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Jan 22, 2025

Chess Champ Told The Game Just Isn’t In His Jeans

A board game has a dress code? Where’s my Scrabble tie?

By Ed Goldman

When international chess champion Magnus Carlsen was disqualified from a tournament at the end of last year because he was wearing jeans—though reinstated a day later when it didn’t play well across social media—the decision provoked a serious argument in my home between me and me. Or, rather, Rotary Convention(al) Me and Rebel-Without-a-Clause Me.

Conventional Me argued that the tourney directors were upfront about the event’s dress code and even gave Carlsen a chance to go back to his room and swap out his jeans for another pair of pants, which was decent of them. Rebel Me would have loved it if Carlsen obeyed but returned to the game wearing a Dior gown.

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I’ve fought this garb battle with myself ever since my graduation from Lakewood Senior High in 1968 (for younger readers: no, I didn’t drive my own velociraptor to school each day—though I sometimes was allowed to borrow my mom’s, provided I took her to work at the quarry and picked her up later). 

My battle was follicle- rather than fashion-related. I had grown my sideburns to the bottom of my ear (!) to play the title role in the school’s production of “The Music Man.” I thought it would be cool to keep wearing them that way for the subsequent two weeks leading up to graduation. 

To appreciate why this was even a debate, you need to understand that this was a different era and I was attending The School That Time Forgot. Raging around us was the anti-Vietnam War movement, as well as the hippie/free-love/discounted-drugs epoch. Even middle-aged men were sporting mutton-chop mustaches and, for at least three weeks, Nehru suits. (Again, for younger readers, both of you: “Nehru” was not a one-named fashion designer. He was the prime minister of India and simply didn’t like to wear collared clothing. I liked the look because it was somewhat slimming—though if you take a look at pictures of North Korea’s butterball boss, Kim Jong Un, who favors Nehru suits to this day, the style clearly isn’t for everyone. On Un, the statement is less Open-Neck Iconoclast than Runaway Won Ton. I now return you to today’s column.)

Anyway, the day before graduation, I was called to the principal’s office and told I wouldn’t be allowed to keep the sideburns if I wished to walk-the-walk down the aisle of our football stadium. Given the formal nature and impeccable tidiness of a football stadium, perhaps you can understand the school’s insisting on elegance. 

I went home and was in a wrestling match with my conscience when my dad came home from work, got briefed on the situation by my mom and ended the match—not by counting to 10 but by uttering just three eloquent words: “Shave them off.” To his everlasting credit, he didn’t add, “Idiot” to his edict.

Two years later, when I became the youngest newspaper reporter at the Long Beach Independent, Press-Telegram, I was invited to speak to my alma mater’s journalism class. I now had long hair and a beard, both of which I’d started growing out the moment after graduation. I felt pretty cocky about returning to my mane-al retentive school. 

But time had caught up with Lakewood High. Dress and hair codes had been not only relaxed but put into medial comas. Walking into the classroom, I saw what once would have resembled a gathering of eager young Nazis and their finishing-school girlfriends but now looked like a sit-in prior to the participants’ demands being announced. (“We want incense and patchouli oil in the bathrooms,” I imagined as their rallying cry. I mean, these were still pretty tame kids.)

To make a long story short, though much too late, why do we have dress codes unless they’re for public safety and hygiene? I understand the importance of wearing uniforms in sports, the military and for first-responders because of the need to recognize them immediately. But why should someone need to dress a certain way to play chess? It’s not as though 18 people are engaged in a single game at any time (unless they’re playing online because the Sudoku site went down). And chess is such a contemplative, internal game of strategy that maybe it requires the player to be dressed comfortably to allow him or her to better concentrate.

Since I work at home, you’d think I don’t have a dress code. That’s true. But I have a very particular don’t-dress code. I never wear sweat pants or open, flannel shirts when I write, as they show work-at-home guys in TV sitcoms. I don’t have a single sports jacket with elbow pads, though I’m sure those alone would make me look more writer-ish.  

With that all said, I’ll admit that 11 years ago this month, I joined a private social club in Sacramento. It has a dress code. Yet I fully endorse it, but for a selfish reason. It mainly comes down to this: Since I’ve put up with it for more than a decade, I sure don’t want some new member coming in and flouting his disregard for it. Why should someone else be comfortable when I’m not?

Maybe this is what the chess champ’s wardrobe is all about. Those directors, dressed to the teeth, are probably itching to ditch their suits and throw on some jeans. Well, gentlemen: Your move.

Ed Goldman's column appears almost every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. A former daily columnist for the Sacramento Business Journal, as well as monthly columnist for Sacramento Magazine and Comstock’s Business Magazine, he’s the author of five books, two plays and one musical (so far).