A great tale explaining the breakdown of the live coverage at the MTel yesteday from Chessdom. True or not, very funny. And tragic. Why is it so hard to slap up a free java applet viewer and update manually? Takes around five minutes. Anyway, blame it all on Sofia mayor Borisov, who made two honorary first moves with white, confusing the relay software, perhaps. And I thought Ilyumzhinov was the only politician who destroyed chess with a touch!
Well, I am sure glad the US Championship web broadcast was a mess too, or the American triumphalism would be unbearable.
It explains why the live coverage broke down, but it does not explain why they did not put it up again.
I have experience running the Toma software that the Sofia organizers are using for their digital boards. It is true that the software may in fact crash if an illegal move is made on the board. However, if such things happens, it is an easy task to restart the software, manually enter the moves that were not recorded, and the transmission should resume as soon as the position is current.
It may take some time to make the board current manually, as the software only allows you to right click on the board and choose from a lisr of moves, but as long as the game was still in its opening stage and they had access to the notation forms, this shouldn't really be a big deal.
Sounds mostly like a convenient excuse for worse problems, it is always nice to have an anecdote of blamelessness when you mess up...
I agree with Quely...
As explained by Tarjei it would have been quite simple to restart the broadcast if an illegal move was the only problem...
That story about Borisov is just a cover up. They couldn’t get the topalov’s chair cable to work
The comp running the broadcast was running maybe Vista... Windows 7 beta? It seems better to joke than to try to understand. It's a pity. If Danailov was good for chess in something, it was organizing. Too bad now it's also gone. Apparently the cristal-cage format seems to work. I would like to see some kind of study about the marketing differences between this and the classical theatre way.
"some kind of study about the marketing differences between this and the classical theatre way"
Hard data & analysis of PR efforts are hardly available in ANY area - it's a science of guesswork.
However, there's a much more interesting question available here: Why did they shut down the working relay of the other two games? We got the first moves of the Wang Yue - Dominguez game, didn't we - so the only thing that's certain here, is that the official version of what happened is a smokescreen and not the complete story.
I guess it means that everything is normal, as media and PR are concerned. :o)
Beatiful game Wang!!!!
Ivanchuk self-destructed again today against Wang Yue; curious how in the last few weeks he's been playing some of his worst chess, whereas right after the ridiculous Olympiad "doping" accusations he was playing his best. Apparently he requires extra pressure or his game appears to drift...!? This is the opposite of most players, whose chess ability cracks under pressure.
lol @ Chucky
He is just a genius. There are not too many players who'd be able to find that selfstalemate!
... well in fact it is only a half stalemate, other half is just selfmate :-) ...
in a position that is impossible to lose with white.