There have been tensions between the FIDE organization and top players like Carlsen since the latter have been promoting an alternative chess organization around Freestyle chess (aka Chesss960), which has slightly different rules.
I.e. this is less about "dress code enforcement" and it is more about "Carlsen is fed up with the FIDE organization in general".
Just to clarify on the facts, as gathered from reddit threads:
He wasn't trying to protest the dress code or make a scene, it wasn't on his mind at all. He had been out for an appearance with a sponsor during a break, then came back to the venue for the next round, and didn't notice that he was wearing jeans and it didn't cross his mind that that would be a violation.
Then he was told to change, and there wasn't enough time for him to go do that before the upcoming round. He thought he was told he could do it either after that round or for the next day, but then was told he would be excluded from that round, and at that point he said f--- it and withdrew entirely.
The controversy was about exactly how the penalty is imposed. The rule is a fine for the first violation and disqualification for multiple. It wasn't clear if his appearance for the day would count as one violation (so he could just incur the fine and wear correct clothing tomorrow), or if each round would be a separate violation. It also wasn't clear if he could play while in violation or would be excluded from each round until he changed. Precedent from other events wasn't clear for either of these.
The headline of "disqualified" is wrong and did not happen - he chose to withdraw.
... and now FIDE has chosen to allow jeans in the remainder of the event. And it appears Magnus will play.
"The principle is simple: it is still required to follow the official dress-code, but elegant minor deviations (that may, in particular, include appropriate jeans matching the jacket) are allowed."
"They were saying that jeans were generally not allowed. If it's generally not allowed, that must mean that there must be exceptions. And if I, with a decent attempt at an outfit apart from that, didn't meet that exception, I don't see what would, frankly."
The only part of this that is totally implausible is the notion that Magnus wouldn't be super familiar with the rules.
I'm not saying I agree with the rule or the specific way it was applied... But Magnus definitely knows the rules.
Edit: for people downvoting... Can you please explain how the world's best chess player of all times wouldn't be familiar with FIDE rules? How is that even plausible? All of the players who compete at these events know the rules.
The rules themselves aren't clear. In fact the rules say that jeans themselves are allowed. The rule is about having frayed worn, or light portions on jeans.
Magnus pants were fine. He is absolutely correct that they were singling him out and you can look back to many recent tournaments to see the clear double standard.
The rules say no such thing, and seem pretty clear to me.
4.10.1. The dress code is strictly observed for the
tournament and all the official events and press
conferences.
4.10.1.1. Dress code for men.
Shoes: Oxfords, loafers, leather shoes or boots, classic
suite shoes.
Dark-coloured pants: black, navy, grey, beige, brown, in
any case unicoloured. No bright colours.
Long-sleeved light-coloured (white, light blue, beige,
brown, etc.), blue or black shirt, in any case
unicoloured. No bright colours.
Dark-coloured jacket, waistcoat or cardigan with
buttons: black, navy, grey, beige, brown, in any case
unicoloured. No bright colours.
Jacket, waistcoat or cardigan may be taken off during
play.
Tie is not mandatory.
[...]
4.10.1.3. No players with t-shirts, jeans, shorts,
sneakers, baseball caps or inappropriate dress are allowed
in the playing area. Any requests to wear national or
traditional dress shall be approved by FIDE Supervisor.
[...]
4.10.9. If a player fails to fulfil his/her duties listed
in Articles 4.10.1, 4.10.4 – 4.10.8, he/she can be
penalised by FIDE Council as follows: 5% of his/her prize
money shall be forfeited to the Organiser and a further 5%
to FIDE for each breach. In cases of serious misconduct,
the player may be disqualified from the event.
I thought it was clear from the context and phrasing that "dark-coloured pants" excluded jeans, but in case there was any doubt:
4.10.1.3. No players with t-shirts, jeans, shorts,
sneakers, baseball caps or inappropriate dress are allowed
in the playing area. Any requests to wear national or
traditional dress shall be approved by FIDE Supervisor.
To a Norwegian reader, blue jeans are definitely included in "pants".
It's entirely possible to read 4.10.1.1, conclude that blue jeans are fine, and then skim over 4.10.1.3.
However the Carlsens read it, after reading it, years will have passed. Carlsen didn't dress like he did after a studious read of the rules. He just put on some nice clothes that were no different from what he usually wears at tournaments.
Except he forgot a belt. A proper organiser would have offered to lend him one.
I would assume (but can't know for sure, of course) that Magnus receives the rules before every event, and that he probably has people to help prepare/brief him on anything he needs to know.
He's not a regular participant, Magnus is almost an institution of his own.
Either way, it's literally his job to follow the FIDE rules (which is unusual but true), and he's the best in the world at his job.
---
> "It's entirely possible to read 4.10.1.1, conclude that blue jeans are fine, and then skim over 4.10.1.3."
In all fairness I originally did the same, so I hear ya. But I'm not a pro at this.
> He's not a regular participant, Magnus is almost an institution of his own.
He is also very much no in agreement with FIDE (a tradition for chess champions - see Fischer, Kasparov). And to be honest FIDE is on FIFA level when it comes to being dodgy as an organisation so it’s hardly surprising.
Presumably after years of coming to these events in dress pants and jackets, around other players all wearing suits, he would know the rules without having to read them. It's not like they changed the rules just to catch him out.
Agreed, but on the surface of it one might think that given the more varied ways that women might dress, they need more rather than less written rules for women vs men to control the way they actually do dress (at FIDE events).
So, the logical conclusion is perhaps, no surprise, that FIDE don't really want to enforce a strict dress code, but rather want to promote the sport, and that translates differently into dress codes (or lack of them) for men vs women...
Honestly, it doesn’t matter whether the rules are clear or not. FIDE isn’t a rule enforcement agency.
FIDE is an agency that exists to promote and develop chess.
Magnus Carlsen is the biggest draw in the chess world by far.
A minor dress code violation should have been dealt with a fine as the rules very much allow for the benefit of the game.
Also, I don’t think there’s a single player who would complain about that (well, other than Kramnik, but Kramnik complains that spectators breathe too loud and that’s cheating).
And then FIDE should have stepped back and thought about the recent growth in the popularity of chess, since the pandemic and thanks to the work of the likes of Magnus and Gothamchess and should have reconsidered the strict dress code rules in the first place.
I have no sympathy for a professional player who can't be bothered, or thinks it's beneath them, to read the rules of the tournaments they're participating in. It is literally your job. I'm guessing these guys are sponsored, get income from speaking appearances, tutoring, and so on. If you're getting paid for what you do, you have no right to complain about having to read tournament rules. At the same time, it behooves tournament organizers to standardize on rules, or at least summarize how their rules differ from some standard.
It makes me wonder if he's been enabled by tournament organizers being lax about enforcement of the rules for top players, when it should be the opposite - those with the most experience should be held to the highest standards because they should know better.
Women athletes who are forced to wear what amounts to underwear when the men aren't - they have a valid complaint about uniform standards. This sounds like a bunch of whiny silver-spooned brats.
Magnus Carlsen is extremely wealthy due to part ownership in large chess sites. He does not need income from these tournaments.
Everyone is saying it's literally their job to know the rules, but for players like Hikaru and Magnus, this is not their job in any meaningful sense, it's a hobby.
Also, Magnus isn't lookirg for sympathy, he's just saying why he can't be bothered complying with these regulations, there's not that much in it for him.
It's not his occupation in some ways. He makes a lot more money from every other venture, so there is not a major economic incentive for him. Likewise, he works with creators and platforms that pull in big numbers of engaged viewers.
I think this is more akin to reading the rules of a formal assembly before participating (eg.: a senate or a formal committee). These guys do chess events for a living. :shrug:
You need to care about the bits around the actual chess playing, but regulations for these things are overwhelmingly made of "play nice, be reasonable, don't be a dick" rules. If you try to play by those high-level rules, apologise if you break the nitty gritty of the low-level rules and fix things at the earliest opportunity, it shouldn't be a big issue. Also, things like dress code can easily be a "not an actual rule, just convention" sort of affair.
I’ve competed in many running races, and I’m not sure if they even have written rules. Presumably they do, but I’ve never read them. You don’t need to, everyone knows what a race is.
Likewise, I use GPL software daily, for a living - doesn’t mean I’ve ever read the license.
It depends on the race, sometimes there are rules that might surprise you. One that I recently signed up for has pretty specific gear requirements for 10k/21k/42k/60k. Trail races can have strict rules as well, like the type of compass and nutrients you need.
It’s very common for sports professionals not to have memorised the rules for every aspect of their sport.
They’re professionals because they understand the game and are in the top 1% of people who play it. Not because they are the best at memorising rules. The latter group are people
Who become umpires/referees instead.
I get paid to attend conferences for my job, I rarely read the detailed rules of the conference and venue. I assume they all say common sense stuff and are mostly the same. It's no different for chess players
Agreed. I’m just thinking about NFL players who have crazy wardrobe leeway in and out of games, but somehow adhere to the minutiae of game time uniform codes. Not because of the insane attention they put into their craft, but because of clear financial or competitive penalties for doing otherwise (that impacts people and time invested in them).
That's because the team's equipment managers lay all of their gear out for them. I doubt any player could confidently answer a minutae-level question about the league's uniform policy.
Not totally true. All NFL teams have dress codes. Some of those players with flamboyant outfits actually pay fines every week. They justify the fines as part of the cost of promoting an individual brand over the team brand or image.
While I don't think it's fair to presume anything about his intentions, it's totally fair to presume he is aware of the rules. He's the world's best chess player of all time, and it's not his first FIDE event.
There’s no way Morphy at his peak would beat Magnus at his peak (and the same goes for any of the old champions)— The way chess is played today is very different. Morphy would have needed to start from scratch and re-learn the game today from a young age to have any chance… But then he wouldn’t be the same Morphy.
Or maybe Magnus wouldn't be able to cope with how Morphy plays the game and would lose. Both of them were/are used to how the game was played in their time.
magnus likely has every game morphy ever played, along with all of his contemporaries memorized, along with at every position in each game, what a strong engine would prefer as a move. morphy would probably be an IM by todays standards, without modernizing
Given the other ways he's currently in conflict in FIDE, the idea is that he finds being disqualified in this way strategically useful, and a way to garner public sentiment that delegitimizes them.
Magnus didn't make FIDE enforce a particularly asinine interpretation of their own rules. If they wanted to, they could have issued a clarification or rectification in the 24 hours after the event, but they haven't.
> "a particularly asinine interpretation of their own rules"
It's pretty black and white.
4.10.1.3. No players with t-shirts, jeans, shorts,
sneakers, baseball caps or inappropriate dress are allowed
in the playing area. Any requests to wear national or
traditional dress shall be approved by FIDE Supervisor.
I apologize for twisting the knife but-- the proper thing to do would have been to research the rules at the source, not to make up stuff or repeat things from third parties.
Wish I had found that section earlier, but I'm less familiar with the chess regulations so it took me a bit to assemble all of the essential parts.
> I apologize for twisting the knife but-- the proper thing to do would have been to research the rules at the source, not to make up stuff or repeat things from third parties.
Well, you are the one who posted the quote, which I used as the basis for my comment. I thought I had read it twice over, and saw no reference to jeans, hence my question. Not statement, question. I did not make anything up.
Did you by any chance add the relevant section of the rules to your comment after I asked a question? The proper thing to do would have been to quote the relevant portion of the rules, instead of adding that later.
You can gather them from anywhere they exist. There might be places where it is easier to gather facts than Reddit.
But wherever you get purported facts, it's hard to know whether they are merely claims, or actual facts. Most of us do indeed short-circuit our evaluation of claims when we trust the source, and although this sometimes causes us to wrongly believe false claims are facts, I think it's probably a good optimization on balance.
Nevertheless, "who should we believe?" remains one of the most fundamental questions of human existence. The tremendous energy required to confirm the factuality of even a trivial claim makes me agree with what I think is your premise — the quoted poster was making a highly dubious assertion of "facts".
But I think s/facts/claims/ would suffice to fix it.
Facts are things that actually happened, (knowledge of) facts can be gathered from Reddit threads but so can (knowledge of) bullshit that is erroneously thought to be facts.
on edit: note I do not say anything about verification, as that is a different thing as to whether or not a thing is a fact. Verification is about how sure the knowledge we have is a fact, but whether a fact is verified or not it remains a fact even if we do not know it is a fact.
> Facts can only be gathered from reliable sources.
Source?
How do you define reliable?
Why is the authors identity important?
Facts don't change because you know the authors name, or trust the source, or like the person telling lies.
The idea that anonymous sources, or "untrusted" sources (for someones definition of trusted) cannot be the source of facts is gaining ground right now, and it needs to be pushed back on wherever it is seen.
It's a lazy Ad hominem, and it's down right dangerous.
I don't care if it's elected officials claiming Russian malinformation or a random chess thread, this is the hill I choose to die on.
The tradition of journalists using anonymous sources doesn’t mean they use anonymous sources, it means that they know who the source is, considers them reliable, but agrees not to name them. Usually they require multiple independent sources.
Unknown sources on the internet are usually not reliable. Anonymous sources should not be trusted, even when there are more than one saying the same thing. Bots and deliberate misinformation abound.
This is not a hill you should die on as it’s a hill that can greatly harm democratic society.
That's one possibility. The other possibility is that the journalist mentions anonymous sources because he/she does not have any and is simply making stuff up.
That’s not journalism, that’s something else. There used to be fact checkers and editors used to have to verify the sources. I realise that the press barons no longer have any integrity, but it certainly used to be the rule.
This is silly. Surely a GM knows the rules. You can't say the facts are he wasn't doing it in protest or wasn't trying to make a scene.
The facts are he violated the dress code rule and then withdrew when it was enforced. He then mentioned his FIDE alternative in the ensuing press coverage.
Edit: also, on paper, him attending a sponsor event and then violating a rule at the competition because he "didn't have time to change" speaks volumes about his priorities.
The rules themselves are silly. Jeans get tagged as a violation but you can wear a jacket that looks as if it belongs in NASCAR (i.e. every square inch belongs to a sponsor) and that flies. Looking at pictures from the event, Magnus looked fine.
I find it weird to witness all the drama, pomp, and circumstance around the professional chess scene. It is a board game. I couldn't care less if they decided to play pool-side with swimming trunks and flip-flops.
Magnus' priorities are clearly that he's won everything up for grabs and plays for fun. He doesn't need to worry about money nor rules set by a sport federation stuck about half a century in the past. If only the rest of us were so free!
I didn't say it, but I agree the rules are silly. However, they are what they are.
What I was saying is that I think Magnus was protesting, and doing it as a publicity stunt. He didn't forget anything. He didn't expect to be given a pass.
And FIDE also weren't being dicks by enforcing the current rules.
Attending corporate sponsorship events sounds soul crushing for someone so free, not fun. His priority is keeping his sponsors happy as he tries to fire up his new thing.
Being a GM doesn’t automatically clarify vague rules. FIDE has some things saying it’s appropriate as long as there’s no holes, others that limit them. Really this comes down to the tournament rather than being a uniform rule to follow.
The arbiter didn’t clarify what was going on first saying it’s a 200$ fine which was meaningless to him, then latter saying you need to change or skip the next round.
Dress-codes can be about more than morality. In a game of intense concentration having distracting clothing could be a distraction. It’s not like every professional sport doesn’t have a dress code.
> It is important to promote a good and positive image of chess. Attire worn during all
phases of the championships and events should be in good taste and appropriate to
such a prestigious chess event.
Clean jeans are normal for “smart casual” now. And the dress code shouldn’t be so prescriptive. If you can pass as “smart casual” somewhere else, should be legal.
The primary impression that most of the contemporary world has of FIDE is probably one of corruption and power games that are completely detached from the game of chess.
There are people who think that it can be reformed and there are people who don't think that FIDE can improve, but certainly no one argues that its past proves its commitment to professionalism.
I'd say you'd be hard-pressed to find a worse performing global sport federation.
What a load of crap. If someone is distracted by a persons attire then they probably are going to be distracted by other players playing, people walking around, noise.
This is nothing more than a dumb outdated rule. He wore jeans. Not a fluorescent jump suit.
I love your approach to this. Perhaps his example will inspire this attitude becoming more prevalent in professional settings. I really hope so - it is definitely just as dumb as women have been saying it is for decades now.
In the case of Carlson that is true. Female players who wear low cut shirts stastically do much better against males than other females who dress more modest.
I can only assume everyone here is going off their own experience - "I don't know the dress code off the top of my head, so he must not as well".
I think Magnus is under a lot of slow-burn pressure. He's the best, but chess is a grindy game, it only takes one mistake to lose, everyone is watching him, there's nowhere to go but down, and he wants to have fun instead of practice his ass off.
A few tantrums might be a way of getting out of the competitive scene on his own terms.
Based on what you said, IMHO may I say this is just a way to disqualifying hime, as he cannot enter into the round in time. That is effective disqualifying. Do not know details but losing a whole round ... can he recover even. Hence, I still ok with disqualifying.
I am not sure knowing the rule but really have jean ... it is crazy rule in any case.
There was no time shortage -- he was asked to change with hours to do it and a hotel that was three minutes away. He said he was refusing "as a matter of principle", not that he didn't have enough time to change.
Exactly, many top players (probably all of them, but some only speak on such issues indirectly) feel FIDE is increasingly power tripping and somewhat out of touch with both the game and the interests of the players.
During Kasparov's era sentiment was similar and ultimately an entirely new players' association with their own world championship cycle was created. In the end they reunified with FIDE, but we're back on the trajectory for something like that to happen again.
I would wager alot that chess.com is strategizing behind the scenes about ways to become that replacement.
Does anyone have any links to political analysis of what's going on with chess.com, and its involvement in various scandals? I think your wager has something to it, in any case.
I think there'd be material there for an investigative journalist (if such a thing still exists to get out the old whiteboard and start figuring out connections and trying to piece together what might be going on behind the scenes. In any case, there's a lot of money involved.
Chesss960 doesn't have "slightly different rules" than chess, it's a variant where all the pieces are randomnly positioned at the start of each match... It's basically playing a completely different game, and one the FIDE has absolutely zero interest in. Freestyle and FIDE organization are not in competition.
> Chesss960 doesn't have "slightly different rules" than chess, it's a variant where all the pieces are randomnly positioned at the start of each match
For the 99% people who don't know what it is, I figured than "slightly different rules" was a reasonable summary.
> Freestyle and FIDE organization are not in competition.
You may want to ask yourself why FIDE is acting like they are indeed in competition. Perhaps they see something that you don't? Several top players getting behind Freestyle chess probably has something to do with it.
Given that the starting layout of the pieces and the movement rules of the pieces are the first things memorized by new chess players, that feels more than slightly different, even to this chess novice
you could compare it to say, Football, either football, and see that its almost the exact same game.
is there a game thats closer to fisher random than chess? checkers? pokemon the card game?
fisher random has the same pieces that move the same way, and at least half the pieces have same starting position as chess (the pawns)
if you compare to say, duck chess, only the opening of fisher random is different, and i imagine sometimes its the same? in duck chess, the openings, midgames, endgames and tactics are all different, whereas in fisher random, the midgames, endgames, and tactics are the same as in chess. fisher random is a superset of chess, and not by much.
engine chess is still considered chess, and similar to fisher random, the pieces and pawns start in different places than they do in chess
Freestyle and FIDE organization are not in competition.
They're competing for the time and attention of the players. If there are two competitions on the same day, players will have to choose which competition to play in. That in itself will determine where the sponsorship money goes unless they can agree not to put events on at the same time. They won't do that because it isn't in either group's interest.
Chances are there also is a commercial angle to it. Magnus has commercial interests in https://playmagnusgroup.com/, which is somewhat at competition with the FIDE.
I always play against my phone; I guess it now has the advantage of having yet another 959 sets of openings stored away that a casual player like me will never memorize.
Still, it seems like a step in the right direction.
Also the context is Magnus wasn’t best at this tournament. He was somewhere in middle in table and had less chances of converting. He has history of throwing tantrums when on tilt (Seinqfield 2022)
He was 2.5/3 the day he was fined (then forbidden to play) for his dress code violation, and was around rank 25 after game 8, one point behind first place. Not a winning performance but not particularly bad either.
Why would you protest against enforcement of the rules that everyone was aware of and agreed to by participating?
I agree that rules against jeans make limited sense. It makes more sense to forbid worn down or shabby looking attire. But one should abide by the rules one signs up to.
> But one should abide by the rules one signs up to.
If it's the only competition in town, and the rules are unjust, and the organisation in question considers you #1 chess player in the world… I can hardly imagine better circumstances for civil disobedience.
Luck is an interesting way of phrasing what can be simply described as pure neurological deficiencies. Your opponents brain forgot to go down a crazy sacrifice line which was actually M6. Is that luck?
Or is it a comparative grey matter evaluation in time and pressure constraints?
there is atill hidden information in chess, and thus luck when you take a guess at what it is.
you provide an example, but the luck is in guessing what the opponent would check or not check.
a clearer example is trying to play out of your opponent's prep. you dont know what lines theyve prepared, and youre taking a gamble with each move on whether theyve prepped it or not. they cant prep every possible line in the available time, regardless of how long (ding wasnt prepared for most of gukesh's attacks, with months to prepare)
theres also luck in that your opponent may not have slept well the night before because a car alarm went off at 2AM, so their comparative grey matter evaluation in time was lower than usual, or they just played a tiring long game where they lost, right before this game.
With our current understanding of biology, if I model outcomes probabilistically (luck) and you model them any other non-equivalent way then I'll be more successful predicting those outcomes. The philosophy behind it is interesting, but "luck" isn't a bad way to describe what's happening to a layman when Carlsen loses.
His edge in rapid/blitz is generally seen as much larger than in classical.
One of the biggest examples of this was in his title defense against Caruana. Every game of that match had been drawn, and in the final game Magnus had a very promising position where he could squeeze with basically no risk.
Instead he offered a draw which was immediately accepted. That sent the game to rapid tie breaks where he casually butchered Caruana 3-0.
The tie breaks were rapid, not blitz. And rapid is where Magnus' gap over #2 is the largest.
And no great player is bad at any time control - they're just 'less good'. Except Magnus - since he's #1 at everything he's just more or less dominant.
Sure, but he's not invincible like in Classic; those 7 wins aren't consecutive (he lost in 2021 and won 22 & 23), meanwhile he's won every classical championship since 2013 (until he stopped playing in 2023).
Hikaru mentioned there had been drama between FIDE and himself about having cameras at the same tournament — and he felt FIDE refused to give him airtime on their streams. Hikaru also had drama with FIDE about the Freestyle league.
I think both happening at the same tournament, which they had threatened to boycott if FIDE didn’t permit them to also play Freestyle league, indicates this is political.
The other piece of context that's worth noting is that Carlsen is not as good as he used to be (he's still the best player in the world, but not by as big of a margin as he was 5-10 years ago) and that he seems to getting increasingly exasperated with chess itself. Every GOAT eventually retires in a different type of way (Kasparov, Anand, Karpov, all did it a bit differently) and Carlsen's might be coming up soon.
This doesn't hold up to a cursory analysis of Carlsen's rating. You can see Carlsen's historical ELO score on FIDE's website and look at it year over year and the difference between Carlsen and the #2, #3, #4, etc... is pretty consistent and very impressive. Usually the difference between a player ranked N and a player ranked N + 1 is about 5-10 ELO points, but Carlsen's is consistently 30+ including at this moment.
While it's true that chess is a young man's game, Magnus has not lost his ability to flow absolute dookie positions into mate like no one else under any controls.
Couldn’t it also be worded - I.e this is less about “dress code enforcement “ and is more about FIDE fed up that Carlson is promoting alternative chess organizations - ?
But if you are going to bother signing up, is 'jeans' really the hill to die on?
If the beef is with the organization, just boycott altogether.
Otherwise, just put on some pants.
EDIT:
Perhaps the downvotes are because of disagreement with methods of protest?
What brings greater attention to your cause?
1. A boycott, you just don't go to the event? And make a press statement about it, that probably doesn't get any headlines.
or
2. Sign up, go, then angrily get disqualified, based on some stupid rule, which gets a lot of headlines, and attention focused on silly rules of the organization?
Guess, if the goal was to effect change, then maybe this was the correct move. But if it was just being pissi, then why bother signing up, you know the rules, so just don't go.
Similarly, is a stupid rule about the type of fabric of a players pants really the hill to die on enforcement-wise? Discretion is a thing. Jeans has NOTHING to do with playing chess.
I agree. This isn't high school rebellion. Is the real world.
Adults dress appropriately for different places and different times. You can be denied admission to a restaurant, a business, an office meeting, or even a concert for not dressing appropriately. This is no different.
Grow up and put on some pants. Be sloppy in your own home.
I've had jobs where I'd absolutely be sent home if I turned up wearing jeans. Might be a little less likely these days but there are many jobs and situations where this still applies.
It's also about showing respect to the host, you dress nicely. Would you wear jeans to church or to a wedding?
Where I'm from, this is normal. There are even theological cases to be made against dress codes in church, beyond "don't show up naked" and similar basics.
If your "host" has unreasonable expectations, then it is on some level unreasonable to follow them.
I was a groomsman at a wedding where someone showed up in jeans.
Japes abounded and some of the more conservative family members were giving severe side-eye, but at no point was it suggested that he be sent home. He showed up in jeans (offense), we gave him a lot of ribbing that he took in good stride (punishment).
The appropriate response to offenses like this doesn't have to be banishment.
You, as chump trying to get a a job, are not similar to Magnus, the greatest chess player of all time, trying to play in a chess tournament. FIDE is well within their rights to demand he not wear jeans. Magnus is well within his rights to tell them to fuck off. FIDE loses more here.
I agree. Just a decade ago, jeans would have me escorted from work. The business dress code was 'pants', jeans were not allowed.
Everyone is arguing about 'jean's not being a big deal. And, all dress codes are wrong.
So, can a female player wear a bikini? By the arguments here, then yes, that should be allowed. Would it interfere with game play? I think yes.
Can someone wear a bright orange Sarang with blinking lights?
How do you draw the line? Doesn't there need to be a line somewhere so there isn't chaos? It's just that todays generation now thinks 'jeans' are ok. 20 years ago they were not.
Obviously, you have never had to use that vacuous argument with an HR department.
This is completely not True.
Either
1. You know it is not true, and are just trolling.
or
2. You do believe this, and have just redefined these words to fit a particular world view. Which I guess can happen. If this generation has re-defined the words 'jeans' and 'pants', then guess, I can't argue against how people re-define words. Just goes to how the world is being divided by re-defining entire vocabularies.
I'm not trolling and correct, I've never had to use that argument. Are you British or something? In the US and most western countries, pants simply means some kind of full leg covering, and generally that's going to be jeans, chinos, or trousers/slacks. All are pants.
A companies dress code will generally exclude jeans if they are not acceptable.
They were Unites States based HR Departments. Pants, did not include Jeans.
You are correct. Looked it up, and Jeans are sub-category of Pants. Though, I live in the US and have never had someone refer to jeans as pants. It seems a technical definition that I've never seen used that way. I know arguing with HR they did not see it that way.
Perhaps HR really meant 'slacks'. as in Dressy Pants.
So we just both have different anecdotal experiences. I live in the US also, and the places I've worked were pretty clear. For example, working at a big4 accounting firm, they specified pretty clearer in the dress code that pants didn't include jeans, as where at the consultancy arm of a fortune 500 tech company, it was fine and pants included jeans unless meeting with a client, but that was clearly specified.
Yep.
And, probably HR departments are also variable in their definitions, and accuracy.
Really, I had to look it up. I had always thought of 'pants' as 'dress pants'. So to have such a broad category of 'pants' seemed like an older technical definition I've never seen used commonly.
But, if you saw in other posts. For the Chess rules. There was another section of the rules that specified 'no jeans'. So for the current controversy, it didn't specifically hinge on this definition of 'pants'.
I wonder if there is even a single player in the tournament who cares about the dress code. It is hard to imagine anyone who was serious about chess caring about the material a player’s pants are made of. No, I think this falls squarely in the realm of bureaucratic administrators who have nothing better to do than assert their power and maintain the illusion of a connection between talent (great chess players) and the trivial signaling games of the upper class (the style of pants one is wearing).
> I think this falls squarely in the realm of bureaucratic administrators who have nothing better to do than assert their power and maintain the illusion of a connection between talent (great chess players) and the trivial signaling games of the upper class (the style of pants one is wearing).
I concur except about the bureaucratic administrators. I think they do this because the upper class will replace them if they don't do the work of asserting the upper class's power.
The upper class has been wearing expensive jeans for a very long time.
The upper class doesn’t need dress code. They know they are the upper class. Dress codes are for petit bourgeois and the upper middle class who try to pretend but everyone knows they are actually middle class.
The upper class, however, seems to care about making other people follow a dress code. Think uniforms for a chauffeur, the long-standing rules around wearing white at Wimbledon, etc.
The only thing that's more ridiculous than an antiquated dress code is an antiquated dress code that's selectively applied to some players and not to others. Other players had to change, so FIDE could hardly make an exception for Carlsen. If Carlsen cares so little about the tournament that he can't even be bothered to change his pants, he should probably not have participated in the first place.
Possibly this is not the actual dress code? Or I'm missing something.
3.a. The following is acceptable for men players, captains, head of delegation.
-- Suits, ties, dressy pants, trousers, jeans...
3.b. The following is NOT acceptable for men players, captains, head of delegation.
-- Beach-wear slips, profanity and nude or semi-nude pictures printed on shirts, torn pants or jeans...
The FIDE dress code [1] appears to only forbid torn jeans, but otherwise explicitly allows them:
> The following is acceptable for men players, captains, head of delegation.
Suits, ties, dressy pants, trousers, *jeans*.
And then later:
> The following is NOT acceptable for men players, captains, head of delegation.
Beach-wear slips, profanity and nude or semi-nude
pictures printed on shirts, torn pants or jeans.
Magnus did not wear torn jeans [2], I can’t see any justification for this enforcement choice.
Don’t even get me started on the sex differences in these rules.
That appears to be from 2013 which is before the rule change that Carlsen is being hit with was made. AFAIK the change happened only a couple of years later.
Or similarly, how he was accused of 'bringing the game of snooker into disrepute' by taking a shot with his left hand (and then playing three perfect games left-handed)
http://en.espn.co.uk/snooker/sport/player/1241.html
I think if anybody's to be commended for their principle it's probably the organisers? They have their dress code, he violated it, was warned, continued to violate it, and they enforced the rule despite his name.
The principle here isn’t about the dress code per se (Carlsen hasn’t made much fuss about it earlier[1]), but the fact that a minor mistake on his part (he chose the wrong pants) is being punished severely. What would would be wrong with giving him a $200 fine and warning him he would be disqualified if he didn’t abide by it next day? Why is it so important to change immediately when you’re still very much dressed acceptable? Stressing about your clothing is not what you want to do when you’re focused on making a come back.
The reason is (according to Carlsen) of course that FIDE is driven by a strict adherence of «rules» which are defined by a small set of people in power. Whenever something happens they always say «oh, but these are the rules», but the process for changing the rules is very one-sided and power driven. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Yet another example of a silly unnecessary rule.
[1]: In an earlier WC he got stuck in traffic and arrived in ski clothing, but changed after the first round.
" that FIDE is driven by a strict adherence of «rules» which are defined by a small set of people in power. Whenever something happens they always say «oh, but these are the rules», but the process for changing the rules is very one-sided and power driven. "
This every government or organization that has ever existed. Every human group from beginning of time. Left or Right, up or down.
That is not what happened. Carlsen refused to change on the same day because it was "a matter of principle" (his words) -- not because there was insufficient time to.
Disagree. FIDE's dress code has double standards, there was a dude in chinos made to look like jeans and they were allowed. To me it seems like a very antiquated rule that needs to be reworked/abolished to keep up with the times.
It's not that I think the dress code is great, I just think it is what it is, and the one's who can say 'it's a matter of principle' (and get my sympathy anyway) are the ones that uphold that written code of the event, and don't waive it for a famous participant; not the famous participant who.. just wants to violate it basically.
He didn't protest being fined. Rather, he (and many other pundits) think being forfeited for a dress code violation is outrageous. (And it doesn't even follow the letter of the law - nowhere is it explicitly stated that violating the dress code can lead to forfeiting a round.)
In my experience "dress code" is very selectively enforced. Men are expected to wear very formal dress, that may limit their breathing and body cooling!
While women get away with tshirts, sweat pants and flip flops!
This is sport event after all, and he is an athlete!
It is like asking female athletes to wear corset and long dress, because that was traditional dress in Victorian England!
If "wearing jeans is not okay for someone playing chess" is a principle, it's a pretty stupid one. Being consistent about enforcing dumb rules is not a virtue when the alternative is not to have dumb rules in the first place
The principal is “I should be allowed to wear reasonable everyday attire”
Standing by the principle was when faced with an ultimatum:
“Change now or else.”
He chose
“Naw, I’ll just leave.”
Also, this is a world rapid blitz tournament - not a "classical" chess tournament. Full length jeans is effectively business casual by today's standards. If a player said they made a mistake because they were late and confirmed that they would change their attire the next day, they should be fined but permitted to play with a warning.
I understand that, and I'm saying the organisers also have the dress code principle, and stood by it when faced with 'oh but the violator is a very famous player, and this might make the news tomorrow'.
I think they come off better, personally. I'm not saying that should be the dress code, he shouldn't be allowed to wear jeans or whatever, or even that it's bad of him to decide not to play rather than to play in jeans. I just don't think 'it became a matter of principle' is a great argument for him, because it just makes me think better of the organisers for similarly standing by theirs.
If two people have conflicting principles and both choose to stand by their principles then they'll be in conflict, but you're not obliged to pick a winner.
the sense check i get from hammer's interview with hikaru is that they think magnus was targetted, and that where typically they wouldnt mind and the "oh, yeah ill wear fancy pants tomorrow" would typically be fine, magnus was targetted because of the freestyle chess negotiations.
another player was not fined or punished at all for wearing basically the same thing
They fined/censored him. He accepted the consequence and said "ok, I'll change as soon as I'm back at my hotel." They then hit him with a second infraction, for still being out of dress code.
I'm not a chess dress code rules lawyer, but I think the principle here is that the judge was power tripping and hit him twice for a single dress code violation.
Precisely this. The dress code was not a secret. Once Carlsen had little chance of winning the event he decided to make it about himself with this display. No one should commend this selfish arrogance, and in no universe is it "principle" to exhibit such prima donna behaviour for attention (and to conveniently exit from a likely loss).
Magnus is a tremendous chess player. He's also, by all evidence, a massive asshole, and continuously shows boorish behaviour and terrible sportsmanship.
And yes, he is a massive asshole, at least in regards to chess. He is an incredibly sore loser, constantly makes it about himself (at the cost of every other competitor, such as in this case: they can't have beaten him, but instead he had to do this spectacle to give himself an excuse to exit and to asterisk their win). He has done this sort of thing again and again.
He has loads and loads of fanboys who will always excuse this behaviour. Who'll say that he has earned the right to be like this. They'll adulate poor sportsmanship like showing up terribly late "like a boss", as if this isn't contemptible behaviour. Eh.
And he can. He might be the greatest chess player ever. Doesn't change that he's obnoxious and boorish.
The reason why Magnus leaving is a spectacle is because of us and what we want out of our superstars, otherwise he's just another player, and players drop out all the time for any reason and nobody cares.
The masses are the ones who elevate him and assume that because he plays a game so well then the spotlight must be on him. Magnus did not seize the spotlight of our attention and he never owned it.
No one is asking him to act like this. Many other greats across many domains manage to not be like this. His performance alone gets him loads of attention, and this is all just distractions.
And yes, people do drop out. It happens. Magnus is famously a very sore loser, however, so when he suddenly is a Dress Code Liberty Fighter to drop out, it should be called out for the ridiculous ruse it is. That people are actually celebrating it and talking about his principles...how profoundly gullible can people be?
The guy has an insane number of fanboys, however. It's absolutely bizarre.
> Why would smart people care about denim vs. trousers?
Mostly it's about the sponsors. It's much more difficult to get sponsors for an event if the participants are dressed like they slept in their clothes. That's why organizers try to impose minimal standards on dresscodes.
Jeans and sneakers are maybe debatable, but players showed up with cargo pants, shorts or tank tops on other events.
In the FIDE regulation for that event jeans were explicitly mentioned as not allowed. FIDE would have made a fool out of themselves when allowing Magnus to wear the jeans.
Not sure I agree. Chess has moved towards a much younger audience over the last 5 years, and is incredibly popular now. Gets 10s of thousands of viewers on Twitch, for example & there are many players that could be seen as modern day celebrities in their own right.
FIDE needs to embrace the younger generation that think the game is cool. Ancient dress codes are a distraction.
Not only still. It increasingly belongs to old people. Old people have capital, young people salaries. Capital has grown faster than salaries for a while, and ai should make the difference even bigger.
There’s quite a difference between casual clothes and dressing indecently. IMO jeans are fine as long as they’re inconspicuous (such as raggy jeans with holes in them or worn in such a way that the buttocks are showing) for such an event. Swimsuits are for a different type of event where if you’re showing up in trousers they would disqualify you.
Other environments manage more casual dress codes without too much difficulty. I can’t wear a swimsuit to the office but I can wear jeans. No-one seems especially confused about where the line is.
Having never read any formal dress code rules for any office, hospital, or place of worship I've been inside in my life, I've never gotten kicked out for wearing the wrong thing, and I've also never seen someone wearing a swimsuit in any of those places. This isn't some uniquely problem that only chess tournaments have, and it's not nearly as hard to solve as you're making it out to be.
> It's much more difficult to get sponsors for an event if the participants are dressed like they slept in their clothes.
Anyone who considers jeans to look like "clothes someone would sleep in" is immediately dubious in my book. Jeans are so extraordinarily uncomfortable to sleep in that I don't think I've ever intentionally done that in my life.
Many jeans today are not the stiff and sturdy work clothes they used to be. They have the appearance of it, but are actually made of a relatively thin, stretchy fabric that is more comfortable, and much less durable.
It seems rather harder to get sponsors when you can no longer attract the best player in the world to your tournaments. That they made much more of a fool out of themselves by holding "world championships" without attracting the undisputed best player in the world to them.
This looks to me like a case where FIDE got greedy and forgot to balance the talents interests with the sponsors.
> Mostly it's about the sponsors. It's much more difficult to get sponsors for an event if the participants are dressed like they slept in their clothes.
Would be interesting if they can get mattress companies or apparel companies that have good comfy clothes as sponsors. Why not play chess on a firm mattress?
We'll see how easy it gets to get them when Magnus is playing at some parallel tournament, though. Nakamura, for instance, has already made a point about that.
id think the venue more than the sponsors. the media sponsor being the norway public broadcast to specifically put magnus on tv means theyve ticked off at least one sponsor by disqualifying him
> Why would smart people care about denim vs. trousers?
Prescriptive contest rules suck, but I don’t like the attitude endemic to nerds that truly smart people don’t care about personal aesthetic. There’s no more honor in not caring how you look than there is in not caring about food or fine art. I have friends that are smart, capable professionals that look like they only get new clothes when their mom notices their shirts exceed the totinos pizza roll stain threshold and drags them to Bob’s— whether it’s at home, work, wedding, date night, court, the gym, the club, a con, etc. You’d expect them to reject people’s tendency to judge people on their looks, but ironically, they deem anyone that puts any effort into their appearance (a.k.a. doesn’t solely dress for comfort) shallow, unintelligent, and boring. Predictably, gender expectations play a huge part.
> I don’t like the attitude endemic to nerds that truly smart people don’t care about personal aesthetic.
Then IMO you should be on Magnus' side here. He is a truly smart person and IMO he looked clean, groomed, and ready for business in those jeans. He wears a mindfully put together outfit of good quality. This is good character, is it not?
It's a shibboleth for ugly people; since they can't "win" on their looks, they opt not to play that game at all and need to loudly brag about their superiority over the vapid "fashion police".
It's a shibboleth for poor and dumb people; they don't have anything going for them (maybe they are not ugly but that doesn't help anymore after a certain age), so they need to play dress up to appear more than they are (and ever will be) and act like it too. Always funny to see.
Why wouldn't smart people care about appearances? If the organization and participants desire to present themselves as dignified and worthy of respect, a certain standard of dress is appropriate.
More generally, appearances are important because they are clear signs of attention and care. Something worth our respect is worth dressing up for, and a collective dressing up reinforces the importance and elevation of a given event or moment over other events or moments of lesser import.
Times have changed. Offices used to be full of people in full suits, with trousers. Now it is common for CEOs to wear jeans, and offices are much more tailored to working comfortably, rather than having a "posh" facade.
It doesn't really matter, regardless of whether or not we agree with the rules, jeans are clearly prohibited in the tournament:
4.10.1.3. No players with t-shirts, jeans, shorts,
sneakers, baseball caps or inappropriate dress are allowed
in the playing area. Any requests to wear national or
traditional dress shall be approved by FIDE Supervisor.
Having bad rules written down doesn't make them immune to criticism. It's a silly unnecessary rule that shouldn't exist, and while Carlsen doesn't deserve any special treatment, being consistent in enforcing a bad rule isn't better than not having the rule in the first place.
Most sports have dress codes. Some for obvious reasons, such as team sports where the players need to be able to identify each other, but others because they want things to look professional and more organised.
Take a sport like rowing. Technically there's no reason why all the rowers in a boat needs to be dressed identically, but it looks more professional.
Chess to me is boring because the better player should win/draw unless they blunder. And we (generally) know who the better player is because of ratings.
I’ve always much preferred games that in the short run have a luck component that can create massive swings (poker, backgammon, Scrabble) and inequality.
Memorizing openings is a waste of time unless/until you have a shot at good enough to make a living playing chess - about 1000 people and most of them live in poor countries where cost of living means they don't need to earn much to live.
Not really. there is some but a lot of it is how this pattern looks in different places on the board. You never see a text book endgame so you have to see how to win no matter where the pieces hapyen to be.
It’s funny because that’s partly what this a LOT about. FIDE, the defacto governing body of chess, wants freestyle chess (aka 960 aka Fischer random, which does lot to fix the memory issue you’re talking about) to not be allowed to have a “world championship”.
And that attitude led us to these honestly inane events.
Basketball is a game for tall people. Lifting is a sport for strong people. Chess is a game for smart people. Is that controversial or incompatible with 5 year old kids playing chess?
Because smart people realize that all associations and organizations have rules and showing strangers that you follow the rules is an easy way to signal across languages and cultures that you are all there for the same reason
Chess itself is a collection of very arbitrary rules.
They happen to be rules that people decided are fun, or interesting, or something. If the dress code isn't fun they should change it.
And for that matter... this tournament is a blitz game, itself a change of rules. Perhaps it would be well suited to a change in dress code. Formal clothes for classic chess. Show up in your PJs for a game that takes as long as brushing your teeth.
On the womens’ side, the biggest FIDE sponsor is breast enhancement surgery. That makes women’s choice of shirts important for the sponsor’s marketing. Maybe these rules are trying to signal that the attention is spread across men as well.
> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Not only Magnus was saying he would withdraw if FIDE didn’t approve them also participating in the Freestyle league. Hikaru Nakamura was also saying he’d withdraw if FIDE forced them to choose between leagues.
FIDE conceded — and then punished Magnus for his jeans and refused to allow Hikaru to have cameras. It’s hard not to see it as political, given the context and fact FIDE went after multiple top level players.
If chess is a sport,
then the mind deserves its own professional chess shoes
"Earlier in the day, another participant, Mr. Ian Nepomniachtchi, was also fined for breaching the dress code by wearing sports shoes. However, Mr. Nepomniachtchi complied, changed into approved attire, and continued to play in the tournament," the statement added."
I used to frequent fancy private parties with people who mostly all had money and nobility titles (EU). Unless it was a ball (which I used to go to do) that had a strict dress code, most men had nice cars, nice shoes and... Dress jeans.
Some other guy interviewed by Norwegian television also came out from the arbiter room, but he didn't get fined. His pants looked like worn jeans, but since it wasn't denim material (only made to look like ugly jeans) it was ok. Highlights how weird the rules are.
For God's sake, no pictures of the shoes in that article, just a link to a long ass video where she allegedly holds them up. Im not watching a 20 minute video to see shoes.
Those look like pricey converse knock-offs, which implies the organisers are operating under a different definition of "sport shoes" than the rest of us...
The rules specifically said "dress to impress" and she wore thousand dollar shoes. Ridiculous. Good for Magnus, somebody needs to take a stand and he's got the clout to do so.
That's an abuse of quantifiers, and an interesting one. You suggest that the judges become literal fashion police, each individual with the authority to remove a contestant whose clothes are not impressive in their personal opinion. That should indeed be protested against; it's a chess tournament and not a fashion show.
The word "to" is commonly interpreted to mean "for the purpose of" in this context. That is, the contestant should put effort into making their appearance impressive. Which, I also find offensive, but to a lesser degree.
I'd propose that they certainly aren't "sport" sneakers, which is what she got dinged for. Unless you're a multi-millionaire playing tennis in a country club, I guess -- but the only reason a person would wear those particular shoes in sport would be to impress their peers.
And if you're not personally impressed by money, how would you interpret the "dress to impress" guideline? Would you find any shoes to be impressive? Perhaps no shoes at all? I'd lean towards 6" platforms, myself, as some people find tallness impressive.
You suggest that the judges become literal fashion police, each individual with the authority to remove a contestant whose clothes are not impressive in their personal opinion.
See also: Tennis. Schools. Restaurants. Courtrooms. Offices. Stores. Even public sidewalks.
Oh, Douglas Adams would have had a blast with this.
Carslen: "But you can't disqualify me! This is outrageous! I've been planning for this tournament for months, and now you're telling me I can't play because of my pants?"
FIDE: "I'm afraid the rules are quite clear, dear fellow. Proper dress code is required, and jeans simply won't do. You should have read the fine print."
Carslen: "Fine print? What fine print? This is a travesty! A complete and utter waste of my time. Do you have any idea how much effort I've put into preparing for this tournament?"
FIDE: "I understand your frustration, but rules are rules. Now, if you'll just step aside, we have a schedule to keep. The tournament must go on without you."
Carslen: "Without me? But I'm the best player here! You can't just kick me out like this. It's not fair!"
FIDE: "Life's not fair, my friend. Now, if you'll excuse us, we have some important work to do. Good day to you."
Carslen: "But wait! You can't just leave me here. What am I supposed to do now?"
FIDE: "That's not my problem. Perhaps you could try your hand at some other hobby. Knitting, perhaps? Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a tournament to run."
Carslen: "You know what? Forget it. I'm withdrawing from this tournament. And you know what else? I'm going to take my jeans and start my own chess tournament. With blackjack. And hookers. Actually, forget the chess tournament. I'm just going to start a jeans-only nightclub. That'll show you!"
FIDE: "What? You can't do that! You've already been disqualified for the dress code violation."
Carslen: "Oh, I can do it. And I'm going to do it. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some plans to make. Toodle-oo!"
This applies equally to everyone is always the rallying cry when a rule applies to everyone while not being equally onerous to everyone. It's like dress codes in schools that are much easier for girls to violate than boys, or office hairstyle bans that seem to only target styles used by black people.
Yep, this is it. Magnus played poorly, knew jeans were not allowed, made himself get kicked out so that he could spin this as FIDE being unreasonable. It's all about the saudi money. This has been a debate in Norway. Surprised to see so many pro-Magnus comments here on HN. It's all a play.
I’d surmise this was about promoting his new freestyle chess thing.
A loud silly issue where he can loudly tie back to what could be seen as “archaic” rules for the sake of rules and a federation that is not where the best players play.
Seems like it might be the beginning of a few issues for a handful of visible players :)
This appears to be a weekly chess column in the newspaper, and they all seem to have a chess puzzle in them[1]. I suspect in the paper it would be at the end of the column, with the answer on another page. It's perhaps a bit of an inelegant way to present it on the web version, but that's probably some sort of tradeoff with how the Guardian's website works, and if it's worth adding some sort of special case presentation for the chess column, which probably isn't exactly the most read bit of the site.
I think the dress code is stupid. But if he were against it, he should not have attended at all. To attend and make a scene is just about publicity. It touches the superficial thread of rebellion without being respectable or commendable.
Rules don't get changed due to people quietly saying "I don't like this rule" while staying at home. Public rebellion is what gets the job done. Protests that don't inconvenience anyone are irrelevant.
Would it have been quiet if the defending champion decides to stay at home and when someone asks him he says it's because of a disagreement about the event's rules? Wouldn't that have gone around and raised the issue/discussion?
I'm still undecided who's right here or who should have done what: I'm not for stupid dress codes, but it also seems silly to get hung up over if you can easily comply at no detriment to your performance or anything, so idk, just saying that it does seem like an option to stay home if you disagree when you're someone whose absence would be very conspicuous
I mean...I feel like lots of rules are changed by people just saying they don't like the rule? Modern society would be pretty unworkable if the only way to change any rule was public rebellion.
(Plus, its not really clear to me that Carlson actually cares about the dress code rule? By his own admission, he broke it by accident, not like a concious act of rebellion, and his issue seems to have been with the way it was then enforced rather then the rule itself.)
He didn’t yell or cause a scene, he broke the rule, received a punishment and explained his reasoning in an interview afterwards. That is perfectly respectable in my opinion.
Part of what makes showing up in jeans way more valuable than not showing up is how normal it seems otherwise. Show, don’t tell, basically. If you didn’t know about the rule it wouldn’t have seemed out of place at all.
Everyone is arguing about 'jean's not being a big deal.
And, all dress codes are wrong.
So, can a female player wear a bikini? By the arguments here, then yes, that should be allowed. Would it interfere with game play? I think yes.
Can a man wear a bright orange Sarang with blinking lights?
How do you draw the line? Doesn't there need to be a line somewhere so there isn't chaos? It's just that todays generation now thinks 'jeans' are ok. 20 years ago they were not.
Something funny related to the topic of this news in my opinion:
in the picture selected by the newspaper, the sponsor of the event looks like to be the "Freedom Holding corp"...
It looks like he was disqualified from one event and then withdrew for the other related event. He said he would change his pants for tomorrow but was told that he had to change before the start of the next game which was scheduled for today. When he indicated that he would not do so he was disqualified, ie. FIDE removed him from the schedule.
So the only possible way for him to be disqualified is if he hung around for the rest of the tournament repeating the same thing over and over again? Sounds like newspeak logic.
Here in the U.K., where so many of these stupid rules and customs originate, dress codes have always been a way to exclude the ‘wrong sort’. Which, is usually working class and poor people.
Coincidence. The world best table tennis player, Fan Zen-Dong also just resigned, as well as two times world champion Chen Meng, from the sleazy organization called WTT. Which decides on WC and Olympics.
I love watching institutions cling to silly little rules to the point where it actually hurts them. It's a perfect demonstration of the problems with groupthink.
I think it's not so much groupthink, but rather that those institutions feel the need to make themselves look important and essential to the sport, instead of being there to facilitate the sport.
penalised by FIDE Council as follows: 5% of his/her prize
money shall be forfeited to the Organiser and a further 5%
to FIDE for each breach. In cases of serious misconduct,
the player may be disqualified from the event.
But the penalty he got was forfeit one game, i dont see that in the rules?
I think that is why some people enjoy John Daly in golfing. For those unfamiliar, look up him up on google images. He is known for usually wearing some sweat pants and smoking a cigar in tournament play.
Some context. The dress code and rules for enforcement are created by the players' representatives commission in FIDE, consisting of active and former competitive players [1] [2].
In a presentation shared with the players about the dress code before the event, jeans are listed on a slide titled "What's NOT allowed?" with "Not Approved" stamped in big red letters over a picture of jeans [3]. FIDE CEO says jeans have been banned in this event since 2018, and that players were asked for feedback on the dress code before the event, and none complained [4].
The same dress code presentation shared with players also has instructions for the Chief Arbiter:
The dress code is strictly enforced to maintain a consistent level of professionalism and respect for the event. The Chief Arbiter, in consultation with the FIDE Athletes Commission, will ensure that the dress code is upheld.
First Infringement
A financial penalty of 200 € for open events and 100 € for women's events. The player is allowed to play the current round.
Further Infringements
Exclusion from the pairings for the next round. Each round counts as one infringement.
Other top players were also asked to change their attire when found in violation. The hotel is a few minutes away [5]. Magnus Carlsen was notified of his violation after his second game on day 2 (round 7) and asked to change into approved attire before the third round of the day (round 8), played half an hour later [6]. Since he declined, he was excluded from playing in the last round of the day (round 9). This counts as a forfeit, and combined with Magnus' score until that point would make a podium finish unlikely, although he would still have been allowed to play in subsequent rounds [7].
In an interview, Magnus stated he was not having the best tournament, explained he had already lost his patience with FIDE due to an ongoing feud over the freestyle chess championship, and stated he declined to change into approved attire as a matter of principle and would withdraw from the rapid tournament and also the upcoming fide blitz tournament, apologizing to fans at home [8].
I remember in the late 80s there was a bar called “Lennon’s” in Liverpool. The dress code banned jeans. Pretty sure John Lennon would have despised the place.
> Honestly, I’m too old at this point to care too much. If this is what they want to do I” ll probably set off to somewhere where the weather is a bit nicer
"At the time of his default, Carlsen had scored 5/8 and was a point and a half behind the leaders, with little chance of retaining his title."
EDIT: I find it hilarious that this is downvoted. It's incredibly cogent to the point. If Magnus was leading the event I guarantee he wouldn't have pursued this distraction.
It's an odds thing. He was unlikely to win. There are some very strong opponents. Could he have won? Sure. But note that he didn't protest the dress code at the beginning of the event.
And sure, he's "fed up" with FIDE (in the sense that everyone who thinks they are bigger than a league does). So why did he participate? If he had the purported principles, he should just withdraw from FIDE sanctioned events, no?
1.)
"Saturday, 28 Dec 2024 00:33 FIDE statement regarding Magnus Carlsen’s dress code breach" https://www.fide.com/news/3363
2.)
"Chess: Carlsen disqualified in New York after refusing to change out of jeans
The world No 1 was defaulted from the World Rapid Championship and has also chosen to withdraw from the World Blitz saying ‘it became a matter of principle’"
Had a friend who sold boats for a living. One day he was at a business meeting where the attire was listed as "business attire". When one of his buddies, another salesman, showed up wearing shorts, a t-shirt and sunglasses, my friend made a snarky remark about him not getting the memo about the attire. His buddy responds, "I don't know what business you're in, but I am in the boat business."
What's your point? I'm not suggesting that Sundar ALWAYS wears jeans and NEVER wears suits.
I'm saying that it is ACCEPTABLE to wear jeans, even in a professional setting. Jeans are "smart business attire." (If the dress code were "formal," that would be something else. But it isn't.)
Kudos to Magnus for taking the high ground in such a low way :)
Western dress codes are obnoxious. People shouldn't be evaluated for how they look or what they wear, at least in a competitive event like this one, but rather on how they play. He's absolutely right to be principled about this.
At the same time, how he did it has such a touch of rebellious style.
I wonder if people would care as much about chess if it didn't foster an image of sophistication and intellectualism? Imagine if most players just turned up in street clothes and looked more like software developers .. would sponsors and the public be just as interested? Would available prize money be as good?
Why? I'm neutral on Western. I'm fine with Western. I'm fine with non-Western. I'm not okay with discriminating against non-Western.
My personal preference is for places to use locally-appropriate clothing for the simple, pragmatic reason that e.g. Western suits in Sub-Saharan Africa get too hot. Most local clothing tends to have gotten what it is for a reason. Even Arab clothing -- much criticized in the West for covering too much skin in the heat -- does well in sandy environments and ones where sunburn is an issue, and tends to be loose enough to provide for adequate airflow.
It's an arbitrary list of clothing items that is supposedly put together to "promote a good and positive image of chess", regardless of where you come from.
"Business casual (European standards), which means long trousers or pants, shirt, jacket, with or without tie (no t-shirts, no polo, no jeans, no sports shoes or sneakers or slippers, no hats or caps (except for religious reasons) and the equivalent style of dress for women players.
National costumes and team uniforms are allowed."
It quite literally says "European standards."
National costumes -- I don't know the context here -- usually means vetted traditional clothing (such as, for India, a sari, but not the much more common selwar suit). It also -- by definition -- excludes minority groups (for example, Inner Mongolia or Tibet in China, or the Kurds in Turkey). There's also the very practical matter that "minority groups" include neurodiversity too.
The whole point is to judge people on their chess and not on their looks. It's the exact same issue as professional hairstyles or, before that, professional skin colors. A 1930-era US or German management consulting firm would obviously look worse to clients with a non-white consultant. There was an objective reason to discriminate in positions. That didn't make it right.
In either case, if the goal of FIDE was to make money, discriminating would make complete business sense, regardless of ethical value.
If the goal is to promote chess, people should be able to see themselves in the game, and participate regardless of how they choose to look. Back to the management consulting example, in 1930, a qualified black management consultant would serve the additional benefit of being an ambassador to and role model for their community.
I find people who use it in a derogatory don’t do much actual thinking to start with.
The literal origin of its use in social justice realms was to put an emphasis and value on critical thinking.
By pondering the nature of society one can be “awoken” to the deeper sociological forces which shape individual lives.
I’ll freely admit the term has been perverted by a range of actors with motivations I disagree with.
But the original meaning and intent is valuable: all of us live in a world of hidden boundaries and power structures, but seeing that requires thought.
Many people don’t want to think for themselves, and they hate those that do.
Part of being woke is usually seeing others as asleep and not as enlightened, which means it's ok to lecture them to hell and back. There's a difference between thinking critically and looking for problems to feel superior.
I agree to an extent, I think the term lost the original meaning.
My main complaint with the state of politics is too little thoughts and reflection. I think cable news, talk radio, and social media are the root cause.
Reading a daily newspaper or viewing the nightly news gives you a full day to think things over. We are more driven by emotion as a result of never having time to digest and reflect.
You aren't wrong, but to be entirely fair, the original meaning of "woke" came from the black activist community and referred to the hidden boundaries and power structures of systemic white supremacy, ignorance of which could directly threaten their lives.
I think it's important to remember that specific context when talking about where "woke" as a concept comes from, its general acceptance within the leftist community has, unfortunately (and maybe inevitably,) come with a bit of whitewashing.
Do they really? I have some black slacks that are 10 year old hand-me-downs from a relative and they look fine. My dress shirt for multiple years was a $5 second hand purchase - and I got more compliments on that shirt than on the ones that I got new.
Most such things are more about insider cultural knowledge than actual money. Most “upper class” activities and styles can be done cheap or free, but you need to know how.
He's one of a few extremely high profile players to publicly support (and maybe financially back / have a stake in?) Freestyle Chess, which may or may not be a venture capital-backed attempt to force a schism in the FIDE World Chess Championship.
He is shareholders of chess.com since they bought out Play Magnus. He is not losing it. He has competing economic interests to FIDE and very little interest into being cooperative with them more than is strictly necessary.
> I wonder if this guy is slowly going off the deep end like a number of other past chess masters. He's been such a great example for aspiring players for a while now but I can't help but worry.
I don't know much else about him, but nothing in this story reads to me like someone going off the deep end. It sounds like someone who picked a perhaps-unfortunate hill to die on, though if you aren't willing to take risks to argue against silly rules when you're at the top of your game then when will you, but not someone losing his faculties.
Well there are other circumstances too. He didn't defend his classical chess champion title. He likes his alcohol.
He hasn't gone off the deep end (past tense). But is it a process currently in progress? Only possible to say in hindsight but does certainly seem possible.
Probably just burned out from chess, especially training the whole day for competitions.
We are animals and eventually the brain will rebel against extreme repetitive mental effort that is perceived to be at least partially useless (and given he's already been the world champion, it's easy for part of him to think there's no point in training).
There have been tensions between the FIDE organization and top players like Carlsen since the latter have been promoting an alternative chess organization around Freestyle chess (aka Chesss960), which has slightly different rules.
I.e. this is less about "dress code enforcement" and it is more about "Carlsen is fed up with the FIDE organization in general".
reply