Standing Up for Your Right to Sit Down

As dozens of chess players and millions of gamblers around the world know, the 2006 FIDE World Chess Championship is happening right now in Elista, the capital of the Kalmykia. This year's event is special because it is a reunification match between the two major chess leagues, the big-dog FIDE and the upstart CWC. The CWC champion, a Russian named Kramnik, is facing off against the FIDE champion, a Bulgarian named Topalov.

If this were only about chess, I wouldn't care. But after game 4 of the grueling 12-game Cataclysm in Kalmykia, controversy broke out. A controversy that may touch us all, one that could upset the very foundations of life as we know it. A man has been robbed of his toilet.

The Topalov team, down 1-3 to the Russian, protested to the judges that Kramnik was taking way too many bathroom breaks during the games. Essentially, they were saying he was using bathroom breaks to cheat somehow. Topalov's bosses wanted the private bathrooms, which were specifically enumerated in the match's contract, to be barred. The judges announced that while they found no evidence that Kramnik was cheating, in order to ensure ethical behavior the private bathrooms would be locked and the men would share a new bathroom.

The Russian was mad as hell. He said his frequent breaks were totally honest; he does his best thinking in there (which gives new meaning to the phrase "good move"). When game 5 was scheduled to start, he staged a sit-in in front of his private bathroom. He was forced to forfeit the game.

Seeing as how this was chess and not something trivial, Kalmykia's prime minister cancelled his summit with Putin and rushed back to Elista to solve what he called "the issue of the bathrooms." After some frenzied shuttle diplomacy he got the players back to the table, but the Russian is now playing under protest and has vowed to take the FIDE to court if he loses. Reunification seems farther away than ever.

To some, it seems pretty childish. All this over a toilet? But think about it. Who among us hasn't chosen a favorite toilet stall at work? Who hasn't designated a particular bathroom at home his own domain? One's choice of crapper is as personal and as sacrosanct as can be; the very pyramids of Egypt are just oversized toilets for the pharoahs in the hereafter. Have you not noticed that the Colisseum is shaped like a gigantic toilet bowl? These things are primal, friends. You can take my toilet from my cold dead ass. Or something.

So despite the fact that I know nothing about chess, I'm pulling for Kramnik big time. I hope he wins tomorrow's decisive 12th game, ending the need for lawsuits, reunifying the world title, and breaking the lock on the private toilet of life. I hope you'll all join me at 7am for the web cast tomorrow to cheer on the man who fights for us all.

Good move, Kramnik. Good move.

Update: Topalov, playing black, battled Kramnick to a draw. Credit where credit is due (as in American life, being white gives you an unearned advantage in chess). The tiebreaker, 4 games with 50-min time limits, will be played tomorrow.