Let's
ban the FIDE
I don’t know how many times I have said
to myself that it makes no sense at all to keep getting involved in chess
politics and that I should just concentrate on my work etc. But the recent FIDE
“developments” possibly made many late great champions turn in their
graves. That means the living chess players should speak out.
According to the Russian totally
non-free chess journalist Yuri Vasiliev (fortunaltely not the most reliable one
whom we know for bringing up the ghost of Alexander Chernenko) Ilyumzhinov has
already stated that Vasily Ivanchuk might get severely sanctioned for the doping
test refusal after his game against Gata Kamsky.
Can we believe such news? A player who
has been in the very top for more than twenty years since winning New York Open
in the beginning of 1988, an absolute record from currently active players, gets
banned simply because he wanted to calm down after a lost game? Boris Spassky
has already given his opinion about the situation but it’s not published
anywhere. Suddenly Ilyumzhinov wants to say that the rules are the rules.
But the rules don’t seem legal to me
unfortunately. IOC has never guaranteed that chess would become the Olympic
sport, so the FIDE policy in licking their posterior is at least questionable.
After the success of Intellectual games festival in Beijing it’s time to STOP
trying to get into the Olympic movement. I personally feel guilty for
participating in the Olympic exhibition in Sydney 2000 but at least then it
seemed that the chessplayers were going to be welcome with open heart. As it
hasn’t happened we have our way and we cannot lose our best representatives like
this.
If FIDE and Ilyumzhinov don’t stop
destroying our intellectual sport something should be done. At least step by
step. I hope Mr. Hans-Arild Runde would not mind to keep calculating Ivanchuk’s
results, so any organizers who still respect our game should deal with him and
no longer give the official rating reports to FIDE. In fact the rating reports
are generated automatically nowadays but somebody should still control that they
are not changed by cancelling results.
The second part of this press-release
will include some of my thoughts about the latest changes (nothing unusual, of
course) in the World Championship system. Of course, with Ivanchuk ban the whole
system loses its sense but there is still a chance that his case will be
resolved. In fact I don’t think the idea of the Candidates tournament is as
negative as some people think, adding the second place in the Grand Prix and the
World Cup is a nice compensation for changing the format as long as the
tournament is attractive for players and chess lovers. But giving the direct
seed to the loser of Topalov-Kamsky match seems totally senseless as long as the
player can prove his strength in the next World Cup or qualify by rating. He
should be replaced by the second highest rated player in my opinion.
Unfortunately this opinion cannot even theoretically be supported by the ACP
board as one of their leading forces Emil Sutovsky is the manager of Kamsky and
the most of the rest are his cronies!
Ok, time to stop writing. Let others
express their opinions on this FIDE news.
Alexei Shirov
Riga, 02.12.2008