The same treatment

How long does it take you to see what's very wrong with this?

The answer, if you're a chess player, is no time at all.

If you're not a chess player (which is a few of our readers, though probably not many) the answer is that Capablanca did not win the world championship "every year from 1921 until 1927", because there was no world championship every year from 1921 until 1927. Between those years no world championship matches took place. It is not and was not an annual event.

This is not an easy thing to get wrong - if you're a chess player, if you know anything about chess. Even if you do not, it is an easy thing to look up.

but it is not an easy thing to get wrong.

I mean it is like saying that Brazil won the World Cup every year between 1970 and 1974. Or that Barack Obama won the Presidency every year between 2008 and 2016. You would never say either of those things, because you would know - if you knew anything - that these were not annual events. And anybody who did say those things could expect to be laughed at.

But not Brin-Jonathan Butler, who gets to write a magazine article about Capablanca, among the most famous of world chess champions, without apparently knowing the most elementary facts about the world chess championship.

Now if you've clicked on the link, you'll have noticed that the error has since been corrected

and that the periodical itself acknowledges this at the foot of the piece.

The author, however, has not taken being corrected entirely well.

However, before being blocked I did happen to scroll down his account a bit and was surprised to come across this.

He doesn't just get to write an article about Capablanca - he gets to write a book about the game as well.

I mean he's obviously just the guy you'd want, isn't he?