BY OSABUOHIEN VIVIAN ROSE
World chess champion Magnus Carlsen has quit a major tournament after being told he could not put on jeans.
The chess grandmaster was defending his titles as world number one at the Fide World Rapid and Blitz Chess Championships in New York when the incident occurred.
Officials said Carlsen had broken the dress code regulations by wearing jeans and asked him to change, which he refused.
Governing body Fide said it had issued the reigning champion with a $200 fine.
Carlsen, world champion between 2013 and 2023, said he had a lunch meeting before the round and had to change quickly.
“I put on a shirt, jacket and honestly like I didn’t even think about jeans, even changed my shoes,” he told Take Take Take.
“I didn’t even think about it… First of all, I got a fine which is fine, and then I got a warning that I would not be paired if I didn’t go change my clothes. They said that I could do it after the third round today.
“I said ‘I’ll change tomorrow if that’s OK, I didn’t even realise it today’, but they said, ‘Well you have to change now’. At that point it became a bit of a matter of principle for me.”
Carlsen has said he would not appeal the decision, saying he is “too old at this point to care too much.”
The 34-year-old later shared on X a photo of his jeans and jacket combination and wrote “OOTD” (outfit of the day).
Fide said in a statement that its rules were applied “impartially”, citing another case where a player was fined before changing his shoes.
Five-time World Chess champion Carlsen, from Norway, had been in a dispute with rival Hans Niemann previously.
He had accused Niemann of cheating after he was beaten at a tournament in 2022, but Niemann denied the allegations and said he would “strip fully naked” to prove his innocence.
Both of them settled a $100m lawsuit in August 2023.
