As an amateur chess journalist myself I was really excited to see chess coverage from a mainstream journalist that respected the subject matter and wasn't filled with excrutiating misconceptions and downright mistakes. So that colours my thinking. But I also think the piece was just an example of good magazine style writing. The individual parts of the story were introduced in detail and the whole thing came together in the end. Unlike you I thought the click-baity headline was the worst thing about the article. I excused the author on the basis that he probably had no input on the title Slate chose to run his piece with. My apologies for the unnecessarily snarky tone in my original reply.
I agree that it was a slightly clickbait title, but my bigger problem is that I don't feel the article delivered on the promise. The event referenced in the title is an amazing upset, and the article addressed that only very obliquely. I want to read an article about that upset, not about the sociopolitical environment of this tournament, coupled with the tournament's history.
Alternatively, if the sociopolitical environment is worth reading, then have the title let me know that's what I'm getting in for, and organize the article in such a way that it's clearly the focus, rather than a distraction from the main story.
