Kasparov gone wild

I haven't read very much about the behind the scenes part of professional chess, but a few things are mentioned enough that I've picked them up. For one thing, Kasparov is not exactly known for losing gracefully. I remember some of his behavior towards the Deep Blue team too.

So my imagination is getting carried away after getting a tantalizing hint of an incident with Short. In Play The Open Games As Black by John Emms, the author discusses why 1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. Bc4 Qh4+ is not very good, despite how it might look to a beginner. He mentions a theme game in which the opening the players were forced to play was the Bryan Countergambit, in which Kasparov lasted all of fifteen moves and "was not a happy man at the end of the game". I've read a couple things about Short, so I imagine him bopping his head up and down singing "Rocking The Kaspah" while Garry loses control.

Does anyone know about his reaction to getting spanked right out of the opening like that? Any other amusing Elmer Fudd reactions from frustrated professionals?

Kasparov was a sore loser all right, luckily he didn't lose that much so we didn't witness too many of his rants.These are not opening specific, but he also completely lost it when the best game award was given to Radjabov in a Linares, the game unfortunately being the game where he beat Kasparov with a knight sacrifice. He also has taken back a move against one of the polgar sisters and blatantly lied about to the arbiter when polgar explained what happened. He also accused Kramnik of avoiding a WC rematch where in reality it was him refusing to participate in a normal candidates cycle. He split the chess world by founding his own organization and caused total chaos for many years, which truly damaged the game. The list goes on.

He later delivered the flag to Topalov, who was a few classes higher in his ungentlemanlike behaviours, accusing Kramink by cheating, intruding his privacy by examining the video tapes of his time spent in his own private rest room etc. 

I heard a interesting story about this game. It was some sort of match were the opening moves were pre-decided and when the position was set up Kasparov saw the move b5 and complained that no one in their right mind would make that move and almost refused to play the match.

I've never been under the impression that high rated chess players were a particularly graceful bunch.

Unfortunately, yes, but at this stage 3 of the top 4 players (Anand, Kramnik and Carlsen) actually have pretty decent personalities, we are lucky to have them. Maybe it's a little early to talk about Carlsen, but he has shown good character so far as far as I know.

He is probably right about that he wouldn't make such a move, but that was the deal, forced openings. I don't think the event was rated anyway.

He talks about it in "how life imitates chess" I remember.

Damn, being an arbiter at one of these events must be a nightmare. I remember reading about that Polgar incident now too, wasn't that when he said that the Polgar sisters were trained dogs?

Korchnoi's tantrum on Sophia was pretty bad too.

Oh yeah, and Fischer's behavior was bad enough that the Icelanders were wondering why Spassky didn't just leave and win by default.

Short boasted about bagging another player's girlfriend during his eulogy...

Damn, these guys are pretty wild haha.

Yes, Korchnoi is a pretty nasty person too, I'm glad he is out of the top scene long ago. I didn't know about Short banging a fellow player's girlfriend. Any written sources? Videos would be even better. 

LOL 

It gets better, too: the organizers then showed him an opening book that evaluated the move as leading to +=, nothing worse. The book was Batsford Chess Openings 2, by Kasparov and Keene!

Short bragged about having an affair with GM Tony Miles' girlfriend in Miles' obituary. By the way if you want to see how Kasparov handles defeat, watch him on youtube under "kasparovs wrong move." It's short and sweet (watch his eyes).

Despite all this, somehow I still really like Kasparov.  Perhaps it's mostly because of what he's been doing in politics lately. Not that we're allowed to go into all that of course.

I like someone with fire in the belly, who stands up for what they believe in. Even if they're more than a little brash on occasions...

@ Scarblac: ROFL, you just couldn't make that up!

Scarblac is that true? Sounds to good to be true.

I don't know where I read that story (years ago), but I'm sure that that detail was in there. New In Chess, perhaps? Anyway, someone who owns BCO2 could check; I gave away my copy years ago.

Scarblac is certainly correct about the BCO evaluation, as the footnote 37 shows only a slight white advantage:

I'm no expert, but from what I hear from almost everyone FIDE is a bit of a joke as an organization. Wasn't it good that someone was prepared to do something about it?

EDIT: Scratch that. Philidor_position has convinced me otherwise in a message (He can't post here as his break from his break from the forums is over ).