Magnus Carlsen's Jeans Gambit ¦ The Complete Story

But you know, there was this whole thing where FIDE were actively going after players as well to get them not to sign with Freestyle, basically threatening them that they wouldn't be able to play the World Championship cycle if they played in Freestyle, so honestly my patience with them was not very big to begin with and it's okay, like they can enforce their rules, that's fine by me, and my response is that fine, then I'm out, like f*** you. I really feel that it might be some sort of a combination of factors that played a role for Magnus, but as he put it himself, for some reason it became a matter of principle for him, which is very strange and something that we wouldn't like to see, obviously. And for us it was important that, of course, Magnus is Magnus and we would love to see him play. And I think we were very welcoming, not only to Magnus, to his family as well here in New York, and we met several special requests which he had, and of course his participation is important for the tournament, but it would be absolutely not okay to have just a special set of rules for him, because rules are rules for a reason, but also because other participants are respecting the rules. Yes, now that you bring it up, I can do it, but with Kasparov it was fairly clear. Kasparov and Nigel decided this to break away, and even that felt slightly improvised at that point, because Nigel was supposed to be on this boat when he found out, or maybe when he landed, he found out that this decision had been taken. Anyway, a lot of things. Today seemed a bit, shall we say, emotional. He was not willing to compromise, and I don't know yet how to draw the parallels. Thank you. He really just said that now I'm finished with FIDE. As it feels now, it's full war. That's the exact word he used, and then he turned it down a little bit because of the situation in the world, of course, but the meaning is still there. And he says, I will quote him, it has come to a point where I have done this in many years, and I don't want anything to do with them anymore. So I'm sorry to all people back home. It's maybe a stupid case, principle case to have, but I don't think this is really fun anymore when it is like this. He doesn't feel like things are boiling over. He's just sad. He's done this for many years, and it's not so important to play under any circumstances anymore for him.