New queen

Ha ha .... I've just discovered that my article on Alexandra Kosteniuk in today's The Star is their most read story this morning. I don't know how much longer it will stay there before it's knocked off the perch but you can read it here. Later, you should be able to catch it in my other It's All In The Planning blog too. (Note: I caught a small typo error in The Star which made a sentence incomprehensible but I have corrected it on my blog.)

Anyway, I found that the editors had chosen to amend one paragraph and remove another from my original article. I had half-expected it and I wouldn't blame them. Perhaps the removed paragraph was considered too racy for a family newspaper enjoyed by the young to the old. Mustn't suggest any wayward thoughts to the young and impressionable minds. Tut tut. That's very bad of me.

But if you are curious about what I had submitted to them earlier, it's this:

No, Kosteniuk is the representative, the flag-bearer of a new breed of women chess players who know how to balance their grey brain cells with the most modern of women’s fashion. She’s àla mode, chic, posh, smart, stylish, swanky, all the rage. She makes women’s chess fashionable!

It’s a fashion statement when she pushes her pawn to e4. It’s also a fashion statement whenever she decides to fianchetto her bishop. And above all, she looks stunning in almost every outfit she wears.

UPDATE: At 2.30pm today, I noticed that The Star has changed the title of my story to "New chess queen". I suppose someone must have noticed the abnormally high number of visits to this story. Anyway, it's still listed there at the top of the Most Viewed list. Woo hoo...!!

FINAL UPDATE - 27 Oct 2008: Had a good night's sleep and awoke about a half hour ago. Curious. Had The Star Online refreshed their site with today's news and stories yet? Apparently, not yet, because even at 7.30am, this is what I saw.

So because of a freak technicality, a mere story on chess - about the new women's world chess champion - ended up as the most viewed item in Malaysia's top English language newspaper. In my opinion, there are two reasons why this happened. One, a wrong choice of the initial headline by the editors. "New queen" gave no inkling at all on the story's content. And if you look at the print edition of the newspaper, in the Star Two section, that's exactly what was used. Two, people were curious enough. Could there have been a suggestive, sexual undertone in the title? Maybe. And later, changing the online title to "New chess queen" no longer helped anything at all because people were already wondering why the story was at the top of the most viewed list. It could've helped more people to click on it anyway, just to find out why.

I think this will be a one-off occurrence which I'll not see it again. But it was a quite enjoyable moment. Imagine. Certainly made my day!