Talk about a bitch move.
Chess grandmaster takes selfie with opponent... then reports her for using phone
As she sat down for a match with the world’s No1 chess player
Magnus Carlsen, Alua Nurman could not resist asking for a selfie.
To the 18-year-old grand master’s delight, Carlsen agreed and leaned across the chess board with a broad grin as she took the cheeky photograph.
But that’s where the fun stopped for Nurman. Carlsen got up from the table, tracked down a judge and reported her for flouting a strict ban on mobile phones.
The awkward moment occurred at Germany’s Grenke chess festival, where all electronic devices were banned to prevent players from cheating.
Carlsen, 35, faced a dilemma when his young rival asked for the selfie: refuse and look curmudgeonly in front of the crowd, or reward her for flouting the phone ban.
In the end, the Norwegian
five-time world chess champion opted for the middle route: agreeing to the selfie but then reporting Nurman’s cavalier behaviour to the judges.
Footage posted on social media shows Carlsen crossing the room to find a judge and then leading him back to the game table, where the judge demanded that Nurman gave up her phone.
The selfie of Alua Nurman (left) and Magnus Carlsen (right)
Nurman, a Kazakh grandmaster who is a World Women’s Team Chess Championship silver medallist, appeared to have found the funny side in the end.
When she later posted the selfie on Instagram, she wrote “Magnus stays Magnus”, in what seemed to be a light-hearted reference to him being a stickler for the rules.
The young grandmaster added she had been inspired by another player who had attempted the same stunt with
Carlsen recently.
“Last year, Etienne Bacrot also took a selfie,” she told the website ChessBase India, referring to a French chess grandmaster. “I thought like, why not? I’m very grateful that Magnus agreed to this.”
The incident has prompted a debate in the online
chess community as to whether Carlsen – or for that matter Nurman – was in the wrong.
Some suggested that Carlsen was being pedantic by reporting the presence of a mobile phone at the game table, but others noted the strict ban applied to all players.
While there is no suggestion that Nurman intended to cheat, less scrupulous players have long exploited mobile phones in chess tournaments.
The simplest cheating tactic is to download an app such as Stockfish and use it as a guide to choose the best moves during toilet breaks.
Cheaters could also use their phones to communicate with an accomplice by connecting it to an earpiece or receiving coded messages via the phone’s vibrations.
The practice has become so widespread that some chess tournaments use phone-detecting wands to “sweep” the players and the game area before a match can begin. Other contests allow players to keep their phone, but only if it is switched off.
With cash prizes of up to £58,000 on offer at the Grenke festival, one can imagine why its organisers enforce the ban on mobile phones and other devices with such gusto.
Unfortunately for Nurman, her selfie did not affect the outcome of the match; Carlsen won.
As she sat down for a match with the world’s No1 chess player Magnus Carlsen, Alua Nurman could not resist asking for a selfie.
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