A sporting chance
Professional chess has a chequered history. Fans hope to revive it
Oct 5th 2013
By Jonathan Zalman
IN LONDON in April, a 22-year-old Norwegian turned cartwheels by the Thames. Magnus Carlsen, the world’s top-ranked chess player (and a model for G-Star RAW, a fashion firm) had just earned the right to challenge for the World Chess Championship in India next month. His battle against Viswanathan Anand, a 43-year-old Indian and world champion since 2007, is a long-awaited spectacle. Match organisers see a chance to turn a struggling sport into a global brand.
Time was when the world stopped for professional chess. Millions watched Bobby Fischer, an American, beat the Soviet Union’s Boris Spassky in 1972. In the 1990s a pair of matches between Garry Kasparov and Deep Blue, a computer, recaptured some of that suspense. Yet despite booming interest in the amateur game, top-level chess has become obscure again, hobbled by squabbles and eccentric leadership.
Enthusiasts spy a comeback. Last year Andrew Paulson, an American businessman based in London, bought rights to stage the game’s most prestigious contests, including November’s duel. For $500,000 the World Chess Federation (FIDE) granted Mr Paulson media and marketing licences for a decade—and the chance to make chess a profitable enterprise.
The game itself has plenty of fans. Research in five countries by YouGov, a pollster, found that more than two-thirds of adults have played at least once. FIDE says 605m do so regularly. In India, where Mr Anand is a national hero, nearly a third of adults claim to play every week. The internet and smartphones mean novices no longer need a friend to play.
Susan Polgar, a Hungarian-American grandmaster, says about 35 countries include chess in school curricula. FIDE’s membership includes associations in 178 countries, up from 90 or so in the 1970s. This has cut the dominance of professional competitors from Russia and former Soviet states. Hou Yifan, a 19-year-old from China, won the women’s world championship on September 20th. Mr Carlsen could become western Europe’s first world champion since 1937.
But grassroots enthusiasm has not raised the profile of the professional game. Critics gripe about mercurial decision-making within FIDE. The sport’s governing body gets by on some $2m a year (FIFA, football’s federation, spent more than $1 billion in 2012) and has had only two presidents in 31 years. Its boss since 1995 has been Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who also ran Kalmykia, one of Russia’s poorest regions, until 2010. That year Mr Ilyumzhinov said he was once contacted by aliens; in 2011 he played chess with Muammar Qaddafi.
FIDE has a fractious relationship with some national clubs. The English and Georgian chess federations accuse it of mishandling the appointment of several officials in 2010 (in July 2012 a court of arbitration ruled in FIDE’s favour). Earlier squabbles have had long-lasting impact.
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Carlsen – Nakamura would be a big draw.
I think the Anand v Carlsen match will have more interest than recent WC matches. Carlsen is very popular and people want to see what he can do in match play. However, I don’t see this as a chess revival. Fischer v Spassky and Karpov v Kasparov were huge. I don’t see that level of interest in chess again. Most non chess players seem aware that chess is a very drawish and repetitive game. GMs tend to play the same narrow opening repertoire, leading to familiar middle game positions. personally, I can’t wait to see how Carlsen performs in the upcoming match. I hope he wins!