The world's number one chess player, Magnus Carlsen, said he will return to a major chess competition after the sport's governing body agreed to relax the dress code.
Carlsen withdrew from the World Blitz Chess Championship in New York on Friday, where he was defending his title, when he was told he could not continue playing while wearing jeans.
The International Chess Federation (FIDE) later said it would relax its dress code to allow “simple, elegant deviations” from its official list of acceptable clothing.
The 34-year-old has since said he will return to competition on Monday and will continue to wear jeans when he plays.
Carlsen, a five-time chess champion, was fined $200 (£159) last week for breaching the tournament's dress code.
He said he was wearing jeans to a lunch meeting, and “didn't even think” about changing them into a different pair when heading to the tournament.
He had already played a few rounds wearing a T-shirt, jacket and jeans when he was told he had violated the dress code.
The grandmaster said he offered to change his trousers for the next day, but was told he needed to change them immediately, which he refused to do.
Carlsen then withdrew from the competition and said he was leaving town.
“No one wants to retreat… Maybe I will go somewhere where the weather is a little better than here,” he said.
Announcing the changes to the dress code on Sunday, FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich said: “The principle is simple: it is still required to follow the formal dress code, but simple elegant deviations (which may include, in particular, well-fitting jeans matched to a jacket) are allowed.” “With it.”
He said tournament staff would be asked to help judge whether clothing fits the relaxed rules, and added that he hoped players would not “undermine the festive mood” at the tournament on New Year's Eve by “misusing this extra flexibility”.
“Oh, I'll definitely play in jeans tomorrow,” Carlsen said in a social media post on Sunday.
The federation had previously said its dress code was designed to “ensure fairness and professionalism for all participants.”
Carlsen is a prominent figure in chess and has attracted some controversy in recent years.
The Norwegian became a grandmaster – the highest title in chess – at the age of 13, and has long been considered a maverick in the chess world.
In 2023, he settled a long-running legal dispute after an American competitor was accused of cheating.
Carlsen made the accusation after he was unexpectedly beaten by 19-year-old chess prodigy Hans Niemann in a match in 2022.
Niemann denied the allegations and filed a $100m (£79m) defamation suit against Carlsen, Chess.com and another US grandmaster.
Chess.com said last August The lawsuit was settled out of courtAnd that Carlsen has now accepted that Niemann did not cheat.
