Vladimir Kramnik, the Captain of the defending Chess Olympiad Champions- Uzbekistan, today filed a complaint for presence of mobile phones in the playing venue of the 45th Chess Olympiad. Kramnik was unhappy that ChessBase India used phones for streaming India’s Open team games, explaining that this is against FIDE rules.
Mike Klein reported for Chess24 about the case: “Vladimir Kramnik, Captain of the Uzbekistan team, registered an official complaint about the existence of phones inside the playing hall.“. Klein further explained that ChessBase India has a permission to record the Indian boards in the Open section and that they use four phones to stream: “I talked to ChessBase India earlier at the tournament, and they said that those phones are all in airplane mode. In fact, they have to be, in order to be able to last six hours without the battery dying. I actually got into the playing hall and I took advantage of Vladimir Kramnik’s smoke break to ask him outside about this situation. He told me that it’s against FIDE regulations for phones that can transmit to be inside the playing hall. He was quick to tell me that he was not actually saying that they were being used for any sort of inappropriate reason, but simply their existence wasn’t allowed. Interestingly, only the phone on Gukesh’s board was actually removed from the playing hall. It was taken to the Fair Play room, and it has been returned to the board”.
