Assaubayeva is now leading the Women's Grand Prix after spreading some really nasty words and turning an organizational problem into a sour personal dispute between players themselves.
It's not the first time we hear about Assaubayeva's willingness to stir up trouble. Once she was suspected of cheating during a bit tournament, and as far as I know, the heart of the matter was her repeatedly antagonistic behaviour towards other players, correlated with excellent results.
It reminds me of Viktor Kortchnoi back in the days. It was reported several times that Kortchnoi liked to hate his opponents and was performing better if he had a personal grudge against the other players.
As for Kortchnoi, he stated himself the psychological underpinnings of this tendency (see the account of his childhood in "Chess is my life" and the relationship Kortchnoi sees between these hard times and his future achievements).
Assaubayeva has a clearly different story behind her. The family pressure to perform in chess was such that, to paraphrase her own words, "she wouldn't know how to cook bortsch". This sounds more like Kamsky than like Kortchnoi.
I haven't read a Kamsky biography, so I would be glad if someone could rectify or confirm this impression. Was he a nice person himself when he was young (especially when his father could be neutralized :D ) before becoming, in his own words, "a famous f*** legend" (sic) ?
The bottomline after these comparisons is that Assaubayeva's psychological warfare has worked. She leads the tournament while her demoralized fellow players have drawn all their games. Whether these non-chess strategies should be tolerated is another question altogether ; there are precedents all over the chess History, and is now the time to make those things History ? If I were an organizer I wouldn't want such a person in my playing hall, for sure.
It's not the first time we hear about Assaubayeva's willingness to stir up trouble. Once she was suspected of cheating during a bit tournament, and as far as I know, the heart of the matter was her repeatedly antagonistic behaviour towards other players, correlated with excellent results.
It reminds me of Viktor Kortchnoi back in the days. It was reported several times that Kortchnoi liked to hate his opponents and was performing better if he had a personal grudge against the other players.
As for Kortchnoi, he stated himself the psychological underpinnings of this tendency (see the account of his childhood in "Chess is my life" and the relationship Kortchnoi sees between these hard times and his future achievements).
Assaubayeva has a clearly different story behind her. The family pressure to perform in chess was such that, to paraphrase her own words, "she wouldn't know how to cook bortsch". This sounds more like Kamsky than like Kortchnoi.
I haven't read a Kamsky biography, so I would be glad if someone could rectify or confirm this impression. Was he a nice person himself when he was young (especially when his father could be neutralized :D ) before becoming, in his own words, "a famous f*** legend" (sic) ?
The bottomline after these comparisons is that Assaubayeva's psychological warfare has worked. She leads the tournament while her demoralized fellow players have drawn all their games. Whether these non-chess strategies should be tolerated is another question altogether ; there are precedents all over the chess History, and is now the time to make those things History ? If I were an organizer I wouldn't want such a person in my playing hall, for sure.