[light_hue_1]

Chess is in such a sad situation again.

The world champion (which is determined for classical chess) isn't even remotely the best player. He's barely even in the top 10 and may soon fall out of that too. In terms of strength he's the weakest player to win in half a century even in absolute terms. And I can't think of any time in modern history of chess when such a low ranked player won.

We really need to do something to reinvigorate the game. Chess world championships used to be front page events. The winners would be stars and everyone knew their name. Now, even I don't bother to follow anymore.

[specproc]

I dunno, I think this says more about FIDE and the championship title than the state of the game.

Online chess is huge, streaming is huge. You do have these big personalities in the game, and an often unfortunate amount of drama.

People wrote chess off after Deep Blue, but the game is really going from strength to strength right now. It's just that classical isn't the focus.

[Mr_Minderbinder]

> In terms of strength he's the weakest player to win in half a century even in absolute terms.

Gukesh is arguably stronger than either of Khalifman, Kasimdzhanov and Ponomariov, who won the FIDE title before it was re-unified. Also his current rating is higher than either Karpov’s or Kasparov’s were when they first won the title. His rating when he first won was about the same as Fischer’s when Fischer first won. Neither Kramnik or Anand were clearly the best player throughout the entirety of their reigns and both of their ranks fluctuated amongst the top ten positions.

[traes]

> Also his current rating is higher than either Karpov’s or Kasparov’s were when they first won the title. His rating when he first won was about the same as Fischer’s when Fischer first won.

This doesn't really mean anything. Rating is a purely relative system, as in the other thing that matters when performing Elo calculations is the difference in Elo between the two players. The absolute value of an Elo rating carries no real meaning and drifts over time based on the volume, skill level, and initial rating of lower level players. Since these change frequently, it's pretty much useless to compare ratings separated in time by more than a decade or so, maybe less. 50+ years is certainly far too long.

[gosub100]

I think the household names are perfectly able to start their own league and deprecate FIDE. Maybe they are already? This is a situation where the org needs the players more than the players need the org.

I think it was F1 auto racing that recently (10 or so) years ago went through a revolution that changed the rules (for fans, in that case) that dramatically increased the viewership of the sport, mainly because the previous owner was so out of touch with the times.

[traes]

This is an incredibly ironic comment. "Freestyle" chess was an attempt to do exactly this with Magnus's support, and it failed to secure funding after its initial run. This event is them running back to FIDE in shambles to salvage their tour. Kasparov attempted something similar in the 90s, making his own world championship title, and similarly failed horribly.

The stability of a 100+ year old international organization that's led by serious politicians with connections in every major country is hard to contend with. FIDE's current president was Russia's Deputy Prime Minister for 6 years.

[BrtByte]

The title has always been about winning a specific match under specific conditions, not necessarily about who's 1 on rating at that exact moment