Under the FIDE Flag

Last month, in Oldest Chess Piece? (November 2019), I wrote,

In Yahoo's heyday, stories like [this] would have easily been featured in Yahoo News. Now I have to rely on Google News for this sort of thing, where Google News is more-and-more a rehash of Chess.com News.

Not so long ago, stories like the following would have attracted widespread attention.

Need proof? It's been only eighteen months since June Yahoos (June 2018), which recalled yet another chess story from Iran:-

Let's skip the Yahoo stub and jump directly to the real story. It echoes another Yahoo story that I used twice on my World Chess Championship blog: Hijab Hubbub (October 2016), and Hijab Hubris (ditto).

2018-06-13: Chess player pulls out of championship over Iran's rules. In 2016, the story's protagonist was Nazi Paikidze, the reigning U.S. Women's Champion at the time. This time it's an Indian player. Conscience knows no national boundaries.

The two headlines pictured above are in chronological sequence. The first was the 'before' story:-

• 2019-12-27: Chess: Iran’s Alireza Firouzja, 16, bypasses ban on playing Israelis (theguardian.com; Leonard Barden)

Making this the logical 'after' story:-

• 2019-12-29: Iranian Chess Player Who Refused To Play For His Country Wins Silver Medal At World Championship (rferl.org)

The main chess news sites ran a report before the 'before' story, for example:-

• 2019-12-24/-25: Firouzja Seeks Nationality Change After World Rapid & Blitz Ban By Iranian Federation (chess.com; comments)

The 12-24 portion of the story was tentative:-

The Iranian chess star and the country's top player Alireza Firouzja is considering changing his nationality after the Iranian chess federation withdrew its players from the upcoming World Rapid & Blitz in Moscow, according to the Iranian chess federation.

The 12-25 portion was following a moving target:-

Update: Firouzja is now back on the World Rapid & Blitz players list under the FIDE flag.

Recently GM Firouzja also appeared on my chess960 blog in Quarterfinals of FWFRCC Completed (October 2019). That long acronym stands for 'FIDE World Fischer Random Chess Championship', which is longhand for 'World Chess960 Championship'. He was knocked out in the quarterfinals.