FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich interview: “We need a long-term solution”
FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich spoke with ChessBase India’s Sagar Shah about FIDE’s activities in 2024 and its plans for 2025. They also discussed the dress code incident involving Magnus Carlsen, the shared title between Carlsen and Nepomniachtchi, Freestyle Chess, and more. Below is an abridged version of the interview. The full version is available on the ChessBase India YouTube Channel. – The year 2024 was like filled with so many things and on interview I want to talk about all that FIDE has done in 2024 and also what the plans will be for 2025 so maybe your first thoughts about the year 2024. – First of all I’m really happy that we successfully ran all major competitions at a very high level, with increased prize funds and expanded visibility. With sponsorship from various parts of the world, these events were held in iconic locations, including the final part of the World Championship match in Singapore and the World Rapid and Blitz Championships in New York. Congratulations to the new World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju. It is an amazing achievement and a big thing for India, I can guess it. FIDE team worked hard to organize those events, to raise funding and to make sure that players are in the comfortable conditions. I would particularly like to thank the Chair of Global Strategy Commission and FIDE CEO Emil Sutovsky who did a great job with his team and PR staff providing the best possible environment for all players. I know that some people have issues with Emil and criticize him, but the way he is working like 20 hours a day sometimes and putting all his heart and efforts into events organization and fundraising is really amazing and deserves very high evaluation. I find these personal attacks on him unacceptable. Of course, you can criticize constructively. You can argue with people, including myself. If you want to attack, attack me, but not people who work really hard. I send a strong message to everyone: no personal attacks, including on people who maybe you do not like or disagree with. They do a great job. 2024 showed and 2025 will prove it. Of course, it is not just about one person. The entire FIDE team worked hard. I really want to thank Vishy Anand for his outstanding contribution both in Budapest in New York as well as other locations. He has had a great chess career, actually it continues; he is #10 in the world after all, but he started doing more and more and more FIDE Deputy President work. It is a really big thing. Dana Reizniece also works very hard on various projects and handle relationships with federations. Additionally, Akaki Iashvili, Lukasz Turlej, Nigel Short all play crucial roles and I deeply appreciate their efforts. If I did not mention someone, they should not feel bad about it. There are so many people to mention. I am very grateful to our team, which is getting bigger and bigger. Since our ambitions are getting bigger and bigger, we are expanding FIDE’s road to social projects and initiatives. While 2024 was a year of some major events and FIDE’s 100-year anniversary, the 2025 is about social mission of chess, in addition to all major events. We are finishing the year with an expanded chess community with more countries actually involved. Our next challenge is how to make our spectatorship base even broader and make chess even more commercially attractive. – Those were some very important points that you brought up I want to talk about a few of them that you touched upon especially the ones about the personal attacks. There were two issues at the World Rapid and Blitz in New York. The first one is this dress-code incident and the second one – sharing first place in the blitz event. – The time difference was very big, and I was unwell, so unfortunately I was not present when the decision was being made. I don’t criticize anyone involved — neither our team nor Magnus, who acknowledged the violation and was ready to comply with penalties. So, I don’t think anyone is really guilty in this situation. It was just a sequence of things that led to a suboptimal result that was not good for anyone. I personally would suggest a different solution if I would be there, but again it is not about criticizing anyone. It is just a lesson that we should learn. I know perfectly that Magnus did not have an intention to violate the dress code. It is the most important part for me. I think that it is good that we found a solution and Magnus could participate in the blitz event that increased the attention to the tournament. He also went to the conference that we had before the blitz tournament, which is also good as it attracted many VIPs to the Wall Street Gambit conference. I think everyone understands that some of his words after this jeans accident were just too much. He knows that, I know that, everyone knows that, but we found the way to move forward and it is good. I don’t criticize anyone right now for that; we left this moment behind. As for sharing the blitz title, I think it is a lesson in terms of regulations. The regulations were not perfect. Basically, we created the risk that it can last forever, which is not good. After two games nobody would expect that it could end up like that, but Ian was back in the game, leveled the score and it happened. So regulations were not perfect, it is clear. My argument basically was that players did not have real motivation. It was evident even without any videos that I saw only next morning about their joking suggestions. I really think it was kind of a joke since they knew they were being recorded, in the camera just in front of them. Actually, I didn’t see