Iranian GM refuses to play Israeli opponent, gets excluded from Corsican Circuit

Iranian GM Eshan Ghaem Maghami was excluded from the Corsican Circuit on Monday after he had told the organizers he refused to play against the opponent he was paired for in the 4th round: FM Ehud Shachar of Israel. "I want to emphasize that personally I don't have any bad relations with anyone from Israel," Ghaem Maghami told us.

Yesterday the traditional Corsican Circuit, which takes place October 22-29 in Ajaccio, reached its 4th round. The pairings showed for board 8:

When he saw these pairings, Ghaem Maghami went to the organizers and told them he refused to play against this opponent because of the political situation between Iran and Israel. The tournament director, Léo Battesti (also Vice-President of the French Chess Federation), decided to exclude Ghaem Maghami from his tournament. The next morning, Battesti sent the following text and video to different chess media:

The Iranian Grand Master Ehsan Maghami Ghaem informed me of his refusal to play against his opponent of the fourth round, the Israeli Fide Master Ehud Shachar. I told Mr. Ghaem Maghami that as an organizer of a sporting International competition, I could not accede to his request to change the pairings, for him to play against another player. The presence of five Israeli players in this tournament is known by all participants since Saturday, October 22. It honors our competition as well as the presence of Iranian players and about thirty other nationalities. The motto of our Federation is Gens una sumus, we develop in Corsica awareness of the positive aspects of chess sport on our youth, being complicity of any form of segregation would be unworthy, and in total contradiction with the foundations of our sport action. So regretfully I have to exclude the player who unfortunately has persisted in his choice, inspite of my imprecations. I regret it. But I could not escape from our responsibilities.

This is not a unique situation. Numerous times it has happened before, in individual tournaments and team competitions, that certain players or teams couldn't play against a certain opponent. One example that comes to mind is that in the 1990s, players from Croatia couldn't play against players from Bosnia, simply because the two countries were at war.

In his 2004 column #73 'An Arbiter's Notebook' (PDF here) for Chess Cafe, international arbiter Geurt Gijssen gave an early example:

First, I would like to mention what happened in 1939. The Chess Olympiad was organised in Buenos Aires. During this Olympiad, World War II began, and many countries refused to play against Germany. FIDE decided not to change the pairings but the results of the unplayed matches versus Germany and “Böhmen und Mähren” were 2-2. The last country was, as a matter of fact, the Czech Republic, which was occupied by the Germans. (...).

These days the situation often occurs when players of Israel are involved. In many sports, players from Arab countries cannot play against their rivals from Israel. In chess, a recent example occurred during the last Olympiad in Septemer 2010 Khanty-Mansiysk. Yemen didn't show up for their match against Israel, and lost 0-4 by default. Our co-editor and Israel-born IM Yochanan Afek has some experience too:

This happens all the time. For example, two years ago Sacha Kaplan encountered it in two different rounds in Biel, and won both games by default, but of course he couldn't score a norm this way. In fact I had the same situation with Mr Ghaem Maghami in the first round of a tournament at the Isle of Man! In my case they just changed the pairings.

In fact this is a much-used procedure: arbiters simply tend to change the pairings, so that a politically problematic situation will be avoided. Afek:

Arbiters normally avoid this in the first place. You can enter certain 'forbidden pairings' in the computer system. As long as you are consistent, it is accepted by FIDE. Experienced arbiters know this in advance. 

Alternatively, the opponent of the Israeli player loses by default, like with Jemen at the Olympiad and with Ghaem Maghami in Corsica. The fact that the Iranian grandmaster was excluded from the tourmament is remarkable. We spoke on the phone with Ghaem Maghami, who plans to travel back to Iran tomorrow.

It was something normal for me. Time to time it happens that I meet an Israeli player in the pairings. I want to emphasize that personally I don't have any bad relations with anyone from Israel. I respect people from all over the world and I understand very well that we are all sports men.

The fact that I was excluded from the tournament came unexpected. It may happen to anyone that he doesn't want to play a game, but will he be excluded immediately? I would have preferred a loss by default and continue the tournament. This makes the situation more complicated. It's not helpful for chess, or politics.

Chess is my main job and my hobby, I love it. I've played it for almost 22 years. So I'll continue playing tournaments and I just want to give the advice to organizers that we should try to avoid this problem in advance.

So the question remains whether Ghaem Maghami's exclusion by Léo Battesti was really necessary. Some of the top players in Corsica were upset, supported the Iranian grandmaster and tried to persuade the organizer. Yochanan Afek thinks differently:

My opinion is that I respect what Mr Battesti did, as much as I sympathize with the Iranian players and the impossible position they continuously find themselves in. At some point it has to stop; FIDE should take measures. It brutally violates Fide's sportmanship spirit, inserts dirty politics in pure sport and also causes damage, because often players miss chances for a norm after investing money to go abroad and sometimes it has also a direct effect on the final results of the event.

We'll return once more to Geurt Gijssen's 2004 column:

(...) I think that it is better to change the pairings, if possible, and if the change does not affect the normal progress of the event. I know that it is easy to criticise me for my opinion, but let me explain the situation. There are governments who explicitly forbid the players of their country to play against players from a specific country. Let me emphasize that it is the governments that forbid it and that quite often the players have a different view. They would like to play, but they have no choice.

Well, the arbiter can decide not to change the pairings, but he knows in advance that one of the players will not show up and lose his game by forfeit. This is, of course, an unpleasant situation. Yet there is more – a game decided in this way, will not be counted for rating calculations, which is not a very serious problem, but it will also not be counted for a norm. It means, that, for instance in a 9 round tournament, both players do not have the possibility of making norms, because 9 games must be played to qualify for a norm. So both players suffer in such a case.

I hope that everybody agrees that changing the pairings is preferable. And I already know the next question – suppose two tournament leaders refuse to play each other before the last round, because one player is forbidden to by his government. What would you do in this case? Well, in such an exceptional case I would probably have no choice, but this case would be very exceptional.

Update 17:44 CET: After reading the article, Léo Battesti sent us the following reaction:

5 Israeli and 2 Irani were playing among 40 players of their levels. Could you imagine the numbers of forfeits... I have never been informed of his intention before this 4th round. If they had informed me before the open, I would have told them not to take part. It's a special open which qualifies the first 14th with 6,000 € of prizes. Could you imagine the consequences of arranged pairings on the sportive equilibrium of this qualification? So it will be a permanent position considering also, of course, that chess is a sport.