head on this platter"
ReplyDelete"much more... much more than this... I did it my tray"
ReplyDeleteFIDE! Your old washing up liquid still leaving those ground-in stains of old world champions? Then you need new, super-concentrated VishyWashy! Guaranteed to remove all marks and stains, leaving your world championship sparkling clean!
ReplyDeleteHas Kramnik had his chips?
ReplyDeleteVishy Anand - he's cooking on gas!
ReplyDelete"Piece of cake."
ReplyDelete"Scandal hit the world of chess yesterday when world champion Vishy Anand demonstrated how he thought Veselin Topalov might have cheated his way to the world title in San Luis in 2005. 'It was so simple that I cannot believe anyone hadn't thought of it before. They used old-fashioned heliography. All they had to do was to send reflection signals through the window of his rest room and he signalled back using a tin tray like this one. It couldn't be picked up by the electronic scans', quipped the genial champ. 'Of course, with the bright Argentinian sunlight, there were no problems. But it didn't work in Elista because it was so overcast there.'"
ReplyDeleteAnand wins half-baked FIDE World Championship
ReplyDeleteWell Kramnik didn't say he'd handed me the title on a silver salver!
ReplyDelete