Earlier today, SBNation noted a bold new marketing direction for the World Chess Championship 2018, the London-based effort to once again crown the reigning champion of the game of kings. Rather than focus on all those boring old pieces or gambits, though, the new logo doubles down on everybody’s favorite part of this ancient battle of wits: the fucking.
It is, by all accounts, a very weird logo, one of two that’s been developed for the London event, which is being backed by the FIDE, the governing body of international chess. (The other depicts two arms intertwining, and somehow manages to be even more sensual, given that it doesn’t reduce the panoply of human sexuality into an image of two faceless creatures boredly mashing their genitals together across a chessboard.)
The UK’s Telegraph talked to a few noted chess champions about the marketing decision, which the organizers have said was meant to be “controversial and trendy, just like the host city.” Shockingly enough, a bunch of world-renowned chess experts weren’t completely on board for the Kama Sutra-esque design, with at least one pointing out that it seemed kind of inaccessible to the numerous chess dork children who would be following the games. (Others were just annoyed that the board at the center of the lover’s tryst was only 6×6, instead of the proper 8×8.) In any case, the World Chess Championships will be held next year in London, and will pit reigning champion Magnus Carlsen against a to-be-determined challenger in a match that hopefully won’t be entirely unsafe for work.