Bang in the middle of the Chess Olympiad in Budapest, after the sixth round ended on Monday, players and delegation members from over 190 nations had a decision to make: should they attend the now-traditional Bermuda Party that was organised at Budapest’s Akvarium Klub or focus on resting and plotting their way ahead for the remaining five rounds of the tournament.
Some Indian players like D Gukesh and R Praggnanandhaa chose the second option on Monday. Others like Arjun Erigaisi and Vidit Gujrathi chose the first.
Chess tournaments are usually grim, more-serious-than-death affairs. Players only let their hair down at the end of tournaments, but even then they prefer to paint within the lines: by playing endless games of bughouse chess, board games or cards.
Bermuda Party 2024 🔥🔥
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— ChessBase India (@ChessbaseIndia) September 17, 2024
But at the Olympiad, the Bermuda Party is now a decades-old tradition, held on the evening before the only rest day of the tournament, which was Tuesday at the Budapest Olympiad.
The tradition was started by the Bermudan chess team, made up of cash-rich businessmen, who threw a massive party in the middle of an Olympiad. Since then, the party is usually staged at a nightclub in the host city.
During the Baku Chess Olympiad in 2016, FIDE Executive Director Nigel Freeman had spoken about how the Bermuda Party came about.
“The first one was in Malta in 1980. It was really a staircase party. The government of the country built low-cost housing for locals, but before people moved in, those houses were occupied by the players participating in the Olympiad. The Bermuda team decided to hold the party one night. So that’s how it first started. Afterwards, it has been held at every Olympiad till now except for Elista, Russia (in 1998), where Bermuda did not participate,” Freeman had said.
The event is now listed on the official schedule of the tournament. And each passing year, the urban legends and tales from past Bermuda Parties get more colourful.
The most infamous tale comes from the 2006 edition in Italy when a Turin nightclub called Hiroshima Mon Amour saw Grandmaster Levon Aronian being punched by British GM Danny Gormally. Not for something that happened over the chess board. Gormally had taken umbrage at the then 23-year-old Aronian dancing with 19-year-old Arianne Caoili in a Turin nightclub (Aronian later went on to marry Caoili). There were tales that Aronian’s teammates took it upon themselves to respond to Gormally’s assault of their star player a day later. The British GM was so embarrassed by the incident that he ended his event early and left the country.
There are other tales about blood being spilt at a Bermuda Party: England women’s team captain Lorin D’Costa needed stitches on the finger after inadvertently injuring it in an accident which involved a mobile phone and a glass.
First person account
Hikaru Nakamura, who has skipped the Budapest Olympiad, once recounted his experience of attending the 2008 Olympiad’s Bermuda Party.
“Most of us got fairly drunk, but that seems to happen fairly often to many people at these chess tournaments. The only negative I will say straight up about the (Bermuda) party is that I saw plenty of people chasing when they certainly are married or have girlfriends back in their native lands. There were several times when I did a few cheers to avoid any of this unfaithful carousing. When I left with the Canadians at 3 AM, there was still a lot of partying going on, so I’m not sure when it actually ended. I know it was definitely going until 5 AM but probably even later,” Nakamura wrote.
For many chess players, the Bermuda Party is a way of reconnecting with friends from other nations they rarely get to meet at other tournaments. There are many players who speak fondly about how one of the perks of playing at the Olympiad is to get the chance to meet the same people every two years and swap nostalgia-laced tales.
But for teams that are chasing medals at the Olympiad, the Bermuda Party can be a banana peel on the dance floor.
Grandmaster Ivan Sokolov, who coached the Uzbekistan team to a gold medal at the Olympiad in Chennai two years back, was fully aware of this pitfall. One of his most significant contributions towards Uzbekistan winning gold might well have been to prevent his young players — Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Nodirbek Yakubboev, Javokhir Sindarov, Jakhongir Vakhidov and Shamsiddin Vokhidov — from getting distracted. He managed this by prohibiting his players from attending the Bermuda Party completely.
“They were very enthusiastic about the Bermuda Party, but I told them: ‘Look, you are forbidden to go there, but I am also going to punish myself. This will be the first Bermuda Party since 1988 that I am not going to attend myself. So I am staying in the hotel as well if this is any consolation,’” he said in an interview.
“They tried a bit by saying: ‘We will only go for a few hours.’ But I replied: ‘Boys, there is one small problem. I was not born yesterday. Once upon a time I had your age, and I am not buying it. It is not going to happen.’ So this was a good decision.”
