FIDE President took part in the 2021 Sport Integrity Week with a keynote speech, "Chess: an Enabler of the Social Development Goals".

The Sport Integrity Week™ is aimed at promoting the implementation of the highest integrity standards at all levels and across all areas of Sport.

Bringing together relevant industry leaders, decision-makers and top experts, the Sport Integrity Week™ offers a unique, powerful platform to raise awareness about the most critical challenges facing sport and the wider industry, facilitate collective action and pave the way to the necessary reforms.

In his speech, FIDE President presented some key benefits that chess can provide to society: "Chess can be instrumental in improving the intellectual capacity of people, especially the young. Chess teaches us how to respect our opponent. Chess teaches us how to take wins and losses with honour and pride. How to analyse your mistakes, improve strategical thinking and memory."

He also elaborated on the role of FIDE: "FIDE is not just about official tournaments or world championships, it is about promoting education among youth, gender equality, fair play values. In chess, we are strongly standing against all types of discrimination. We also do our best to support players with disabilities to be involved in chess activities."

The organisation is facing some challenges and President did not shy away from them: "FIDE must change itself, improve its management capacity and be even more intensive and have better interaction with all its constituencies."

Answering the question about prevention and fight against unscrupulous behaviours that affect the sports industry, including chess, Arkady Dvorkovich described the institutional framework FIDE was putting together, stressed the importance of transparency for the entire organisation and castigated computer cheating:

"It is absolutely intolerable from our perspective. We sent a very clear message that we are not going to tolerate it; we are going to fight… We do have means, but we need support from the legal community to establish this [using AI for detecting cheaters] as a streamline process and use it widely in chess."

Full keynote and fireside chat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuWSpOBEY70

More about the event: https://siga-sport.com/siga-sport-integrity-week-2021/