The dirty little secret of how politics poisons chess was exposed last week when Iran’s best player was kicked out of a tournament for refusing to play an Israeli.
Ehsan Ghaem Maghami was among 40 grandmasters and about 800 other players from 30 countries competing ina major open event in Corsica.
In the fourth round, the luck of the pairing system determined that hewas to play Ehud Shachar of Israel. But as IranianTV explained, “Iranian athletes refuse to play against Israeli opponents . . . as the occupying Zionist regime of Israel is not recognized by Tehran.”
Normally, tournament organizers finesse the issue by quietly changing the pairings before theyare posted, in effect endorsing the boycott of Israel by Arab and Muslim players.
This time tournament director Leo Battesti refused to change the pairing. Maghami said this has happened to him before, and he usually just accepts the loss of the game on forfeit.
He said he has no personal issue with Israel and said it was up to tournament organizers “to avoid this problem” in the future.
But Battesti went further and expelled him from the tournament. “I had no other choice,” he explained.