Sergey Karjakin won’t be playing much chess for a while. Last month, the Russian grandmaster’s Twittering jingoism in support of the invasion of Ukraine drew such universal scorn that his international invitations were bound to run dry.
Karjakin challenged Magnus Carlsen for the World Championship in 2016, and had earned a spot in Fide’s forthcoming Candidates tournament, which will begin in Madrid in mid-June 2022. Perhaps he assumed that was one invitation which could not get lost in the post. But then Karjakin’s conduct was brought before the Fide Ethics Commission, which bared its teeth and resolved to ban him from competitive play for six months – long enough to make him forfeit his chance in the biggest tournament of the year.
As appealing as this is, I found it hard to wrap my head around the Commission’s key finding. Karjakin’s public pronouncements were deemed to ‘cause the game of chess, Fide or its federations to appear in an unjustifiable unfavourable light and in this way damage its reputation’.
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