[menotyou]

> Why would smart people care about denim vs. trousers?

Mostly it's about the sponsors. It's much more difficult to get sponsors for an event if the participants are dressed like they slept in their clothes. That's why organizers try to impose minimal standards on dresscodes.

Jeans and sneakers are maybe debatable, but players showed up with cargo pants, shorts or tank tops on other events.

In the FIDE regulation for that event jeans were explicitly mentioned as not allowed. FIDE would have made a fool out of themselves when allowing Magnus to wear the jeans.

[trollied]

Not sure I agree. Chess has moved towards a much younger audience over the last 5 years, and is incredibly popular now. Gets 10s of thousands of viewers on Twitch, for example & there are many players that could be seen as modern day celebrities in their own right.

FIDE needs to embrace the younger generation that think the game is cool. Ancient dress codes are a distraction.

[bluGill]

But money still belongs to old folks so they need to attract them to get money to pay large prizes.

[dist-epoch]

Where do you draw the line though. Is dressing in a swim suit allowable?

[saghm]

> It's much more difficult to get sponsors for an event if the participants are dressed like they slept in their clothes.

Anyone who considers jeans to look like "clothes someone would sleep in" is immediately dubious in my book. Jeans are so extraordinarily uncomfortable to sleep in that I don't think I've ever intentionally done that in my life.

[GuB-42]

Many jeans today are not the stiff and sturdy work clothes they used to be. They have the appearance of it, but are actually made of a relatively thin, stretchy fabric that is more comfortable, and much less durable.

[gpm]

It seems rather harder to get sponsors when you can no longer attract the best player in the world to your tournaments. That they made much more of a fool out of themselves by holding "world championships" without attracting the undisputed best player in the world to them.

This looks to me like a case where FIDE got greedy and forgot to balance the talents interests with the sponsors.

[pixelatedindex]

> Mostly it's about the sponsors. It's much more difficult to get sponsors for an event if the participants are dressed like they slept in their clothes.

Would be interesting if they can get mattress companies or apparel companies that have good comfy clothes as sponsors. Why not play chess on a firm mattress?

[elif]

My brother was wearing a formal shirt and suit jacket.

[PUSH_AX]

You’ve stated this as a matter of fact, but do you have a source, or are you speculating?

[jncfhnb]

FIDE looks a lot more foolish having the greatest and most famous chess player reject them over a dispute about clothing.

Also, he looked very sharp in his outfit with the jeans. Frankly it was a better ensemble than I’d look in one of my suits.

[tacone]

We'll see how easy it gets to get them when Magnus is playing at some parallel tournament, though. Nakamura, for instance, has already made a point about that.

[8note]

id think the venue more than the sponsors. the media sponsor being the norway public broadcast to specifically put magnus on tv means theyve ticked off at least one sponsor by disqualifying him

[Modified3019]

They’d made a fool out of themselves by disallowing jeans