"To be honest, I was rooting for Arjun!" | The people who made Qatar Masters 2024 successful

[@SUNs1591]

chess boom, i think 2013 was when crown lost, boom was there around vishy and what he done alone and 5 time world champion defeating russians chess school. Boom was already credit to vishy sir and chess don't have medium to see live stream but today reach is there, And DD also live stream vishy final but those games not cover fully and other games uncover. Hope other chess school also get to fight upcoming Indian Chess School.

[@ardinhajihil5011]

arjun ftw

[@TMadhusudan]

No audio

[@himankghosh2333]

It's audible loud and clear, maybe an issue on your end!

[@TMadhusudan]

@himankghosh2333 all other youtube channels are ok. Hmmm

[@fisk-zh1uz]

Why do Chessbase India cover these sportswashing events? It's just poor judgement.

[@joker73612]

What is sportswashing?

[@Phoenix.219]

​@@joker73612I had to Google it. It basically means using sports to improve your image. Here the use of this word doesn't make sense. Maybe this person is someone who hates Qatar for some reason

[@rishmastering]

Two points: Qatar is not Saudi and Chess is not football.....

[@fisk-zh1uz]

@@joker73612 You can start by looking at the wikipedia article "sportswashing". Or search the web for "qatar sportswashing", "qatar human rights" etc.

[@fisk-zh1uz]

@@rishmastering Two points: a) I never had a problem with geography, and b) I can see that chess pieces aren't spherical like one of those balls you kick around :) Football events are often used as an example (e.g. the Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup) just because it is a very popular sport, but the concept of sportswashing pertains to all sports. I think perhaps some/many of the worlds top players (or the nations they represent) made a concious choice re. not participating in an international sports event hosted by a country like Qatar, seeing as 93 of the top-100 finishers of Qatar Masters come from countries that can be classified as autocracies (see below). This high number does not reflect the number of top chess players originating from autocracies in general as it is very different from the number you get when looking at something like the top-100 December 2024 FIDE rankings list. Obviously, autocracies are very over-represented in Qatar Masters. "Autocracy" above refers to either "electoral autocracy" or "closed autocracy" as defined by the V-dem's "Democracy Report 2024" (just google/duckduckgo it and you'll find the PDF -- it's an easy read). They use a 4-tier classification (liberal democracy/electoral democracy/electoral autocracy/closed autocracy) which they assign to all countries. So 93 players are from countries that are classified as "electoral autocracy" or "closed autocracy". Only 1 of the top-100 finishers come from a "liberal democracy" (an Italian). The remainder comes from countries classified as "electoral democracies". Also, if there's any kind of ambition to grow the share of women players in chess, the very least you could do from an organizer perspective is to split the prize fund 50/50 betw. men and women. Norway Chess 2024 did this, while in Qatar Masters 2024 the winner in the open (aka mens) division got 5 times as much as the winner of the womens division (and only top-5 women received any prize at all). You should ask yourself why that is. And if you only come up with the answer "there were fewer participants in the womens division", you should ask yourself why *that* is. ChessBase India are free to choose what to cover. But the worn out argument of "sports being separate from politics" does simply not apply to autocracies.