FIDE Grand Prix: Call for a Fair Selection Process |
| Written by Administrator | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Wednesday, 26 September 2012 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Womens chess is relatively neglected as compared to mens. If you ask a typical chess fan what the Womens Grand Prix is and who qualifies for it, the answer will usually be silence. As of now, the FIDE Womens Grand Prix is a series of round robin tournaments with nice cash prizes and opportunities to increase ones mastery by facing other strong grandmasters. One of the main goals of holding these events is to determine the Challenger, i.e., a female player who will face the winner of the Womens World Cup for the Womens World Chess Champion title. Therefore, in some sense the Grand Prix is the semi-final of the World Championship, because winning it entitles one to play the final match for the crown. It is hard to follow the Womens World Chess Championship Cycle, so here is a quick reminder:
Furthermore, the current list has four more new names in it: Monika Socko (2481, POL), Nino Khurtsidze (2456, GEO), Lilit Mkrtchian (2450, ARM), Kubra Ozturk (2296, TUR). As far as I know, the reasons for their inclusion have not even been stated officially. Now lets do a bit of elementary Math. Only ten players were invited to the Grand Prix on a competitive basis, thirteen more were granted wild cards of some sort. Summarizing, about 57% of the players are participating in the Grand Prix not due to having great chess skills, but simply because a certain FIDE official likes them, or because someone has the money and the desire to stage a stage of the Grand Prix specifically for them! Can you imagine another reputable sport where one has the option of paying a few hundred thousand dollars and entering the semi-final of the World Championship Cycle, no matter what his international ranking is? Dont get me wrong, I have no intentions of hurting the feelings of any of the participants. The one thing I am protesting against is that sports are supposed to be fair, while modern top-level womens chess isnt. Of course, everyone has different training conditions. For example, some athletes can afford top-level coaching and travelling a lot, while other cant. Nonetheless, one would typically expect the players to have equal legal chances to fight for the crown. The way the system is working now, talent and skill matter only to a certain extent, because quite often you wont be invited unless you have powerful sponsors or FIDE connections. On the contrary, if you have them, your chances to succeed are greatly increased. Unfortunately, professional womens chess is becoming a pay to win sport. A notable example of prevalence of personal relationships over chess mastery is that IM Ekaterina Atalik (2448), who along with her husband GM Suat Atalik has a conflict with FIDE Vice-President and President of the Turkish Chess Federation Ali Nihat Yazichi, is not taking part, while two significantly weaker Turkish women rated in the 2200s-2300s got wild cards. Moreover, one can question oneself: why are some even higher-rated players than Ekaterina Atalik not participating? ChessBase is usually kind enough to publish interesting feedback from the readers. Let me try to anticipate at least some of the remarks and try to address them in advance:
First of all, not all of the players who received wild cards are weak in the sense of not being able to compete for the Challenger title, or at least affect the final standings. Secondly, if you check the FIDE womens rating list, you will notice that quite a few of the strongest players are not competing. Why? Thirdly, I have no problem with some players having organizer friends and sponsors. Thats absolutely great! But why dont they just offer them endorsement fees and/or stage private super tournaments instead of trying to affect the official World Chess Championship cycle?
Believe me or not, I am trying to be objective and criticize the things that I find unfair, no matter if they benefit or harm me and my friends. Of course, like any human, I am more likely to notice that something wrong is going on if it affects me personally in a negative way. Nevertheless, if Natalia Pogonina gets a wild card next time, my opinion about the situation wont be any different. In fact, when we were discussing this situation with a top manager of a well-known IT company, he half-jokingly suggested we hold one of the next Grand Prix stages so that grandmaster Pogonina qualifies for it automatically. Naturally, I waived his generous offer off, because I dont want to play by the unfair rules that are common practice in chess nowadays.
This is a tough question. In my opinion, FIDE should either finally find a business model that would allow it to earn money promoting chess, or at least cooperate only with chess patrons who are genuinely interested in keeping the competition fair as opposed to benefitting their favorites. After all, FIDE can create a list based on rating/tournament results and then use it to persuade certain cities/sponsors to host the events, not vice versa, the way it is done now (sell a few vacant spots to the bidders). Yes, Andrei Filatov, the main sponsor of the Anand-Gelfand match, is a friend of Boris. However, he has only funded the Championship, while Gelfand has fairly earned the right to play for the title. Its not like Andrei has paid the organizations costs and demanded that his friend gets a direct shot at the chess crown. Meanwhile, what do we see in womens chess? Wouldnt it be great to know in advance how one can qualify for the Grand Prix cycle? Isnt chess supposed to be a fair sport where ones skills are more important than having rich relatives and/or influential benefactors among chess officials? Will we witness a transition from nepotism and plutocracy to meritocracy? What do you think?
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