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 GM Joel Lautier |
About the current situation in the chess world:
The professional chess world is currently in a complete mess.
Matches for the reunification have been announced and cancelled several times
over the past year by the FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. The final result
looks like a joke: the official FIDE World Champion, Ruslan Ponomariov, is
now offered a spot in the first round of a knockout tournament to be held in
Spring, while his challenger, Garry Kasparov, has somehow taken his place since
he will only play the final match against the winner of the knockout tournament.
The list of failures by the FIDE management in the last years is truly amazing.
This intolerable situation, where we can see our sport crumble to pieces and
the media interest in our game dwindling dramatically, has prompted us to act
and create a new organization, the Association of Chess Professionals.
What is the ACP?
The Association of Chess Professionals is a not-for-profit international
organization which operates under the French law and was set up in Paris in
September 2003. There are five official founding members (as required by the
French law) and these are Vladimir Kramnik, Almira Skripchenko, Pavel Tregubov,
Yannick Pelletier and myself. The project was born out of a large protest movement
during the European Championship in Turkey. The vast majority of players present
at that event were clearly unhappy with the unfair conditions whereby they
were forced to pay exaggerated room rates to have a right to participate in
an official event counting for the World Championship. On one of the rest days,
more than 150 players, led by Igor Glek, Almira Skripchenko and Pavel Tregubov,
decided to form a new association that would look after their interests. This
eventually became the ACP.
The goals of the ACP
The ACP has one simple goal: to transform chess, which in effect
is still an amateur sport, into a professional one. We would like to emulate
the successes of golf and tennis, namely to set up a circuit of well run professional
tournaments all linked together as in a chain. To this end, we will explore
two different avenues: linking the existing tournaments worldwide and creating
our own new events. We will look after the rights of our members when these
are clearly ignored. And I'd like to remind everyone that we shouldn't forget
about women's chess too. This part of our game has a tremendous appeal that
few organizers seem to notice, although it is quite obvious to any chess fan.
I am certain that if a poll was conducted, it would reveal that both Judit
Polgar and Alexandra Kosteniuk would be in the top five most popular chess
players. To that effect, two members out of nine will be women in the future
Board of the ACP.
Membership
We currently have more than 130 members (that number keeps growing)
of which most are grandmasters, and at the very top, nine out of the best twelve
in the world according to the latest ranking list have joined our ranks. It
is important that the best players participate actively by sharing their ideas,
especially since most of their suggestions, and sometimes requests, have repeatedly
been met with remarkable indifference from FIDE. Kasparov is not currently
listed as a member. He says he will follow the Association's development with
interest but awaits concrete results before deciding whether or not to join
the new organization. Other top players such as Shirov, Leko and Gelfand have
also preferred to wait before committing themselves. Membership is not limited
to chess players only, (but open to) all actors of the professional chess stage:
players, organizers, arbiters, journalists, chess programmers.
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Why will the ACP succeed where the GMA and PCA failed
Actually, both the GMA and the PCA have had some measure of success
before they ceased to exist. They have proved at least that chess had the power
to attract important corporate sponsorship, such as SWIFT for the GMA and Intel
for the PCA. There is a common feature that acted as a detonator when they
both collapsed: the fact that Garry Kasparov left both organizations at some
point. It was Kasparov's merit that he managed to secure the sponsorships in
the first place, but both organizations were too dependent on his participation.
This is not the case with the ACP since Garry is not even a member, so if we
fail, it will be for another reason!
The protection of professional chess players' rights
By "rights" we mean, in the first place, the strict application of
signed contracts between players and organizers. The players are asked to sign
their copies of the contract and then never receive FIDE's copy of the contract
with the organization's signature on it. In case of breach of contract from
the part of FIDE, the players have no legal recourse, whereas if a player doesn't
comply with the terms of the contract, FIDE can comfortably sign the contract
before assigning the player in court. The ACP will also contest FIDE's further
attempts at reducing the classical time control in most tournaments, since
repeated polls, initiated by FIDE but never taken into account, have proven
that a large majority of professional players are against the current 90 minutes
duration for the whole game.
The leverage of the ACP
The ACP is not an abstract concept, it is a group of top professional
players that have agreed to stand together under one flag. Therefore, when
federations or organizers enter into a conflict with one of its members, they
will have to deal with the rest of them as well! If an organizer is known to
treat players in a highly unethical manner in his tournament, we will warn
all our members accordingly. In some extreme cases, we might even issue an
official boycott to such organizers.
On the reunification efforts
Certainly, the collapse of the single FIDE world championship
title as it existed until 1993 dealt a heavy blow to the attractiveness of
our sport. The ongoing uncertainty about what is to be considered the legitimate
championship title has repelled many potential sponsors and will continue to
do so until the chess world solves that problem. The ACP will establish its
own circuit of tournaments, but it doesn't intend to take over the FIDE world
championship. We will not enter into a feud with FIDE over rights to the title
of "World Champion".
The future of FIDE
FIDE has every reason to exist, it federates all the national
federations and coordinates various actions to develop chess worldwide. At
the moment, however, FIDE is not functioning properly. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov has
certainly earned the gratitude of many players for giving them opportunities
for a good income, however, the day he stops signing the checks, FIDE immediately
goes bankrupt. I think that even in the controversial days of Campomanes, FIDE's
financial situation was not that critical. FIDE definitely needs to be reformed,
it should hire a professional staff of corporate sponsor seekers, sports marketing
specialists and the like.
Testing X3D virtual reality chess in NY |
How the ACP will promote chess
A sponsor should get his money's worth in terms of exposure and
advertisement. Top players playing in worthy environments, such as theatre
stages or luxury hotels for example, should project a positive image of themselves.
They should be well dressed, agree to press conferences, make a serious effort
to promote the game. How can we expect to arouse massive interest in our game
if we stay away from the journalists and don't give spectators the desire to
find out more about our game? Chess is too complicated a game to attract large
crowds by virtue of its sole existence, we need to reach out for the public
and explain to them why our game is unique and worth devoting its time to.
How to attract more money to support chess
The ACP will research what can be done in terms of defending
the players' copyrights to their games. It is hard not to agree with Grandmaster
Evgeny Sveshnikov, when he points out how unfair it is when chess organizers,
writers and other players use the fruits of his analysis and work shown in
his games to earn money without paying him any tribute. This obviously holds
true for any strong player's games published without asking his permission,
when his ideas and discoveries become public property. This state of affairs
is not quite normal in my view, for a well-played game involves an act of creation
that is valued by other people. Hence, like any value, it should have a price.
There are other areas where chess can generate serious amounts of money, namely
Internet chess which grows more popular every day. These will be addressed
by the ACP as well.
On the "French Model" and Mme Nahed Ojjeh
The "French chess boom" is mainly due to Mrs Nahed Ojjeh's strong
support of chess in my country. The fact that France for the first time has
three native players in the top fifty players in the world (myself, Bacrot
and Fressinet) is attracting many more young players to chess than before.
Nevertheless, the French Chess Federation, although not as abysmally incompetent
as FIDE, still isn't making the most of this favourable situation. Their motto,
to me, still reads as "too little, too late".
With chess patron Mme Nahed Ojjeh
The next steps
The results of the elections for the Board of the ACP will be
posted on the ACP website right after the deadline, on the 15th of December
2003 at midnight. Shortly afterwards, the nine Board members will nominate
a President, a Secretary and a Treasurer, as is required by the French law.
Once that is done, work will start in earnest, as of January 2004. On behalf
of the ACP, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of your readers!
