Bengaluru: Alireza Firouzja reclined in his shorts on a bed in a hotel room, his right leg propped up on pillows. Across him sat World Championship challenger Javokhir Sindarov as the two played out moves on a chessboard placed on a table between them. An arbiter sat on a chair near the foot of the bed. It was an extraordinary scene from Round 5 of the Grand Chess Tour Super Chess Classic in Bucharest.
According to the organisers, the French-Iranian Grandmaster had suffered an ankle injury after the third round. He did not play his Round 4 game against Fabiano Caruana. “There are certain games where by the end you’ll get into a highly neurotic state because of all these turmoils,” Grandmaster Anish Giri, Firouzja’s Round 3 opponent said.
“And by the end of our game, Alireza and I were both Firouzja very shaky...and then I heard he even fell. over. I heard it wasn’t so bad at least. This is kind of crazy. I hope he’s going to be fine.” In a position that was drawn, Firouzja blundered and lost against Giri.
On Monday, Grand Chess Tour wrote on its X handle, “Fortunately, the ankle wasn’t broken or fractured. After consulting with his team and the organisers, he has decided to continue playing in the tournament from a special room in the hotel with the agreement of his opponents in the presence of an arbiter.”
It made for an unusual sight.
{{/usCountry}}It made for an unusual sight.
{{/usCountry}}Though it’s not without precedent.
In the Interpolis tournament - with eight of the world’s top eight players in a double round robin event - held in the fall of 1985 in Tilburg, English Grandmaster Anthony Miles played most of his games lying flat on his stomach on a massage bed after suffering from severe back pain.
He ended up tying for first place.