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This meeting, which was organized by the Planning and Development Committee (PDC), took place in Mexico City from February 10 to February 12th. The most interesting part of this meeting was the participation of the leaders of FIDE, including Arkady Dvorkovich and Victor Bologan. When I decided to attend the meeting, my priority was to get the opportunity to create relations with representatives of American Federations and, of course, with the president of the FIDE. The 2 days spent convening were sufficient for this. Hal Bond was also present at these meetings, as a member of the PDC, and I am thankful that he introduced to me to many members of the committee who he has known for a long time.
Behind the scenes, there was a hidden conversation about the upcoming election for the president of the American Federation. Incumbent president Mr. Jorge Vega from Guatemala has held this position for nearly 20 years, and he's currently 86 years old. Despite his age, he continues to have a wide base of support, especially from Spanish-speaking countries. However, many who discussed the topic with me addressed a dislike of this situation.
This meeting was mainly meant to discuss the diverse practices involved in financing FIDE events and help for developing countries in uplifting chess. I would like note that this event was well-attended, but a delegate from the US was not present. It seemed to me as though they don't find this sort of event to be of importance.
One such segment involved each representative being given the opportunity to talk about the ideal path for the future of the FIDE, from their point of view.
I used this opportunity to express my view of what the priorities should be.
Throughout the last few years, the FIDE has achieved great progress in the development of elite chess. The World Championship cycle is held routinely and successfully, with adequate funding for all stages of each event. Most important to me is to make the so-called 'chess pyramid' wider, as opposed to taller. This means improving the horizontal connections between different parts of the chess world. This can happen through holding more university tournaments, corporate tournaments, and senior events globally.
In order to pique the interest of the other representatives in what I was saying, I asked everyone a question: amongst the 100th players from each country in the world, after Russia, which has the highest rating? After many incorrect guesses (India, China, US...), someone finally said, 'Germany,' which was the correct answer. It is the German model, with its many tournaments and strong clubs, which seems to be optimal overall. From my personal experience, at several World Team Seniors Championships, there have always been many strong teams from Germany.
I also would like to note that many delegates from South America find it somewhat difficult to communicate in English. Perhaps it would be wise for the next CFC FIDE Representative to speak Spanish.
Many delegates were able to speak one-on-one with FIDE President Dvorkovich. My discussion with him touched on the following points.
1. Initially, we talked about the difficult times in which we find ourselves and the tough decisions that the FIDE president has had to make as a result of the situation with COVID. We briefly discussed the 2 year-length of the candidates tournament and the online Olympiad of 2020, in which there were two gold medal winners, India and Russia. Dvorkovich stated that being Russian was difficult in this situation because he feared his own biases in this case. Though this is no longer relevant, we nonetheless addressed the upcoming Olympiad in Moscow 2022 (the discussion took place before the war). For the record, I told Dvorkovich that I foresaw the chances of a possible boycott from certain western countries, especially the US and UK. Dvorkovich himself saw the Olympiad and the FIDE Congress in Moscow as the pinnacle of his presidency.
2. When the FIDE considers sponsoring federations, it looks at a list which categorizes every country in the world by its chess ranking and economic development. Of course, Canada belongs to the first division, who receive no aid from the FIDE. Without suggesting flaws in these ultimately logical categorizations, I tried to convince Dvorkovich that unfortunately, the Canadian federation finds itself in the worst position of all federations in the first division. Canadian achievements in the chess world are largely due to the successes of immigrants, who arrived in Canada as accomplished chess players and garnered their skills elsewhere. The number of strong tournaments in Canada continues to fall much below the number in most other countries in the aforementioned first division.
3. We also addressed the upcoming election of FIDE America's president. Dvorkovich and I are both unhappy with this situation, in which there has been only one president for the last 20 years. Dvorkovich said that he believes that a president should not be able to hold their position for more than 2 terms, of 4 years each. He considers this to be best on all levels of presidency, which is why he intends to run again in 2022, but not in 2026.
4. At the end of our discussion, we briefly touched upon the appointment of Canadian arbiters for the upcoming Olympiad.
In my separate conversation with FIDE Executive Director Victor Bologan, we also discussed the same thing that Dvorkovich and I talked about in point 2. I believe it is most practical for the pyramid that is Canadian chess to be widened.
Overall, the PDC did a great job organizing this event. My thanks to chairperson of PDC Sonja Johnson.
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