This happened two days after Firouzja effectively defected from his homeland so that he could play Israelis. I see it as something of a credit to him that this is the worst behaviour he displayed in the aftermath.
To Appeal Commitie to Fide
during the blitz game with Carlsen when
I had 2 or 4 second my opponnet speak
Loudly in his Language and of course if this
will be allowed then every body can do this
and of course everybody lose their consentratoin
and I want to request appeal to check
with camera.
That didn't seem so bad. You can see with how much he was toppling pieces that he was having trouble with nerves, which would make the situation all the more frustrating. When players have an increment to play with rules should be decisive on "loss on time is a loss, doesn't matter the position". But here we have some edgecase which settles on some crazy sequence for black to ever win (if white didn't have pawns, the game would've been declared a draw)
Basically have some empathy, losing is rough & in a tournament most players are losing, for all we know he just needed to sleep on it & came around the next day
That'd be ideal, but you only control yourself. Empathisizing with someone doesn't mean you have to agree with them. It just means you don't need to call them out on it months later on a random HN thread when they've come around with a nice result. Maybe it'd be relevant if this article was about another argument with event moderators
From the video of the play, it doesn't look like Alireza threw a fit. Losing on time I'd be frustrated enough to whack the table. It is a tense moment. What seems unsportsmanlike is his interactions with the arbiter.
>I will add some additional information from the broadcast and what microphones picked up during the norwegian live coverage.
>After Alireza lost on time (he fumbled his king, not the bishop), he claimed that there was no mating material and that it should be a draw. There was then a pretty loud discussion at the table, when the arbiter ruled the game as a draw. Magnus claimed there was mating material on the board, the arbiter still ruled a draw. We could then hear Magnus say "Who's ruling is that? Is it yours?" since he thought the arbiter was influenced by Alireza. The head arbiter then came over and ruled a loss on time for Alireza since there was mating material on the board. They moved to the side, and the camera and microphones picked up a heated debate between the head arbiter and the Alireza team and they needed the rules explained to them. After a lot of fuzz, Alireza was shown the very clear rule that it is only a draw if there is "not mating material left by any means possible for Carlsen".
>Then Alireza changed his story and claimed that Carlsen spoke something in Norwegian and had disturbed him. The arbiter then said he should have stopped the clock and addressed it when it happened, and again Alireza claimed that this happened when there was 2 seconds left on the clock and it would be impossible. This was the second time he changed his story.
>The head arbiter ruled that he lost on time and if he had any concerns about Carlsens behaviour he should have adressed it at the table.
>Alireza and his team put in an official complaint, claiming that Carlsen said something in Norwegian and distrubed when Alireza had only seconds left on the clock.
>While the complaint was reviewed, the TV team showed the entire endgame. It shows Magnus spontaneously whisper a norwegian word when he blundered his C-pawn. Carlsen had at the time about 2-3 seconds on the clock, Alireza more than 8 and a completely winning position. If he wanted he had time to complain, but was winning on the board. They played for about 2 more minutes and Alireza fumbled pieces 3 times and lost a lot of time on the clock.
>It was only when he lost on time, all these excuses showed up. The jury overruled his complaint, and Alireza lost on time. He was extremely sympathetic in the interviews before this, but this circus after his loss was an embarassment for him and his team.
Yeah, not only did he throw his water bottle out of anger, he tried to appeal over something he lied about. Hard to care about him at all after seeing that behavior.
