Your trusted source

If Armenia does not attend the 2016 Olympiad in Baku, it would be a real tragedy, ex-world chess champion Garry Kasparov said in his interview with Chessbase. Below are some excerpts from the interview.

- What to make of the reports, clearly from FIDE sources, that there has been a "truce" with Kasparov?

- These meetings and this result was for a specific goal of reforming the badly written rules, to clean up the system. There is no truce because there was no war. We only want FIDE elections to be about who can present the best plans for making the organization better and stronger, and who has the best ideas for promoting chess and helping all the federations succeed. If the system isn't fair, if the rules are ambiguous, then all the focus is on how to exploit the lousy rules instead of who will do the best job for the world of chess.

Listen, I still have many differences with Kirsan Ilyumzhinov and how he runs FIDE, and I know I'm not the only one. But the best way to address these differences is to present better ideas, to show a superior track record, and to let people judge for themselves. Some bureaucrats can only thrive in a combat situation, turning everything into an internal battle that only harms FIDE. Let's see if they can build something real, to create value for the federations beyond talking about big plans that never pay off – at least not for the federations. We will always have disagreements! But don't harm the federations or FIDE; let's talk about real leadership, real results, and make things better.

- Speaking of leadership, we now have to ask the obvious question: are you going to run for the FIDE presidency yourself in 2014.

- My answer is still the same, which it's not about my being a candidate; it's about changing FIDE for the better. If there's a candidate who can promote a strong agenda for improving FIDE and the chess world, who can win the election, then I will support that candidate. This is what I did in 2010 when I supported Karpov, much to everyone's surprise. Despite having so little time to prepare and campaign, the mission of reform attracted considerable support. But the ticket wasn't ready, and the ideas were not clear or presented well due to the rush. Now there will be more time to build the ticket and every element of the platform. If I think I am the only one who can do it, then okay, I'll probably run. But right now there's no point in thinking about it when there are so many things to be done.

- Let's move on to the Olympiad in Istanbul. What were your impressions, even if you do not want to talk about Russia's bittersweet silver medal?

- The Olympiad, in some ways even more than the world championship, is a crown jewel of the chess world. It doesn't get the international mainstream headlines, but it's wonderful to bring so many chessplayers from around the world in a single event. Teams of amateurs get to rub shoulders with the world's elite and play their hardest. So it was a real shame to see such poor conditions for the players and such larcenous financial burdens placed on the federations. So many people I talked to were outraged by everything from the hotel and food prices, the meager room allocations, and the site next to the airport instead of in the city. The cost of sending a team was over double that of Khanty-Mansiysk! Instead of using the large number of attendees to leverage better prices, the players and federations were a captive audience and squeezed at every turn. There was even a "participation fee" of 100 euro per participant, another quarter-million euros bled from the federations. This is a just a fresh example of taking money out of the chess community instead of finding sponsorship to bring money into it. It is ironic because Yazici is the man who led the attack for reparations against the federations that sued FIDE over the election.

Okay, let's put that in the past and hope it is a lesson well learned. I have no doubt Tromsø and Baku will be excellently organized. The organizers there will take this honor seriously and put on a top-class event without using it as an opportunity to loot the federations and players.

- Since you mentioned that gold medal, how can Armenia keep pulling this off? Obviously they have a strong team, and this time they added Movsesian, so maybe the better question is how can a Russian team top seeded every time keep finding new ways to fall short of gold?

- Actually, Movsesian already played for Armenia on the European Team Championship. As for Russia, silver on tiebreaks is not a crime, I think! Yes, okay, for Russia anything but gold is a failure of a sort, and the players are always aware of this. It was that way on all my Soviet and Russian teams, and that sort of pressure is not always comfortable. I was doubly upset because my old coach Yuri was there captaining the Russian team. He already built a winning women's team and he came so close here. I think they relaxed after beating Ukraine [in round eight], you know, they thought "okay, we've played the toughest opponents," and they relaxed against the USA [in round nine]. Of course the US is a strong team now, but unlike, say, Ukraine, China, and Armenia they don't have a really solid core top to bottom. So maybe Russia relaxed a little and we saw what happened. And of course Russia has the women's gold, do not forget, so I congratulate them as well as our open team for the silver and Karjakin and Jakovenko for their individual medals.

As for Armenia, we can rule out luck after three golds in six years! They lost to China but came back and showed their incredible fighting spirit as a team once again. Not on rating the best team, but great fighting spirit all the way through. It's amazing that Movsesian had the worst score on the Armenian team, but he had the two clutch wins over Grischuk and Almasi. Pressure performance! You don't often see a hero with 50%!