I think if anybody's to be commended for their principle it's probably the organisers? They have their dress code, he violated it, was warned, continued to violate it, and they enforced the rule despite his name.
Magnus is a tremendous chess player. He's also, by all evidence, a massive asshole, and continuously shows boorish behaviour and terrible sportsmanship.
I can’t even figure out what the principle was.
This is sport event after all, and he is an athlete!
It is like asking female athletes to wear corset and long dress, because that was traditional dress in Victorian England!
I'm not a chess dress code rules lawyer, but I think the principle here is that the judge was power tripping and hit him twice for a single dress code violation.
I think they come off better, personally. I'm not saying that should be the dress code, he shouldn't be allowed to wear jeans or whatever, or even that it's bad of him to decide not to play rather than to play in jeans. I just don't think 'it became a matter of principle' is a great argument for him, because it just makes me think better of the organisers for similarly standing by theirs.
The reason is (according to Carlsen) of course that FIDE is driven by a strict adherence of «rules» which are defined by a small set of people in power. Whenever something happens they always say «oh, but these are the rules», but the process for changing the rules is very one-sided and power driven. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Yet another example of a silly unnecessary rule.
[1]: In an earlier WC he got stuck in traffic and arrived in ski clothing, but changed after the first round.
Yes, we have. That ship has sailed long ago.
But, in this context, specifically, the GP might have meant 'censured' instead of 'censored' and it was autocorrect or mental confusion.
You can't call a rule new, which is nagging them for nearly a decade now:
https://www.chess.com/news/view/dress-code-incident-at-world...
another player was not fined or punished at all for wearing basically the same thing
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-29/chess-player-fined-ov...
This every government or organization that has ever existed. Every human group from beginning of time. Left or Right, up or down.