Red menace

Readers of this blog know I cover chess shows on the Internet as if they're game shows. They're not traditional game shows, of course, but they're closer than Bachelorette and the other reality nonsense. People are playing a real game in the chess events, after all.

Right now the Candidates tournament is cranking along in London to choose a challenger for the world championship. If you know anything about chess, you won't be amazed to hear that Magnus Carlsen is currently tied for the lead.

But who cares about Magnus? A lot of chatter on the chess forums concerns an awful horror in the official site's live presentation of the games. In a stunning, unprecedented, humongous and all-round colossal departure from tradition, the site is using red pieces instead of black on the diagrams. Why, you'd think the world had ended, started up again, and then ended again.

This only proves that Internet traditionalists aren't confined to traditional game shows. Mess with anything that people are used to, and you're asking for yelps all over the Web.