Chess Scandals Are Back, We Now Have a Woman Resorting to Chemical Warfare to Take Out Her Opponent in The Dagestan Chess Championship

NY Post - A Russian chess champion allegedly attempted to poison an opponent at a recent tournament in a brazen caught-on-camera move.

Security footage from Aug. 2 appeared to capture Amina Abakarova, 40, sneaking into the tournament room of the Dagestan Chess Championship in Makhachkala, a city in southern Russia, while checking to see if the coast was clear, the Sun reported.

Once inside, she walked casually through the room before stopping at one of the many chessboards set up, taking a quick look to see if anybody was looking and then taking something from her bag.

Abakarova then appeared to pour a substance across the table and onto the chessboard, before rubbing it on several pieces. She then slipped out of the room.

Her alleged target, 30-year-old rival Umayganat Osmanova, sat at the spot she’d spread with the substance and ended up falling ill during the match.

Abakarova’s attempt was discovered after a tournament judge reported Osmanova’s suspicious illness to police, and security tapes were checked.

She later admitted to the attempted poisoning, telling police she’d broken a thermometer over the table and spread mercury across the board.

But Abakarova insisted it was Osmanova who opened hostilities between them — claiming her rival had been badmouthing her and her family after winning at a previous tournament.

Abakarova faces three years in prison if convicted on charges of intentional infliction of bodily harm.

What is it about the pursuit of becoming a world chess champion that makes people lose their god damn minds? Is the game of chess so mentally draining that the part of your brain responsible for common sense that tells you, "Hold up... maybe losing a chess match isn't the end of the fucking world." just turns off completely? Or is the fame and fortune that comes with being crowned the Dagestan Chess Champion in the Russian city of Makhachkala so great that attempted murder is worth the risk? 

There was a stretch of time last year where it seemed as if once a month a new foreign substance was found in the ass of a new grandmaster. Some Eastern European dude would show up to a tournament with micro-bombs up his rectum, then a man halfway across the world with a detonator who's live streaming the match on a hidden camera would set off a series of explosions inside his colon to signal which move the supercomputer says gives him the best chance of qualifying for the FIDE Grand Prix in Sebria next month. 

(ok it was just 2 separate instances of chess players using vibrating anal beads to cheat, also one of the guys was an American, but the rate of scandals in chess is still too high, and I guarantee there's some shady stuff going on in the Eastern European chess circuit)

I can actually understand the anal beads. In chess, there's a right answer for every move. And there's always a computer who knows the answer. According to Wikipedia, a human hasn't defeated a top-performing chess computer under regular tournament conditions since 2005. Considering a chess board is a perfect 8x8 squares, it's not too difficult to come up with a formula to communicate the correct move to a player using nothing but vibrations. Chess players used get away with simply putting a device in their pocket. But when people caught on to that they tightened up security. The only logical option cheaters had remaining was vibrating anal beads. Makes perfect sense.

But mercury poisoning is going too far. Winning a chess match can't be that important. I have to think this Amina Abakarova woman somehow got mixed up with some bad apples. I'm sure there's not a ton of money in chess. But perhaps there's a high-stakes underground chess gambling scene run by the Russian Mafia. Amina Abakarova gets approached by a mafia member who offers her a significant enough amount rubles if she takes out Osmanova. 

Abakarova claims Osmanova was simply bad mouthing her family. That there was so much bad chess blood, that Osmanova was shit talking was so aggressive after a previous tournament win that she could only retaliate with chemical warfare. But of course she would say that when the alternative is outing a gang of Russian gangster chess enthusiasts. 

People say you shouldn't let your children play football. I won't be letting my children play chess. It's far too dangerous.