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Tuesday, July 29, 2025

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Kasparov to Fide head: time to go

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20140702

For­mer world chess cham­pi­on GM Gar­ry Kas­parov told the T&T chess com­mu­ni­ty on Sun­day that 19 years was too long a pe­ri­od for any one man to re­main at the helm of the world chess fed­er­a­tion.

Kas­parov was re­fer­ring to the Russ­ian Kir­san Ilyumzhi­nov, pres­i­dent of FIDE since 1995, who he is cam­paign­ing to re­place at the next elec­tions at Trom­so, Nor­way, in Au­gust. Kas­parov spent Sun­day af­ter­noon an­swer­ing ques­tions from a gath­er­ing of T&T chess play­ers, in­clud­ing many ju­niors, at Na­pari­ma Boys Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do, where the third na­tion­al qual­i­fy­ing tour­na­ment is be­ing played.

The chess icon point­ed out that in all the year's of Ilyumzhi­nov's pres­i­den­cy FIDE has nev­er sit­ed a World Olympiad tour­na­ment out­side of Eu­rope. When he be­comes head of the world chess body, Kas­parov pledged, "I will bring change to the or­gan­i­sa­tion, I will do more to sup­port na­tion­al fed­er­a­tions, not the oth­er way around."

Re­gard­ed by many as the great­est chess play­er of all time, Kas­parov al­so spoke about "the dra­mat­ic im­pact" the game could have as an ed­u­ca­tion­al tool. "Chess teach­es kids pa­tience, de­ci­sion mak­ing, strate­gic think­ing and tak­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for their de­ci­sions," he said. Now in its tenth year of op­er­a­tion, the Kas­parov Chess Foun­da­tion works with more 3,500 schools through­out the Unit­ed States and many more around the world to pro­mote the study of chess as a cog­ni­tive learn­ing tool in cur­ric­u­lar and af­ter school pro­grammes of el­e­men­tary and sec­ondary schools.

It was not­ed that the ex­pe­ri­ence of the KCF, which has raised mil­lions of dol­lars for chess in ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes at both pub­lic and pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions world­wide, would be at the ser­vice of FIDE which would be com­mit­ted to bring­ing chess in­to every class­room.

A mes­sage from the KCF chair­man says: "We have de­signed a pro­gramme that en­cour­ages cre­ativ­i­ty, in­stills self-dis­ci­pline and of­fers hope and a feel­ing of ac­com­plish­ment to mil­lions of chil­dren. But we can't do it alone. With your help we can bring chess in­to the class­room where it be­longs. We can turn our dream of a bet­ter ed­u­ca­tion for to­mor­row in­to a re­al­i­ty to­day."

Kas­parov was ac­com­pa­nied by em­i­nent Ja­maican lawyer, Ian Wilkin­son QC, who has joined the chal­lenger's ex­ec­u­tive team as vice pres­i­dent. Based on this pri­ma­ry ob­jec­tive, Kas­parov could hard­ly have se­lect­ed a more fit­ting cam­paign part­ner than the Ja­maican at­tor­ney and chess or­gan­is­er who is pres­i­dent of both the Ja­maica Chess Fed­er­a­tion and the Mag­nif­i­cent Chess Foun­da­tion which he es­tab­lished as a strate­gi­cal in­stru­ment for turn­ing Ja­maica in­to a "na­tion of thinkers."

In this con­nec­tion, DR has no hes­i­ta­tion in ex­press­ing his full sup­port for Kas­parov's bid to es­tab­lish a new and pro­gres­sive era for world chess. For one thing, he has con­vinc­ing­ly demon­strat­ed his sin­cer­i­ty about im­ple­ment­ing one of the cen­tral ob­jec­tives of his pro­gramme, both in the glob­al achieve­ments of his Foun­da­tion and in bring­ing aboard Wilkin­son whose own Foun­da­tion is no­tably aid­ing the aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess of schools in Ja­maica.

In ad­di­tion, Kas­parov of­fers an im­pres­sive man­i­festo for change, cre­at­ing a trans­par­ent or­gan­i­sa­tion "that serves and sup­ports na­tion­al fed­er­a­tions." Among oth­er items, it calls for an im­me­di­ate 50 per cent re­duc­tion in mem­ber­ship fees and a 25 per cent cut in all oth­er fees. Through cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship, it would in­crease the FIDE bud­get by 100 per cent in the next two years. To­wards this end, the or­gan­i­sa­tion would be re­or­gan­ised "with a pro­fes­sion­al mar­ket­ing ap­proach that will make chess and the FIDE brand at­trac­tive to cor­po­rate and pub­lic spon­sors."

Apart from ex­pan­sion of on­line ser­vices, Kas­parov's plan of­fers a uni­ver­sal rat­ing sys­tem that would in­clude every game of chess played on the plan­et from world cham­pi­on match­es to on­line blitz.

It would al­so pro­vide strong an­ti-cheat­ing mea­sures and an­ti-short-draws rules "to pre­serve the in­tegri­ty of the sport and im­prove the im­age of chess."


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