The latest scandal to rock the staid world of chess surfaced recently when the game’s reigning champion walked off the stage in a snit over The International Chess Federation, (FIDE) dress code.
Magnus Carlsen, the 34-year-old top-ranked global chess player, was wearing blue jeans at the 2024 World Rapid Chess Championship/World Blitz Championship in New York when he abruptly departed after uttering a profane objection to the fashion rule requiring proper trousers to be worn.
Given his celebrity status, however, it hardly came as a surprise when FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich caved in to Carlsen by declaring that they would now accommodate “elegant minor deviations” to rules of attire.
Had the event been held in San Francisco, the entire controversy could have been averted. For you see, here, we play in the nude.
Well, not all the time, mind you.
Our city’s preeminent chess venue is located on the fourth floor of the Mechanic’s Institute where the usual fashion decorum dominates. This is the oldest continuously operating chess club in the United States, offering a variety of activities for players of all abilities including tournaments, lectures, lessons, and casual play. It also provides free chess classes to hundreds of San Francisco public school students each week.
The men in our particular clique represent a splinter group, with matches staged in secret locales determined on a random basis by various committee chairs.
When we arrive at the venue many of us are incognito. We dress in suits and ties. Shoes with a hard polish and waxed laces are required.
Neckwear usually consists of four-in-hand ties, but we do occasionally stage “ascot optional” night. Velour Smoking jackets and velvet slippers are also permitted when they match the overall formal aesthetic. Prince Nez eyewear is not unknown, although monocles are seldom sported. Cigarette holders and pipes abound.
Young East Indians show up resplendent their native costumes. Turbans are allowed but daggers must be checked at the door. The Chinese tuck opium pipes behind their silk paisley pocket handkerchiefs. The Irish with their flasks are conspicuous, but are discreet when it comes to pouring a short measure into monogrammed glassware.
Cell phones are strictly forbidden, and bathroom breaks closely monitored (to discourage cheating.)
Our “chess in the raw” nights were inspired by Marcel Duchamp, who famously posed for a photo with the writer Eve Babitz captured by Time Magazine photographer Julian Wasser in the early 1960s.
While Babitz was nude, Duchamp was not. But in our iteration, everyone removes their clothes.
This custom would be embraced by chess-playing Norwegians, as their “Sauna Culture” is accelerating at an unprecedented pace.
Will Magnus Carlsen – Norway’s national hero – soon become the poster boy for this Chess Undressed trend?
Only if he sheds his jeans and other fashion forward affectations.
And it would be wise at the same time, Mr. Carlsen, to lose the arrogant Nordic attitude
You are only as good as your last gambit, afterall.