The Spitzer Variation

If you commit an indiscretion or a series of indiscretions, as Governor Spitzer knows all too well, your reputation can be destroyed overnight. Opening variations enjoy reputations that can dissolve just as rapidly. Some are played for decades and then, suddenly, some brilliant investigator discovers something untoward about them, which brings them crashing down. This is precisely what has just happened to a key variation of the Sicilian Defense. In the first round of the recently concluded intercontinental tournament held in Mexico and Spain, Viswanathan Anand, playing black, unmasked a vulnerability in the Polugaevsky variation that, ever since 1973, in Spassky-Tukmakov, was considered favorable for white Goodbye, Polugaevsky variation, at least for now. Goodbye, Eliot Spitzer, for good.