7 responses to “Ilya Levitov: “For me, classical chess is opera””

  1. A rapid event in honour of Botvinnik ?! my head spins at the thought.

  2. It’s kind of scary that a higly placed FIDE representative actually blames the the game of chess for FIDE’s failour in developing a good tournament infrastructure and a platform for marketing. It’s legal to have new ideas, but nothing will help if FIDE isn’t able to attract sponsors and create a viable structure that gets attention from a broader audience. It’s FIDE’s fault that chess has fallen behind compared to sports like tennis, golf and cycling. None of those are fast sports, but due to wonderful TV productions and great tournament cycklus’s they still are very popular and attracts lot’s of audience and sponsors.

  3. How predictable. While admitting that Kazan was a disaster, FIDE blames chess rather than FIDE itself. “We’re stuck in a situation where chess is of interest only to chess players themselves.” Perhaps that is because the general public worldwide is witness to the head of FIDE embracing and supporting criminals against humanity or talking about his imagined alien abduction, and sponsors eager to make something more of chess will not touch FIDE with a ten foot pole.

    So FIDE now proposes to elevate random chess, blitz, etc over classical chess. This is consistent with it plainly evident long-term plan of degrading the championship. The very nature of these forms of play introduce far more unpredictability to results. Particularly for the public at large, a single clear champion – as opposed to simply the player has prevailed this week or month – is a significant part of the allure of chess. At least for the foreseeable future, it may well be too much to hope for to have the top ten players be household names among the general public. But surely the path forward to greater popularity is not to eliminate the likelihood that the general public knowing one or two names of the very top players, as was the case with Fischer/Spassky or Kasparov/Karpov, which is what will occur if FIDE fosters game varients meant specifically fostering randomness of results.

    The greatest boost to chess popularity in modern times has been the charismatic dominant champions of Fischer and Kasparov. Nothing FIDE can do can equal what a champion can do. Yet a dominant champion with popular appeal and real influence throughout the chess world is the last thing FIDE wants. This latest initiative is one of a thousand examples of FIDE putting its own corrupt institutional interests before the interests of chess.

  4. Mishan, I just wanted to say I hope you won’t be bothered by the dirt you currently get thrown over you by the baboon(s) on chessgames. It’s best to stay away of them. Anyway, keep up the great work!

  5. Fantastic post, calvin amari.

  6. There’s a worldwide economic crisis, tournaments are cancelled and FIDE seems sure to follow a mistaken path, not even distracted by good moves.

    Why ? Because they have always thought that they can come up with ideas superior to our beloved GMs who, seemingly have almost twice the I.Q. they possess.

    Anybody who goes along with their projects is not to be blamed, but everyone has to see that we are being ruled by a “Trial and Error Company”.

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