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Top ranking chess player Magnus Carlsen goes back to the World Championship Blitz on Monday after his governing body agreed to release a dress code that got him fined and denied a late-round game in another tournament for refusing to change out of jeans.
The president of the International Chess Federation, Arkady Dvorkovich, said in a statement Sunday that he would have World Blitz Championship tournament officials consider “matching jeans” with a jacket and other “elegant minor deviations” from the dress code. lamented
He said that Carlsen’s position – which culminated in his conclusion of the tournament Friday – highlighted a need for more discussion “to ensure that our rules and their application reflect the evolving nature of chess as a global and accessible sport.”
Carlsen, meanwhile, said in a video posted Sunday on social media that he would play – and wear jeans – in the World Blitz Championship when it starts Monday.
“I think the situation was badly mishandled on their side,” said the 34-year-old Norwegian grandmaster. But he added that he likes to play blitz – a fast form of chess – and wanted fans to be able to watch, and that he was encouraged by his discussions with the federation after Friday’s showdown.
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“I think we all want the same thing,” he suggested in the video on the YouTube channel of his Take Take Take chess app. “We want the players to be comfortable, sure, but also relatively presentable.”
The events began when Carlsen wore jeans and a sports jacket on Friday to the Rapid World Championship, which is separate from, but held in conjunction with, the blitz event. The chess federation said Friday that long-standing rules prohibit jeans at those tournaments, and players are accommodated in close quarters to facilitate sartorial switch-ups if necessary.
An official fined Carlsen $200 and asked him to change pants, but he refused and was not paired for a ninth-round game, the federation said at the time. The organization noted that another grandmaster, Ian Nepomniachtchi, was fined earlier in the day for wearing sports shoes, changed and continued to play.
Carlsen has said that he offered to wear something else the next day, but officials were unyielding. He said “it became a bit of a matter of principle,” so he stopped the quick and blitz championships.
In the video posted on Sunday, he questioned whether he had indeed broken a rule and said changing clothes would unnecessarily interrupt his concentration between games. He called the sentence “incomprehensibly harsh.”
“Of course, I could change. Of course I didn’t want to,” he said, and “I stand by that.”
& copy 2024 The Canadian Press
