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       Chess Federation Fines Player Over Her ‘Sports Shoes’

       The Dutch chess player, who received an official warning, said she did not intend to violate the dress code when she wore her canvas Burberry sneakers at a chess championship in Uzbekistan.

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       Anna-Maja Kazarian said that leaving the venue of the World Rapid and Blitz Championships in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, to change her shoes made her feel stressed and unfocused during Thursday’s rounds. Credit...Jeroen Jumelet/Alamy Live News

       By Claire Moses

       Dec. 28, 2023Updated 1:45 p.m. ET

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       The International Chess Federation fined a 23-year-old chess player from the Netherlands at its World Rapid and Blitz Championships in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, for wearing “sports shoes.”

       FIDE, as the federation is known, fined Anna-Maja Kazarian 100 euros ($111) for wearing what the organization’s arbiters deemed “sports shoes” during the tournament this week. It also required Ms. Kazarian, who streams her games to more than 34,000 followers on Twitch, to change into more formal shoes in between games.

       Failing to change into other shoes, which she needed to retrieve from her hotel room across the river from the tournament’s venue, would “result in not being invited in the pairings for the next round,” according to the official warning, which she received on a yellow laminated card.

       The shoes in question are plaid, canvas Burberry sneakers with white rubber soles. She held them up in a YouTube video that she recorded after the incident, and said that the shoes had been a gift from her sister.

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       “I barely ever wear them because they’re fancy,” Ms. Kazarian said in the 48-minute video, in which she recapped the day and her games.

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       Claire Moses is a reporter for the Express desk in London. More about Claire Moses

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