Former World Chess Champion and current Anne Applebaum co-conspirator Garry Kasparov played an ambitious but theoretically unsound gambit during an appearance on Fox News last night.

Kasparaov opened with the standard 1. e4 e5 2. nc3 nf6, but then shocked television viewers around the world with 3. "Putin has a very good chance of turning [the] Middle East ablaze" (?!), losing control of the center and also his mind. In doing so, Mr. Kasparov exposed himself to the obvious and winning reply, "Have you picked up a newspaper or turned on a television in the last 15 years, Garry?" but Fox News, which has an ELO rating of -2,000, responded instead with 3. ...a nod of approval (?!), leaving chess commentators as well as ordinary people both confused and agitated.

Poorly played.

One could simply point to Russia's (mostly) successful efforts to prevent the U.S. from drone-bombing Syria into the Stone Age, or its major contributions to the recent nuclear deal with Iran, or the fact that Russia has not been bombing/invading/torturing the Middle East for the last 15 years (unlike a certain so-and-so), but Garry Kasparov is not to be reasoned with. What happened, exactly?

Once known for his cunning attacks and superhuman calculation, Kasparov now struggles to form coherent sentences. He regularly torments op-ed pages with statements such as "fascism has come to Russia", and uses television appearances to compare Putin to Adolf Hitler.

We can only speculate why Kasparov has chosen this extremely risky line. Most likely his neo-conservative handlers have promised him the title of Democratic King of Russia once Putin is finally forced into exile due to his 3% unapproval rating. In the meantime, Kasparov continues to blunder away the last miserly scraps of respect that rational people once had for him.

Why can't Garry stick to what he's good at, like accusing IBM of plotting shadowy conspiracies? Come back to reality, Garry. We miss you.