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ChessChick's Guide To Girl Stuff

Will a WonderBra improve your rating?

All manner of strange things show up in the e-mailbox of ChessChick. A while back I received an e-mail about Ngan Phan-Koshnitsky's breasts. We all have 'em, so it seemed a good starting point for a "girl stuff" column. [Guys don't, but any that are reading this will continue reading because I wrote the word "breasts". Get outta here, guys! This is for girls! Whaddaya doin' clicking on a link that says "Girl Stuff", anyway??!]

Here's the story: early this year (1998) there was an uproar--well, it was only one man roaring--after the South Australian Championship, which was won by Ngan Phan-Koshnitsky. The man, a Mr Cowley, claimed in a widely-distributed-by-email-article (originally published in an Australian newspaper) that he lost the championship because he was "distracted by her breasts". According the newspaper, "Mr Cowley, 50, claims he was unable to keep his eyes off Ngan Koshnitsky's cleavage." The article continued, "He had tried to avert his eyes 'but it was very hard not to see it (her cleavage). I put my hands across my forehead but that didn't work very well, so now I may consider wearing a wide-brimmed hat,' he said."

Who's he trying to kid? You shield your eyes with your hands and all you see is the board. We've all done that during moments of intense concentration. He was peeking! What a perv! What a lech!

This is hilarious! The man is a sore loser and he's a fool. Rather than passing the loss off to a bad streak--or her skill--he'd rather the whole world think that he lost the title match because he spent all his time staring at his opponent's breasts! Well, if nothing else, he wins the award for Most Pathetic Excuse. People all over the world have now heard about his plight and the awful ordeal of playing chess against someone with breasts. I 'bout fell off my chair laughing when I read it!

To paraphrase Shakespeare, "Methinks he doth protest too much!"

Cowley sounds like one of these guys who talks to your breasts. You know what I mean. You can usually get these types to make eye contact only if you kick 'em in the shins. In another era, this guy would've had all his front teeth knocked out by irate boyfriends and husbands; he's apparently compulsive about this breast thing. Nowadays women have to hit back themselves. And that's just what Ngan did. She slammed him, hit 'im where it really hurt, and walked off with the title in a 4-2 victory.

This whole episode does raise the question about what is proper tournament attire. Clothes. You should always wear clothes to tournaments. Tournament halls are notoriously drafty with the air-conditioning typically set to "subarctic". Take a sweater. On second thought, take two. If your opponent is using x-ray vision to stare at your breasts through all those layers of clothing you can always throw the extra sweater over his head and strangle him with the sleeves.

I tracked down a couple of pictures of Ms. Phan-Koshnitsky on the web. From the way Cowley wailed about her breasts I was expecting to see an Asian Jayne Mansfield. I was expecting someone so stupendously endowed that no one, male or female, could help but gape at her mammary glands which no amount of clothing would be able to keep discretely covered.

All you small-breasted chess-chicks out there, take heart. You, too, can turn your opponent into a drooling idiot. She has really small breasts.

Cowley is quoted as saying her top "was 'a real distraction for me,' he said, adding chess was 'difficult enough as it is without extra problems'." In both pictures Ms. Phan-Koshnitsky was wearing casual summer tops, not fancy, not feminine, not flashy, not sexy, not provocative, not revealing (hey, there's not much to reveal!). She has nothing that could even remotely be called cleavage. Her physique pretty much makes the question of her attire moot. The only way her breasts would be prominent or conspicuous enough to be distracting, would be if she took her shirt off. (Remember, always wear clothes to tournaments!)

I'm betting Mr. Cowley (age 50) is one of these chess monks with neither wife nor girlfriend. My advice to him would be, "Get yourself a woman so you at least have a passing familiarity with their physiology." Really. If he goes this ga-ga over a slip of a girl (she 24, but looks much younger) with small breasts, then the first time he sits down across the table from a gal who's stacked he'll have a seizure! They'll have to carry him from the tournament hall, frothing at the mouth!

Will a WonderBra improve your rating? Only if your opponent is a fool, in which case you'd win anyway.


 

 

 

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