CNN
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World No. 1 Magnus Carlsen walked out of the World Rapid Chess Championship on Friday after refusing to take off the jeans he was wearing, according to the International Chess Federation (FIDE).

Carlsen, who has won five rapid chess and seven blitz world titles in the last decade, also withdrew from the blitz world championship, which takes place following the tournament.

FIDE said in a statement that Carlsen violated the tournament’s dress code by wearing jeans and then refused to change his clothes after the head referee ordered him to do so and fined him $200.

As a result, Carlsen would not have been in the pairing in the ninth round, although according to Chess.com he could have returned for the rest of the tournament had he not decided to leave the game.

Having performed poorly in the previous rounds, there was little chance that Carlsen could still have defended his title.

“This decision was made impartially and applies equally to all players,” FIDE said, adding that fellow player Ian Nepominatchi also violated the dress code by wearing sports shoes but continued playing after the change.

The stalemate had become “a question of principle” for Carlsen, he told the chess broadcaster Take Take Take. “I haven’t appealed, honestly I’m too old to care too much at this point. If they want to do that… no one wants to back down. If we’re here, that’s fine with me,” he said. “I’ll probably go somewhere where the weather is a little nicer than here and that’s it.”

He explained that he attended a luncheon before the second day of the tournament and “hardly had time to go into the room, change, put on a shirt and jacket, and honestly I didn’t even think about the jeans.”

“I got here and I don’t know if it was after the first game or the second… I got a fine, which is fine, and then I got a warning that I wouldn’t be paired if I didn’t change my clothes Clothing,” he said.

“They said I could do it after the third round today. I said I’ll change tomorrow, if that’s okay, I didn’t even realize that today. But they said you have to change now.”

Relations between Carlsen, the most famous chess player, and FIDE, the governing body of chess, have become increasingly tense recently.

Carlsen said that his “patience with (FIDE) was not very great at the beginning” and accused the organization of “actively cracking down on players to prevent them from signing in Freestyle (Chess),” a tournament in which the Figures on the back rank start in a random position and which Carlsen promotes.

Emil Sutovsky, CEO of FIDE, responded with a statement on the social media platform X, calling this claim a “lie.”

“We were happy to work together (like we work with the Grand Chess Tour, for example) to adjust the calendars etc,” he said.

“The only thing we have insisted on is that no series or tour can be called a World Championship unless FIDE approves it. FIDE is the governing body of chess and every world championship should either be conducted or sanctioned by FIDE.”