It is time for the world chess body, FIDE, to break its "de­pen­den­cy on un­re­li­able sources" and re­turn to the era when ma­jor cor­po­ra­tions bid com­peti­ti­tive­ly to in­vest in the sport. This is one of the ba­sic changes be­ing pro­mot­ed by twelfth World Chess Cham­pi­on Ana­toly Kar­pov in his cur­rent cam­paign to re­place Kir­san Ilyumzhi­nov as head of FIDE in next month's pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. As an ex­am­ple of what he means, Kar­pov has an­nounced a US$4 mil­lion world wide chess de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme in his first term aimed at "strug­gling fed­er­a­tions around the world." "This four-mil­lion-dol­lar en­dorse­ment comes from com­mer­cial in­ter­ests who want to in­vest in chess and who want to prof­it from how the glob­al move­ment can pro­fes­sion­al­ly sup­port and pro­mote the game," Kar­pov ex­plained. "We have been talk­ing to dif­fer­ent groups for months and want­ed to make sure every­thing was set be­fore mak­ing any an­nounce­ments. "We told them that, start­ing this year, chess was go­ing to be a huge op­por­tu­ni­ty with a new FIDE ad­min­is­tra­tion that would take com­mer­cial spon­sorhip se­ri­ous­ly."

The for­mer world cham­pi­on said the US$4 mil­lion pack­age does not in­clude spon­sor­ship for the world cham­pi­onship and oth­er events. Rather, it would be de­vot­ed to "youth chess pro­grammes and pro­duc­ing ti­tled play­ers in de­vel­op­ing fed­er­a­tions." This, he not­ed, would pro­duce long term ben­e­fits for the en­tire chess world. A crit­i­cal need, said Kar­pov, is to "broad­en dra­mat­i­cal­ly the rev­enue base of sup­port for chess by at­tract­ing spon­sor­ship of sev­er­al types." But this will hap­pen on­ly af­ter FIDE man­age­ment is changed, he added. "Spon­sors want to deal with peo­ple of proven in­tegri­ty and re­li­a­bil­i­ty, who have the ex­pe­ri­ence and busi­ness acu­men to de­liv­er."

Cor­po­ra­tions be­come spon­sors be­cause they wish to be as­so­ci­at­ed with chess. "For years FIDE has been led by a per­son about whom much has been writ­ten and broad­cast, al­most all of which has dam­aged the im­age of the game. It is not sur­pris­ing that spon­sors have stayed away. "We must im­prove the im­age of chess (our 'Brand') to make chess more at­trac­tive to spon­sors," the Kar­pov camp de­clared.

In sum­ma­ry, the chal­lenger pro­pos­es to build a new fi­nan­cial foun­da­tion for FIDE first by lead­ing with in­tegri­ty and through a team of skilled pro­fes­sion­als lo­cat­ed in ma­jor busi­ness cen­tres through­out the world. Then his pro­gramme would: en­list the sup­port of cul­tur­al and en­ter­tain­ment celebri­ties; cre­ate pro­grammes that would at­tract cor­po­rate, in­di­vid­ual and gov­ern­ment spon­sors such as link­ing chess with ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing; mar­ket the sport pro­fes­sion­al­ly; de­vel­op joint ven­tures with suc­cess­ful en­tre­pre­neur­ial com­pa­nies; ex­pand the base of play­ers, not fo­cus on­ly on the elite; re­pair the ad­ver­sar­i­al re­la­tion­ship be­tween FIDE and most of the chess elite; fund and co-or­di­nate mis­sions for strong mas­ters and grand­mas­ters to vis­it var­i­ous fed­er­a­tions pro­vid­ing prac­ti­cal train­ing skills and in­spi­ra­tion. Tak­ing mon­ey from the fed­er­a­tions and dis­trib­ut­ing a frac­tion back to them is not a busi­ness mod­el, the Kar­pov camp con­tends.

In­stead the plan is to re­duce dues and fees paid to FIDE and de­vel­op pro­grammes to waive fees for cer­tain fed­er­a­tions suf­fer­ing fi­nan­cial hard­ship. Al­so, at-risk fed­er­a­tions should be helped by FIDE, not pun­ished. "We will not re­ly ex­clu­sive­ly on fed­er­a­tions to fi­nance FIDE. Past poli­cies ig­nored the broad out­reach for spon­sor­ship there­by dra­mat­i­cal­ly re­duc­ing FIDE's po­ten­tial rev­enue," the Kar­pov camp promised. De­tails of the "man­i­festo" pro­pound­ed by the Kar­pov team are ful­ly out­lined in the web­site of the for­mer world cham­pi­on. It ap­pears to Dou­ble Rooks that the pro­pos­als are gen­uine­ly and com­pre­hen­sive­ly de­signed to lift the sport of chess out of the stag­na­tion it has ex­pe­ri­enced over the last 15 years and in­to a new and pro­gres­sive era in which ad­min­is­tra­tion of the game will re­trieve its trust­wor­thy im­age and win again the world-wide sup­port it de­serves.

It seems doubt­ful whether the T&T Chess As­so­ci­a­tion has made a care­ful com­par­a­tive study of the per­son­al­i­ties and pro­grammes be­hind the con­tend­ing camps be­fore com­mit­ting its sup­port for the con­tro­ver­sial in­cum­bent. While the As­so­ci­a­tion could hard­ly have re­fused Ilyumzhi­nov's US$40,000 of­fer to host the Uma­da Cup 2010 in­ter­na­tion­al in Port-of-Spain, its in­ter­est in the fu­ture ad­min­is­tra­tion and progress of chess should not have made it such an easy prey to this ob­vi­ous pre-elec­tion gam­bit. This state­ment from the Kar­pov team of­fers an ap­pro­pri­ate con­clu­sion: "Re­gion­al lead­ers should be pro­vid­ed with greater au­ton­o­my and re­sources. Re­sources must be pro­vid­ed con­sis­tent­ly rather than once every four years on the eve of FIDE elec­tions. Past prac­tices con­t­a­m­i­nate the elec­toral process. For this rea­son we sup­port 'one fed­er­a­tion, one vote' as an im­por­tant in­gre­di­ent in the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic prac­tices of FIDE and as a guar­an­tee that small and de­vel­op­ing fed­er­a­tions have a voice."