Hyde Park Chess in News

Thanks to Nick Kordahi for pointing this one out. Jelle Marechal's cause has finally made it to the mainstream paper. Today's issue of The Daily Telegraph features the headline, "Check mate for drunken hobos". The article is basically about the same thing that we've already told you in a couple of posts (the second one can be read here). The journo writes:

In Hyde Park, it's not the ivory Queen that's the biggest danger. It's the self-styled kings of the public chess pit that threaten to destroy the classic game.

Smelling of cheap wine and stale tobacco, a band of drunken homeless people have taken over the arena beneath the trees - and are scaring off chess players and tourists with abusive begging and violent antics.

Look, before this gets out of hand, I have to say that that description stretches it a bit. I go there once or twice a week and I've seen neither "abusive begging" nor "violent antics". Like I said in my first post on this, the complaint is more than a little tad dramatic.

Read: Check mate for drunken hobos.