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NOLAN SAWYER AND MALLORY GREENLEAF WILL BE PLAYING AGAINST EACH OTHER.
When Nolan Sawyer dominated this year’s Challengers tournament, therefore adjudicating a spot as Greenleaf’s opponent in Montreal, the possibility that the next World Championship might be a romantic affair became titillating. Could the two be just good friends? Yes, undoubtedly. But what if they aren’t? What if in addition to being adversaries, they also brush teeth side by side in the morning and know the other’s go-to take-out orders? What if they can read each other’s minds over the chessboard, or they have inside jokes about the other’s weaknesses?
The idea is simply fascinating. And it’s probably the reason so many people have shown interest in chess in the last two years: first they were drawn by the brilliance of these two talented players, then they decided to learn to play chess themselves, and then they realized that . . .
CHESS IS COOL, ACTUALLY.
The sale of anything chess related— sets, timers, accessories, tutorials, online classes, apps— has soared following the most recent World Championship, and the wave is here to stay. What’s most notable is that interest in chess is, for the first time in decades, higher among women than men. Furthermore, there are currently more women and nonbinary people in the FIDE Top 500 than ever before. “It’s because we feel that the environment is less and less hostile to us,” GM Defne Bubikoglu, Greenleaf’s main trainer and owner of chess club Zugzwang, told us. Her club has been thriving, officially surpassing Marshall, New York City’s historic chess club, in membership.
IN CONCLUSION . . .
We don’t know how the World Championship will play out. But we do know that because of the circumstances surrounding it, more people will be tuning in than ever before, and for the first time in decades, chess players are becoming household names. And whether the more juicy, romantic aspects of this championship are true or simply rumors, the fact remains that they make for compelling narratives.
And if you “ship them hard” and “want to believe,” you might enjoy this little clue: three weeks ago, at a charity event, Nolan Sawyer— who is a notoriously bad loser— did not stop to take questionsfrom journalists. But eyewitnesses reported that when asked how he felt about the possibility of Mallory Greenleaf accruing enough points to take the No. 1 spot from him, he simply smiled before walking away.
