Playing by Magnus’s rules

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(Newcastle Chronicle, 10 January 2025)

One of the great things about chess is that the rules are the same for everyone. Certainly, if you play in the Northumbria League, rules are applied equally without fear or favour – no matter who you are.

Yet the recent World Rapid and Blitz Championships in New York showed that there is sometimes one rule for VIPs, and another for everyone else. The “Jeansgate” scandal involving Magnus Carlsen erupted, almost derailing both events and prompting a rash of media stories worldwide.

Carlsen, the world number one for over a decade, is pure box office, and his very presence in a competition tends to attract big money sponsors. But the extent to which Carlsen can bend competition rules is now being tested – as FIDE, the international chess federation, seems willing to compromise for him.

In New York, FIDE imposed a dress code that required the players to wear formal attire, not jeans. Carlsen turned up for Day 2 in jeans, was fined $200, and then defaulted in one game, knocking him out of contention.
In response, he withdrew and was only persuaded to play in the World Blitz after the head of FIDE, Russian Arkady Dvorkovich, allowed him to play in his jeans again.

Then, to rub in the point that Carlsen can do things differently, the Norwegian agreed to share the World Blitz title with Russia’s Ian Nepomniachtchi rather than play out a long series of sudden death games. This unorthodox finale was also approved by Dvorkovich, against FIDE rules.

All of this comes against the background of a wider power struggle in the chess world between Carlsen and FIDE. In 2023, Carlsen abdicated his Classical World Championship title (where players have longer for their moves), asking for a combination of Classical, Rapid and Blitz games instead. He is also involved in a multi-million dollar Freestyle Chess championship (where the back-rank pieces are shuffled randomly) that wants to call itself a World Championship – much to the annoyance of FIDE, which sees itself as the governing body of all forms of chess.

Below the 2700-rated grandmaster level, the financial conditions available to Carlsen and his rivals are unattainable, and only the very top players worldwide can master the very tricky Freestyle Chess variant. All of which may ironically make Carlsen look like an enfant terrible akin to one of his biggest critics, the American grandmaster Hans Niemann.

But on the other hand, FIDE has become increasingly bureaucratic and inflexible, particularly since being controlled by a series of Russian officials. Where the Carlsen v FIDE feud is headed, no one knows. It all seems a world away from the Northumbria League.

PUZZLES

Puzzle A: Karthikeyan-Mamedov, 2024. White to play & win.

Puzzle B: Can-Svane, 2024. Black to play & win.

Puzzle C: Jones-Adams, 2024. White to play & win.

Puzzle D: Caruana-Donchenko, 2024 (variation). Black to play & win.

ANSWERS:

A: 1 Qxf5+! 1-0. After 1…gxf5 2 Rh6+ Ke7 3 Nxf5 mate.
B: 1…Qb4+! 0-1. If 2 Ke5 Qe1+ wins the queen.
C: 1 Rf8! Rf6 2 Rdd8 1-0.
D: 1…Ng3+! 2 hxg3 Rh6+ 3 Qh5 Rxh5 mate.