FIDE Candidates 2024 Chess: The father of Alireza Firouzja says his son doesn’t want to “play,” threatening to call the police

The 2024 FIDE Candidates Chess Tournament is now embroiled in controversy when it was claimed that Alireza Firouzja’s father threatened to call the police in an argument with the organizers. Hamidreza Firouzja delivered another bombshell in an interview with Chess24, revealing that his son Alireza had allegedly declared, “Dad, I don’t want to play chess anymore.”

This added to the intrigue surrounding the 2024 FIDE Candidates Chess Tournament. Even though Hamidreza attempted to highlight the emotional toll the chess champion has endured, his remarks were prompted by his son’s prior allegation that the chief arbiter had forewarned about noise from his shoes during a match. During his Round 9 tie with Ian Nepomniachtchi, Firouzja had taken offense at chief arbiter Aris Marghetis for denying him the right to walk. Firouzja said on social media that Marghetis’s lack of professionalism interfered with his ability to concentrate throughout the game.

The elder statesman allegedly threatened to contact the police if he was not permitted to watch his son’s games from the playing hall’s balcony anytime he pleased. A day later, Alireza’s father got into another argument with the organizers.
This occurred after Hamidreza was led off the Great Hall arena after Alireza’s defeat against Fabiano Caruana in Round 10.

In an interview with Chess24, FIDE Technical Delegate Pavel Tregubov said that early concerns were expressed over non-players having direct viewing access to live games from the balcony. For the first seven rounds, only players were allowed admission to guarantee fair play.

“For the first seven rounds, we did not allow players’ entourages to enter the arena for this reason. Hamidreza, Alireza’s father, voiced his displeasure with this during the second round. He expressed his dissatisfaction alone. I assured him that he should think again. Since the first few rounds went well, we made the decision to let team members into the playing hall within the first fifteen minutes.

Positive feedback was also received from the Fairplay team. We stretched in rounds nine and ten since the modified rule worked nicely in round eight. However, Hamidreza chose not to take advantage of this for round eight, Tregubov said to Chess24.

However, my team informed me that Hamidreza had threatened to call the police if he wasn’t permitted to use the balcony anytime he wanted, shortly after the start of the tenth round. We were obviously unable to fulfill this request,” he said. “Hamidreza was being a little violent when I crossed him.”

In the chess world, there has been a lot of debate about the current issue. Concerns over the possible interruption to the competition have been voiced by a few pundits.
Chess fans, however, will be anxious for this issue to be resolved in order to protect the Candidates’ integrity and smooth operation.