The following is an Open Letter / Press Release by GM A. Shirov (ChessBase.com):
Let’s ban the FIDE
I don’t know how many times I have said to myself that it makes no sense at all to keep getting involved in chess politics and that I should just concentrate on my work etc. But the recent FIDE “developments” possibly made many late great champions turn in their graves. That means the living chess players should speak out.
According to the Russian totally non-free chess journalist Yuri Vasiliev (fortunaltely not the most reliable one whom we know for bringing up the ghost of Alexander Chernenko) Ilyumzhinov has already stated that Vasily Ivanchuk might get severely sanctioned for the doping test refusal after his game against Gata Kamsky.
Can we believe such news? A player who has been in the very top for more than twenty years since winning New York Open in the beginning of 1988, an absolute record from currently active players, gets banned simply because he wanted to calm down after a lost game? Boris Spassky has already given his opinion about the situation but it’s not published anywhere. Suddenly Ilyumzhinov wants to say that the rules are the rules.
But the rules don’t seem legal to me unfortunately. IOC has never guaranteed that chess would become the Olympic sport, so the FIDE policy in licking their posterior is at least questionable. After the success of Intellectual games festival in Beijing it’s time to STOP trying to get into the Olympic movement. I personally feel guilty for participating in the Olympic exhibition in Sydney 2000 but at least then it seemed that the chessplayers were going to be welcome with open heart. As it hasn’t happened we have our way and we cannot lose our best representatives like this.
If FIDE and Ilyumzhinov don’t stop destroying our intellectual sport something should be done. At least step by step. I hope Mr. Hans-Arild Runde would not mind to keep calculating Ivanchuk’s results, so any organizers who still respect our game should deal with him and no longer give the official rating reports to FIDE. In fact the rating reports are generated automatically nowadays but somebody should still control that they are not changed by cancelling results.
The second part of this press-release will include some of my thoughts about the latest changes (nothing unusual, of course) in the World Championship system. Of course, with Ivanchuk ban the whole system loses its sense but there is still a chance that his case will be resolved. In fact I don’t think the idea of the Candidates tournament is as negative as some people think, adding the second place in the Grand Prix and the World Cup is a nice compensation for changing the format as long as the tournament is attractive for players and chess lovers. But giving the direct seed to the loser of Topalov-Kamsky match seems totally senseless as long as the player can prove his strength in the next World Cup or qualify by rating. He should be replaced by the second highest rated player in my opinion.
Unfortunately this opinion cannot even theoretically be supported by the ACP board as one of their leading forces Emil Sutovsky is the manager of Kamsky and the most of the rest are his cronies!
Ok, time to stop writing. Let others express their opinions on this FIDE news.
Alexei Shirov
Riga, 02.12.2008
Mr Shirov makes a good point, but spoils it a little bit with remarks that are unrelated to his point. His point about doping controls in chess is completely valid of course. Those controls are pointless and should be removed. The remarks about APC, etc, don’t add anything to his arguments.
Furthermore, the sad thing is: with the existing doping rules (in every sport) there is no such thing as ‘calm down after a loss’. After the match, there is the doping control, period. Let’s focus on the fact that checking for doping in chess is ridiculous. It’s equally stupid for Ivanchuk who just lost or anybody else.
I wonder what the impact would be. If he were banned for 2 years (the normal punishment for avoiding a control), what tournaments would that involve?
FIDE is a disgrace to the chess community and has been for many years now.
Thera are a number of substances that enhance thinking and mental performence. This is very well known. Chess is not an amateur sport at this level and one would expect that one of the top GMs will not act as an amateur. I have huge respect for Ivanchuk but he was not right to refuse the tests. I am sure Ivanchuk is not a doper but this gives bad example. I don’t think he should be banned but he should be fined or a at least suspended for a certain period.
@kiril
“Thera are a number of substances that enhance thinking and mental performence.”
And you get banned because you took something that is on the list but lowers your performance. It happens all the time.
Was it only a dream?
okay
Does anybody know what is the current status of the “Ivanchuk situation”? It seems to me that there may be an effort to hush things down, as it has been really hard to find detailed information on the web. Chessbase is not saying much, Europe Echecs neither, I saw a German newspaper commenting, but well, I don’t speak German, and that’s about it.
Bruno
Well, I didn’t need to wait too long:
http://chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=5048
I bet Susan will post this here soon, but I give you the link anyway.
Bruno
Even if dope tests are to stay in chess, only winners should be tested not those who lost their game.
It is simply not true that there are substances that enhance chess performance. Drugs that do affect cognition are tradeoffs: ritalin can improve your concentration but decrease your speed of calculation, for example. The reason why chess is such a high skill game is because it requires a range of congnitive skills spanning fast thinking to planning to deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning. Until there is good, peer-reviewed evidence that drugs can enhance chess performance there is no good reason for doping tests, period. Doping tests are invasive, and because of the posibility of false positives even honest people take small but real risks when taking them. Until we chessplayers are shown some benefit to doping tests, we should not agree to them.
However, I will also say that the
proper time to refuse a test is before an event, not after the results as Ivanchuk did.
-Justin Daniel
Yes, you can’t complain about the rules when you already broke them (no matter how silly they are). You have to complain when those rules are announced for the first time. And NOBODY complained about doping test when they were announced for the first time.
So bye, bye Ivanchuk. See you in 2 years.
licking their posterior!
I never knew Shirov was so great with words lol