‘Unnecessary action’ or ‘good initiative’? What Indian chess GMs say on FIDE’s latest ‘experiment’ | Chess News:

India’s leading Grandmasters Pravin Thipsay, SL Narayanan, Abhimanyu Puranik, Srinath Narayanan, SP Sethuraman, and Shyam Sundar M (Designed by TimesofIndia.com)

NEW DELHI: Getting an official FIDE (the main governing body of chess) rating is never easy. A player must participate in FIDE-rated tournaments, which are organized under strict regulations and often require travel, entry fees, and constant preparation. To receive a rating, a player must face rated opponents and meet the required performance in rated games.That tradition, however, may soon change.In a major policy change that has sparked a deep existential debate, FIDE and World Chess, an official commercial partner of the governing body, have recently opened the “First Rating Experiment”. The two-year pilot program will allow casual enthusiasts to earn their first official over-the-board (OTB) blitz and rapid ratings throughout online play at worldchess.com. It’s a bold attempt to democratize a historically insular game, as the governing body seeks to expand the current global pool of 500,000 rated players into millions so that every Tom, Dick, and Harry has a chance to earn their first FIDE rating.To manage this new digital frontier, FIDE plans to use an AI-driven fair-play screening framework and a specialized technical coefficient designed to match online performance to physical standards. To protect the upper echelons of the sport, the governing body has also put up a regulatory firewall, where these online-incubated ratings are strictly limited to 1,800 Elo.Although FIDE intends to launch the program this July, after a period of community review, Indian Grandmasters, the vanguard of the modern chess renaissance, are locked in a fierce cerebral tug-of-war over the decision.For some, it represents a vision breaking down economic barriers; for others, however, this is a dangerous compromise of the game’s ultimate currency, which lies in the integrity of the rating system.

‘An unnecessary step’ by FIDE?

According to many Indian Grandmasters, the boundary between online and offline chess must remain completely sacred. In an exclusive interaction with TimesofIndia.com, Grandmaster (GM) SL Narayanan was blunt in his disapproval.“I think it was an unnecessary move from FIDE. You can’t combine online tournaments and then translate the rating into over-the-board rating because the rules of online and offline chess are different,” he said. “For recreational players, they will consider this a good step, but the real problem is (that) it affects the credibility of the rating system.”This sentiment was strongly echoed on X (formerly Twitter) by prominent coach GM Srinath Narayanan, who expressed deep reservations about online security. He wrote, “Very skeptical about the effectiveness of fairplay checks. Online play and overboard ratings should not mix.”GM SP Sethuraman also brought up X to highlight how this merger could disrupt an already fragile rating ecosystem, “I already feel that the chess rating system is far from fully calibrated across different regions, formats, and activity levels. We’ve already seen significant inflation and deflation issues over the years, making it difficult to compare ratings across generations. “The introduction of official online ratings that can be converted to OTB ratings may create more noise and uncertainty. While the intention is to make chess easier, I hope that FIDE will continue to do well.”Offering a more relaxed but equally cautious take, GM Abhimanyu Puranik told this website, “Overall, (it’s) bad to link online and OTB play, but the rating itself is starting to be so low that it won’t change much.”“It is a difficult decision to doubt players based only on actions”Speaking to TimesofIndia.com, Chennai’s one of the most prominent coaches, GM Shyam Sundar M, admitted to being very surprised by the news, weighing the big shift in operations against the dark cloud of digital cheating.“The good thing is that FIDE is trying some new initiatives… However, combining online chess for over-the-board rating, I’m not sure. I mean, that’s also playing without a physical board. Like, a hybrid system, I understand. That makes sense too.”Shyam Sundar suggested that a hybrid system, where players gather in physical regional halls overseen by local arbiters and 24-hour Zoom monitoring, would be safer and more economical for the organizers.Expressing his core concern about the anti-cheating algorithm, he added, “I firmly believe that even an innocent person should not be punished. It is not easy, and it is a difficult decision to doubt the players based only on the actions, on the quality of the game in two or three or four games.However, he remains open to the future, adding, “Maybe AI-based or even server-based. Maybe something like that browser with AI, maybe it’s possible.

Grandmaster: Pravin Thisay the initiative is accepted

In stark contrast, Arjuna Awardee and veteran GM Pravin Thipsay hailed the initiative as a visionary leap as he noted that less than 1% of the world’s chess enthusiasts have the means to actually play in physical, rated tournaments.“I think FIDE has taken a bold step… There are crores of players… who play chess online, and they play regularly as Karpov established one third of the Western world who play chess almost every day, but they play on the computer, and then they remain far from the mainstream. TimesofIndia.com.Thipsay acknowledged that the system could face serious problems if cheating is left unchecked or if the rating coefficient is calculated incorrectly, pointing out that changes to the FIDE coefficient before 18 players have “boomeranged and failed”. However, he believes that the 1,800 ceiling is a very good filter.“If someone goes over 1,700 or 1,750, there is a reasonable chance that the particular player who tries to play chess more seriously, becomes an over-the-board player,” he added. “So I think it’s a good initiative, we have more players coming to over-the-board chess.”With FIDE now gathering feedback before the final rollout, the chess world stands at an unprecedented crossroads. What do you think about this proposal? Let’s find out in the comments.