Why Alireza Firouzja is playing elite chess event lying on his hotel room bed | Chess News
4 min readMay 19, 2026 12:10 AM IST It felt like a return to the work-from-home era during the coronavirus pandemic. When French grandmaster Alireza Firouzja rolled over his ankle after his third round game at the Super Chess Classic 2026 tournament in Bucharest, organisers of the Grand Chess Tour knew they would have to get creative if they wanted to ensure his continued participation in the remaining rounds of the classical tournament in the Romanian capital. So, they came up with a never-before-heard solution: Alireza was asked to play from a bed in a hotel room with his opponent sitting across a physical board and an arbiter designated in the room to keep a mindful eye on them. The organisers were unable to set up cameras in the room on time, which meant that only the board’s live transmission was available but visuals of Alireza facing Javokhir Sindarov in the room were not seen. Despite being in crippling pain, Alireza managed to hold the Uzbekistan grandmaster to a draw on a day when all …









