GM Illya Smirin lands in trouble for sexist remarks, fired for saying 'Chess is not for women'

A huge controversy broke out in theopening event of the FIDE Women’s Grand Prix 2022-23 on Tuesday (September 27) whenGM Ilya Smirin's sexist remarks, claiming that chess is not for women, during the live broadcast went viral in no time. As a result, the announcer landed in trouble and has beenfired with immediate effect by the FIDE.

The embarrassing commentswere made during the live broadcast of the ninth round of the event in Astana. Smirin, a Belarusian-born Israeli grandmaster, was ondebut as an English-language commentator with WIM Fiona Steil-Antoni of Luxemburg. Nonetheless, hisdebut turned out to be a nightmareas the chess player shockingly claimed that "Chess is not for women”. Further, he continued saying, "Why women can play against men and men cannot play against women” and "why a woman would want to get a men’s GM title."

A viewer asked if it was possible for one of the participants(WGM Zhu Jiner) to make a GM norm in thisevent solely for women. To this, Smirin asked, "She’s a Woman Grandmaster or what? Why does she want to be like men grandmaster in this case?” In addition, the Israeli chess playerquestioned,"It’s possible basically to make a men norm in a woman tournament?"

Isn’t it a pure form of discrimination? How can such a man work in the official @FIDE_chess broadcast of such an important women's event? pic.twitter.com/osdI8jipab — Gulrukhbegim Tokhirjonova (@Gulruhbegim) September 27, 2022

It is to be noted that scoringa grandmaster norm has no relationwith the gender. It can be attained by a certain level of performance against a strong opposition, thatmust include a plethora of other grandmasters (irrespective of thegender).

GM Illya Smirin pays a heavy price

While Steil-Antoni countered saying, “Of course, why not?” Smirin replied, "I don’t know. For instance, why women can play with men and men cannot play with women? Today it would be like everyone for parity!”

Afterlaughing it off, Smirin tried to move past his remarks and said, "I didn’t say it openly, sorry. Private conversation." The damager, however, was done by then.

American GM and popular YouTube streamer Hikaru Nakamura lashed out at Smirin for his insensitive remarks. In a Youtube video, he said, "What the hell? It’s brutal. It must be really uncomfortable for Fiona to handle it there. It is reasonably rough."

While FIDE was slow to react, it shared a statement on the following day resulting in the ouster of GM Illya Smirin. Here's the official statement:

FIDE's statement on sexist remarkshttps://t.co/2vXhRrQPVN pic.twitter.com/KCaWdAdX6N — International Chess Federation (@FIDE_chess) September 28, 2022

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The FIDE statement read: "During yesterday's Women's Grand Prix live broadcast, one of the announcers expressed some very embarrassing comments. Although we have great respect for Grandmaster Ilya Smirin as a chess player, the views he expressed on air are completely unacceptable, and offensive, and do not represent any of the values that FIDE stands for. Therefore, we unreservedly apologise to all those who were offended. Additionally, GM Smirin will not continue as a FIDE commentator with immediate effect."