Quote:
Originally Posted by Shuffle
Hou Yifan was protesting because she entered an open tournament wanting to play higher rated players to challenge her and improve her game, yet she and the other women were mostly paired with each other in nearly every round. The chances of this happening randomly were deemed to be so low that it could not be a coincidence, despite the organizers claiming everything was selected by machine. Even many of the men like Caruana complained that their own pairings seemed fishy.
I support Hou Yifan in her action and she always comes across as a respectable person and champion.
Kinda late to the party with that post
In any case, I am not sure how you can defend her actions. Does she have the right to protest if she feels something fishy is going on? Of course. Simply do not show up. It has been the chess player's go-to protest form for I don't know how long. When you do not show up, you show the organizers that you are protesting. If you show up and throw the game, you show the organizers that you are protesting and insult the game itself, as well as the other players.
Add to that the fact that no rigged pairings have been proven (please provide source for whatever it is you read otherwise), the fact that it was the final round where the winners of one of best Open tournaments of the year emerge and deserve all the limelight, which instead went to this stupid action, and the fact that Gibraltar (and Stuart Conquest personally) probably did more for woman chess than Hou Yifan itself at this point in time and you get a very ugly picture.
She could have protested, but the way she did it was really, really bad.
Also, I am not a hater, I love Hou, but I have lost some respect for her after this.