What happened in Dallas, Texas Sunday night was not showmanship but criminal disrespect to chess, writes Shilpa Mehra
Thousands of parents introduce their children to chess every year hoping the game will teach them discipline, etiquette, emotional management and how to control aggression. As Indian folklore goes, chess was invented to help warring Kings find catharsis on the board instead of in the battlefield.
Thanks to what happened in Arlington, Dallas Sunday night, a lot has been undone for these parents. Grassroots-level arbiters and coaches are left grappling with damage control. A majority of chess players are children and youngsters with Internet access and impressionable minds.
For those who came in late, here's the background — In an exhibition chess match between five Indian and five US players, in an E-Sports stadium full of more than a thousand fans, World No. 2 Hikaru Nakamura tossed World Champion D. Gukesh's King to a boisterous crowd after winning. As the videos went viral, eliciting intense reactions, one of the players and streamers Levy Rozman - surely in attempts to save the players from disgrace - came forward to reveal the truth: The players had been told to do so by the organisers! In fact, Rozman added, at one point the players were even expected to break the opponent's King. Rozman, on his part, upon winning had congratulated his opponent and applauded before leaving the stage. The organisers - surely chess-illiterates — had no clue what they were doing. They were just out to create hype at any cost and Nakamura possibly fell into the trap.
These ideas of vandalising chess sets is so pedestrian that it is unlikely to strike even the most ordinary of chess players. Surely, the organisers had no clue about what chess really needs.
GM Jacob Aagaard said it short on X: You entirely missed the point of chess...... (sic).
Grandmaster Nakamura's act is akin to football players slicing open the ball itself and strewing strips around the field. That's putting it mildly.
Carlsen Incident
A few months ago when World No. 1 Magnus Carlsen, in an involuntary human display of emotion, slammed the table on losing a won game against Gukesh, he became raw fish to salivating wolf marketeers.
Carlsen remedied the action in a split second by patting the young grandmaster but floodgates had already opened to reels and memes online even as countrywide-arbiters scrambled to announce that this "trend" was not acceptable in tournaments. Random players with little understanding of the sport in random local tournaments had started banging tables much to everyone's dismay.
Vaishali Incident
In January, 2025 Uzbek GM Nodirbek Yakubboev declined to shake hands with Indian GM Vaishali Rameshbabu before a game at the Tata Steel Challengers tournament due to religious reasons. Vaishali said she understood this and had not taken offence. But a witch-hunt had already started for Yakubboev eventually leading him to apologise on camera. No compensation for what he may have suffered or how ridiculous Vaishali may have felt dragged into an insane unnecessary controversy. This opened the floodgates to not-required religious debates
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What do you want to see here? Kids throwing pieces and smashing clocks?
(c) Chess Club Black & White, Lucknow |
Or, was that also marketing strategy?
Who is coming up with all these ideas?
Who wants to earn money off chess without being an honest part of the community?
Who is so desperate to sell chess?
Do we need to sell our chess soul to popularise the game?
Who are the organisers of the match in Arlington?
Can one justify vandalism as exhibition and promotion?
Nature of Tournaments The very nature of chess tournaments requires large groups of people playing in close proximity in a closed hall. Managing that is a task by itself what with cheating being a monster the chess world is already grappling with. How can chess tournaments be conducted if young people start destroying chess sets and then possibly furniture?
Already there have been incidents in India - This same Sunday, a player, during the last round at a rating tournament in Goa, intentionally swept off pieces from the board and started trash talking in a losing position when his opponent was low on time. Some time back, in the city of Vrindavan, players ransacked hotel rooms before checking out after a tournament. This is not cool. This cannot be acceptable behaviour by any account.
After all, what stars do, fans copy.
Fourteenth World Chess Champion Vladimir Kramnik, responding to the controversy, said on X:
"These people, "chessgrowers", are trying to hide, that majority of chess fans prefer watching serious chess. It is clear by stat reports. Yet, private interests are driving them to pretend and try to convince us that the opposite is true, by throwing pieces in particular 😊." (sic)
CEO of Fide (the world chess federation) could not have said it better on X:
"The event was a show. Fans were ecstatic. Players were encouraged to behave accordingly. All true.
Now, for better or worse, name me one top player who would do what Hikaru did."
Royal Game
There is a reason chess is called the royal game. It's not about being a purist. Creative marketing strategies keeping the sanctity of the sport alive are possible. The very reason people do chess is because of what chess is. Same goes for any sport. After all, we do have chess boxing now.
Would Gukesh have thrown his King to the crowds even if paid to do so? Why is the world's youngest world champion being portrayed as a hapless victim left rearranging his pieces? His act is of tremendous respect for the game and impresses the real chess audience far more than tossing the opponent's King into the crowd.
The current World Champion D Gukesh, from Chennai, has brought class, values and respect to the game. It was tragic to see him reduced to a bewildered theatrical prop in a marketing gimmick.
This is not even marketing. This is vandalism and desperate vandalism to ruin a traditional sport for a few more online views. No sponsor is coming to support such crass behaviour. No parents will be sending their five-year-olds to chess class to learn aggression.
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| (c) Chess Club Black & White, Lucknow |
The organisers of Dallas event advertised: This isn’t your quiet library chess match. It’s a full-throttle arena spectacle with the biggest names in chess, lights, anthems, interviews, and a crowd that’ll shake the walls.
Was that not enough to market the sport? Did they really have to add damaging the chess set? What qualifies as crass behavior? Where do we draw the line?
The next edition of this show, as the organisers claim, will be in India. What can we expect? Maybe, right now, the organisers are exulting that they succeeded in more viewership. For them, there has been no harm and the critics are old fools.
One day, when a ten-year-old boy picks up a King and throws it at his little girl opponent in class as other kids cheer him on while coaches watch in horror, these chess organisers would have pulled the final Faustian deal — sold our chess children's soul to the devil and undone all the work the thousands of unsung unknown heroes of the chess community have done across the world to teach respect, honour, dignity and gender equality.
Hopefully, FIDE will widely publicise and seek to endorse it's etiquette rulebook more strictly protecting the sanctity of our royal sport for all the children and the genuine practitioners of the art of chess.
Somewhere, a classroom of chess kids will again learn to respect their opponents and shake hands. Somewhere, a 64-year-old Grandmaster Gregory Kaidanov will again get up to stand in acknowledgement as a former world champion, decades younger than him, walks up to start a game. Chess is about honour and always was. So, it shall remain.
If you're reading this and are associated with chess in any way, please call out all bad behaviour for the sake of our children and chess generations to come.
(The writer is a journalist and chess player with a Masters in Child Psychology. As founder-director of Chess Club Black & White - Lucknow, her research papers are on developing analytical and lifeskills in children through chess and screen detox through board games for children.)
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Chess Club Black & White stands for honourable combat on the chessboard. Our monthly tournaments focus on themes of respect, discipline and love. Here are some of our tournament themes.
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