Kasparov announces candidacy for FIDE President

Sparks

From ChessVibes:

BREAKING: Kasparov announces candidacy for FIDE President

Photo tweeted by Kasparov

On Monday night in Tallinn (Estonia) Garry Kasparov announced his candidacy for the 2014 FIDE Presidential Elections. The 13th World Champion aims to "revitalize FIDE with a focus on serving the national federations and raising the commercial profile of chess worldwide." Among Kasparov's team members are the current FIDE General Secretary Ignatius Leong, and chess maecenas Rex Sinquefield of St Louis.

...continues with much more

cdeb

Interesting. And rather unexpected, I think?

He's got quite a fight on his hands to oust the bould Ilyumzhinov, but you'd imagine he'd be up to the challenge anyway.

mikhail

Not that unexpected - I know Karpov mentioned it a few months back, and it may have been known before then. Kasparov backed Karpov in the latter's failed bid for presidency (Ireland voted for Karpov), so being a former world champion may not be enough.

If anything, I'd expect Kasparov to be more divisive than Karpov, and so I expect he's got a major battle ahead of him if he's to win. Good luck to him anyway - no one seems to hold Ilyumzhinov's presidency in high regard, however he keeps getting elected.

Sparks

Looking over what he plans to do, most of it seemed fairly cookie cutter stuff that you'd see from nearly any sport (increase transparancy, get more money, improve the regulations, and so on), but this one caught my eye as being a bit interesting:

4. FIDE will develop

A universal rating system is a vital core of an international sports federation. In this FIDE is far behind other sports. FIDE will address this and also expand online services:

• A universal rating system will include every game of chess played on the planet, from world championship matches to online blitz. It will serve as the portal to unite tens of millions of players and will become an attractive advertising and sponsorship asset.
• FIDE must provide benefits to the huge base of chessplayers, not just serve the elite. It can do this by offering services to the federations such as online news and training, a social media platform, direct support for organizers and journalists, and assistance with fundraising and finding sponsorship.

The stuff for the base of players is nice to see mentioned, but also a bit cookie-cutter. But a single universal rating system that copes with every game played from world championships to online blitz? Now that's a fast way to give a statistician an aneurysm and probably give every non-casual player something to keep them up at night Granted, compared to some sports the ratings in chess aren't as great as you'd wish (by which I mean that you can't compare ratings between different pools because of the nature of the system, whereas in other sports, you get a number of some kind and you can test yourself against that no matter where you are and know how you measure up); but I don't see how he's planning to actually do it...

brilliantboy

I wouldn't hold my breath. Cheating is far too big a problem in online chess to make a universal rating system feasible.
We've seen the lengths that Borislav Ivanov and the like have apparently gone to for rating points and prize money otb.
If similar gains are on offer through online play then what's to stop a 1200 player having the latest opening encyclopedia open on his desk while playing, a 2200 player from taking a sneaky look at an engine here and there, a 2700 receiving live input from a second etc. etc.
Online chess cheating is too difficult a problem to police fully and fairly at the moment, and I don't see it getting better in the future.
Some people will always cheat and we just have to deal with it, but lets not make the temptation greater for them.

Sparks

The online stuff is definitely a problem (leaving aside events like the US tournaments where they just use the net as a communications link between fixed locations with arbiters); but what about all the other OTB games? The new FIDE junior rating system would seem to be a push towards that (and face it, FIDE must be considering the boost to the finances of having everyone with a rating above 1000 being a paid-up member ).

cdeb

Do you have to pay up to be a FIDE member though? I think it's only titles that are paid for; I don't think the ICU pay a stipend for every person who has a FIDE rating.

In that case, it'll actually cost them extra in terms of administration.

Sparks

cdeb wrote: »

Do you have to pay up to be a FIDE member though? I think it's only titles that are paid for; I don't think the ICU pay a stipend for every person who has a FIDE rating.

No, it's per person from the federations but it's not a huge amount right now:

9. Rating Fees
9.1 Rating fees will be charged to the national federations on the basis of the number of their "active" rated players included in the last published FIDE Rating List.
9.2 Annual rating fees are 1 Euro per player with a maximum each year of 1,500 Euros.

But once you have an accepted fee and a service used by a lot of people, you can always tweak the mounts upwards

(and if they were introducing a universal system, wouldn't they have to replace national systems and wouldn't much of this change anyway?)

hewhowatches

Ireland's strongest chess player

Just came across the results of the recent Irish blitz championships!

This Dennehy guy is surely the country's strongest chess player...he is lifting up the whole table! that is some feat of strength!

http://www.icu.ie/tournaments/display.php?id=662

regarding Kasparov standing for election.... well it's a foregone conclusion that he will lose by a majority of 2:1

He has no chance.

[Cmod Note: 1 week ban for ignoring my previous on-thread warning today about derailing threads]

brilliantboy

hewhowatches wrote: »

Ireland's strongest chess player

Just came across the results of the recent Irish blitz championships!

This Dennehy guy is surely the country's strongest chess player...he is lifting up the whole table! that is some feat of strength!

You're not too hot yourself either

hewhowatches

Ah Jonny is that you..? you old chancer you. Sure how did you know twas me? You have me rumbled mind you I know the queen and the bishop move on the diagonals and the castle moves in straight lines. Sure I'm not that bad. I reckon I'd be about average but I don't go in for competitions. They don't have too many down here anyways. Poker is my game.

zenobi

hewhowatches wrote: »

Ireland's strongest chess player

Just came across the results of the recent Irish blitz championships!

This Dennehy guy is surely the country's strongest chess player...he is lifting up the whole table! that is some feat of strength!

http://www.icu.ie/tournaments/display.php?id=662
.

hewhowatches. this is not nice to make fun of a player's competition result , so what that dennehy lost all of his games , he is probably an 8 or 9 year old who just started learning chess , kids in chess need our support and not ridicule.

Myrddin

hewhowatches wrote: »

Ireland's strongest chess player

Just came across the results of the recent Irish blitz championships!

This Dennehy guy is surely the country's strongest chess player...he is lifting up the whole table! that is some feat of strength!

http://www.icu.ie/tournaments/display.php?id=662

regarding Kasparov standing for election.... well it's a foregone conclusion that he will lose by a majority of 2:1

He has no chance.

What has this got to do with the FIDE Presidency? I presume my previous warning today to you today not derail threads wasn't enough for you? I think it's best you take some time to gather your thoughts & consider if you really want to post constructively here or not. What shall we say, a week? Yeah, I think a week off should allow you to do that. Failing that, we'll try a month, but we'll see how you get on in a week

checknraise

I would have thought Kasparov has a decent chance of becoming president of FIDE. Every self respecting chess nation wants nothing to do with Ilyumzhinov. The guy is almost certainly bonkers and with Kasparov being probably the best and most famous player ever I would have thought that he will be able to get some of the votes from the developing chess countries.

For the good of chess Ilyumzhinov needs to be replaced. Kasparov may not be the answer but he has to be a better alternative in the short term at least.

zenobi

Karpov would be alot better than kasparov, he is a true gentleman both in life and in chess but as you said any one would be better than Ilyumzhinov.

Lucena

I could be wrong, but I think it's one country, one vote. So it's relatively easy (in theory) to win votes in countries with a very small number of players, as generally these countries have a smaller organisational set-up. For example, if Rwanda say, only has 50 players, it's very easy to win their vote by promising a load of chess materials (or whatever). Do this in all the smaller countries and you've won the election.

Ciaran

Lucena wrote: »

I could be wrong, but I think it's one country, one vote. So it's relatively easy (in theory) to win votes in countries with a very small number of players, as generally these countries have a smaller organisational set-up. For example, if Rwanda say, only has 50 players, it's very easy to win their vote by promising a load of chess materials (or whatever). Do this in all the smaller countries and you've won the election.

It's a pity that no one tries to bribe the ICU like that.

Airbender

mikhail wrote: »

Not that unexpected - I know Karpov mentioned it a few months back, and it may have been known before then. Kasparov backed Karpov in the latter's failed bid for presidency (Ireland voted for Karpov), so being a former world champion may not be enough.

If anything, I'd expect Kasparov to be more divisive than Karpov, and so I expect he's got a major battle ahead of him if he's to win. Good luck to him anyway - no one seems to hold Ilyumzhinov's presidency in high regard, however he keeps getting elected.

So far as I know, Ireland voted for Ilumzhinov, who proclaimed around that time that he was a personal friend of a certain Mr Gaddafi of Libya. Yes, Kasparov can be more divisive, in the sense that the Russian federation isn't likely to support him. However I admire Kasparov's integrity, and I firmly believe he will be up to the challenge. I am sure his presidency will be the one to remember. Hope Ireland will vote for Kasparov.

brilliantboy

Airbender wrote: »

So far as I know, Ireland voted for Ilumzhinov, who proclaimed around that time that he was a personal friend of a certain Mr Gaddafi of Libya. Yes, Kasparov can be more divisive, in the sense that the Russian federation isn't likely to support him. However I admire Kasparov's integrity, and I firmly believe he will be up to the challenge. I am sure his presidency will be the one to remember. Hope Ireland will vote for Kasparov.

Ireland voted for Karpov
http://icu.ie/articles/display.php?id=282

no conspiracy here either

Airbender

You're right, we did vote for Karpov. I just got confused...

I may have missed something but I couldn't find any mention of any conspiracy on this thread. Which one are you talking about?

brilliantboy

Airbender wrote: »

I may have missed something but I couldn't find any mention of any conspiracy on this thread. Which one are you talking about?

I'm just referring to the recent tendency of people to take digs at the ICU for any little thing, real or imagined

Sparks

brilliantboy wrote: »

I'm just referring to the recent tendency of people to take digs at the ICU for any little thing, real or imagined

Ah, but you missed this morning's group boards.ie hug (patent pending) which fixed all of that

Airbender

The ICU have a new President, so it makes sense if we just leave him alone, so he can learn and adjust. I am sure he'll do a great job.

L1m1tless