General Discussion

It's their tournament, so they make the rules. Don't want to follow them, don't enter the tournament.
But, it seems an odd thing for them to have such a code. Makes the whole affair silly.
I don't completely buy the "exclusionary" argument. I was watching Ken Burns' Baseball the other day. It was the period 1910 - 1920 and all the fans were wearing suits. But at that time, baseball was a working man's game. Yet, those "lower class" people owned & seemed comfortable in suits & dresses. Not sure a dress code us de facto evidence of exclusion.
I sub at one majority black junior high that has a code of dress. If anything, that code is a class leveler because everyone dresses the same, independent of their parents wherewithal.
So, I'm not opposed to dress codes, see how can they can have value, but this chess tournament seems a specious application of such a rule.