The past three FIDE presidential elections have been hotly contested. Not only did candidates actively campaign worldwide, accusations of corruption had also dogged the elections.
After Kirsan Ilyumzhinov won the 2014 election, both the New York Times and the Guardian reported that the campaign had been “long” and “bitter”. It is clear that candidates have a strong desire to win.
It is perhaps impossible to ensure a perfectly clean and fair election. However, can this strong desire to win be harnessed for good? In this essay, I propose one way of doing this: that the number of votes a country has in a FIDE election be based on a measure of chess activity in that country.
The rationale for such a proposal is simple:
First, there is likely to be an increase in chess activity worldwide. Federations worldwide would have an incentive to promote chess activity in their country, so that their words carry more weight. Even candidates for the FIDE Presidential Board may have incentives to promote chess activity, especially in federations that are likely to vote for them.
Also, FIDE will also benefit from an increase in revenue, since FIDE rated tournaments generate revenue for them.
One simple, if imperfect, method would be to measure chess activity by the number of FIDE rated games in that country in the past four years. For example, if ten thousand FIDE rated games have occurred in country X in the past four years, then that country’s federation would have ten thousand votes at a given FIDE election.
Below I sketch some criticisms of such a proposal. The criticisms that I can think of are valid criticisms, but most of them point towards finding a better way to measure chess activity, rather than the principle that votes should be based on chess activity.
I do not have a strong opinion about how chess activity should be measured (though I think that the number of rated games is a simple and elegant way). I also am deliberately refraining from calculating how potential candidates might gain or lose from such a proposal. However, I believe if a federation’s votes in a FIDE election are based on its chess activity, the strong desire of chess politicians to win elections can be harnessed for good, even if FIDE elections remain highly politicized.
Update: December 21st — Editor's note:
Related articles in our archive include a 2014 "Visual presentation of world chess ratings", featuring the following graph:
Also represented geographically on a 3D earth model!
We also previously looked at "Which is the world's biggest chess nation?" and the results which may surprise you!
FIDE itself also publishes a country rank averaging the top 10 players by rating.
It's worth keeping in mind some of the ramifications of the current system when thinking about any new ideas. E.g. The last page of FIDE's federation ranking shows that Swaziland has 24 rated chess players and no titled player; Burkina Faso has five rated players and no titles; Djibouti has three rated and zero titled; Nauru has seven rated and no titled, etc. — not to pick on any of these countries specifically, but the point is that Djibouti and, say, the British Virgin Islands, have the same weight and voting power in FIDE as Russia, Germany, India, US or China.
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