How NOT to Dress for a Chess Tournament

Talk about imposing rules where none are needed!  Well, what's sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose.  Let's see what the ECU (European Chess Union) does about the male chessplayers who come to tournaments in filthy, wrinkled worn out stinky clothes with smuts in their nostrils that they constantly pick at, wax raining out of their ears and uncombed, uncut (and probably with cooties in their) hair -- not to mention a week's growth of beard.  Dirty chewed fingernails, too.  Eeeeeeuuuuwwwwww!

Hand out photo of Jennifer Shahade, author of "Chess Bitch: Women in the Ultimate
Intellectual Sport". Other player is Jason Bretz.

What's not to love about WGM Jen Shahade in a corset but damn, that has to be uncomfortable!  Photo should have kept her flame-shot deep red hair, blowing gently in a breeze...  The woman has a fabulous sense of the ironic :)  Catch up with JS at Facebook.

From USA Today:

Mar 09, 2012

Women players must button up during chess championships

By Reid Cherner

The European Women's Championship in chess is telling women players to dress for success not for an evening out.

ECU General Secretary Sava Stoisavljevic talked to Chessbase News about the new rules.

Décolletés are partly covered in our regulations, which state that in respect to shirts the second from the top button may also be opened, in addition to the very top button. But, nothing is written in our rules about the length of skirts or dresses. There are several special rules in some companies which put restrictions on the length of skirts and dresses – no shorter than 5-10 cm above the knees for example. I can see that there are many players here who wear very short skirts. It's nice to see chess players with short skirts – they are very pretty girls. But I believe there should still be some limit.

Here are some of the dress rules for women:

• ....blouses, turtleneck, T-shirts or polo's, trousers, jeans or slacks, skirts, dresses, and appropriate footwear (boots, flats, mid-heel or high-heel shoes, sneakers with sock) or any other appropriate clothing modification.
• a jacket, vest or sweater, a scarf, as well as jewelry (earrings, necklace, etc.) coordinated to the outfit may be worn.
• the pieces of the clothing should be crisp, show no excessive wear, no holes and shall be free of body odor.

Chessbase!  A bastion of testosterone peopled by thirteen year olds with pimples.  Oy!  To give them credit, Chessbase does report on women's events -- but usually including lots of photographs -- of the youngest, prettiest of the female players.  On occasion, Chessbase will run a feature story on a female player.  For instance, the day after International Women's Day (March 8th), there was an interview with perhaps the most famous female chessplayer in the world, GM Judit Polgar.  She is know to chessplayers, of course, but not to hardly anyone else who isn't "into" chess.  (Interview will be covered in a separate blog post).  Catch up with JP at Facebook. 

Here's the link to the Chessbase article about the "new" ECU women's dress code.  It's the same as the interview featured at the official website for the 2012 European Individual Women's Chess Championship.