When the FIDE Candidates Tournament, a battle between eight premier chess players, began on March 16th, in Yekaterinburg, Russia, there was something macabre about it. Chess, one of the world’s oldest games, seemed determined to be its last. The event, put on by the Fédération Internationale des Échecs, would decide who would challenge the reigning world champion, Magnus Carlsen, in December, and it began in high style, with Bolshoi soloists and prima ballerinas at its opening ceremony. A picture of the audience, more than a thousand people, sitting arm to arm, circulated on social media—an image from another era. Only a young woman—Hou Yifan, the best female chess player in the world—who was wearing a mask in the front row, her knees tilted toward a lone empty seat, gave away that something was wrong.

The players themselves weren’t at the ceremony—one of the many precautions meant to protect them from the coronavirus crisis, FIDE claimed. They would be playing their matches without live audiences, too. Meals were served to them in their hotel rooms; they were tested for COVID-19 before the start of the tournament, and were to be tested again after ten days. There were twice-daily medical checks, and hand sanitizer was dispensed liberally; handshakes between competitors were replaced by mildly embarrassed elbow taps. Ding Liren, a grandmaster from China, who had been on lockdown in his home city of Wenzhou, was quarantined for fourteen days before the tournament began. There were frequent reassurances that the outbreak had not reached that part of Siberia. No one could say why, or whether that was really so—the Russian government is not known for its transparency. And there was a worrying sense that FIDE saw an opportunity. “This is a big event not just for the chess world but, possibly, for the whole sporting community,” the FIDE president, Arkady Dvorkovich, said, “since almost all international competitions have been canceled due to the spread of the coronavirus."

Not everyone was so rosy about it. One of the competitors, Teimour Radjabov, withdrew from the event before it began, questioning the decision to hold the tournament as planned. The moral force of his argument was somewhat undercut by his focus on the Chinese players—he expressed concern that only Ding had been quarantined, while another Chinese player, Wang Hao, who had come to Yekaterinburg from Tokyo, had not—at a time when the virus had very much gone global. But it was hard to fault his decision. He was replaced by a French player, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. The former world champion Vladimir Kramnik, who had been set to provide commentary for the site Chess24, also pulled out in protest, only to be replaced by Carlsen himself, whose company Play Magnus AS bought the site last year. Some called for the tournament to be played online, but that was a non-starter: the classical chess community is traditionalist, and the in-person encounter is considered an integral part of the game. Besides, an online tournament, with its need for referees and arbiters, presented major logistical challenges. Officials clung to the idea that the Russian Urals was the safest place to be.

But the world began to close in. On March 17th, when the first round was held, the first case of COVID-19 in the area was confirmed. Players spoke of the anxiety that they felt while playing as news of the pandemic grew worse. After a win against Kirill Alekseenko, the tournament’s wild card, the American player Fabiano Caruana, who won the previous Candidates Tournament, talked of the stress he was under. “Today I showed a temperature of 98.7 degrees,” he said. “This provoked a panic. Everyone’s extremely paranoid. They’re not great conditions to play under, but I have no choice.”

Eventually, neither did FIDE. On Thursday, after seven rounds—with Vachier-Lagrave, the replacement player, in the lead, tied with Ian Nepomniachtchi—the tournament was suddenly suspended. Russia had announced that, as of March 27th, no international flights, commercial or charter, would be allowed in the country’s airspace. It took Dvorkovich only a “few seconds of thinking,” he told Chess24, before he decided to call off the event, to be resumed when the situation was safer. Players, their support teams, and media members were told to pack their bags immediately. Some headed to Moscow, to catch the last flights out of the country; a charter from Yekaterinburg was being arranged for others. It wasn’t clear when, or whether, all the players would be able to make it home. For his part, Radjabov told Chess.com’s Danny Rensch and Robert Hess that he was considering a legal appeal to be given a spot in the tournament again.

It was a surreal interruption to a surreal tournament. No place is safe from the virus’s reach, not even Siberia—that becomes more obvious every day. For the players whose attention was on chess for the past several weeks, that sense of surreality is just beginning. “The Candidates is over for now,” Caruana tweeted. “The hard part still remains: getting home. I expect to re-enter a world I’ll hardly recognize.”