The avid chess fan has a love- hate relationship with FIDE, the international organization that connects national chess federations for the purpose of uniting all chess activity under a common governance umbrella.
FIDE (Federation Internationale des Échecs) was formed in 1924, and lists over 150 nations as its delegates. Its main activities are to organize the Chess Olympiads, World Championship cycles, and calculate the FIDE ratings of the international chess community.
The first of several controversies plagued FIDE in 1975 when American Bobby Fischer defaulted his world title match against Anatoly Karpov when his list of match demands were not met.
In 1993, the current world champion Garry Kasparov and his challenger Nigel Short broke away to hold their championship match under the auspices of a newly created organization: the Professional Chessplayers Association (PCA).
FIDE began holding its own championship, and the chess world embarked upon a confusing split in the world championship succession.
The lightning rod for FIDE is its president for the past 12 years: Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. Ilyumzhinov is also the president of Kalymkia, a sovereign republic from the old Soviet bloc. It is generally acknowledged that the infusion of Ilyumzhinov’s personal money into chess events is necessary to keep a poor FIDE business model from bankrupting the organization.
Chess purists are outraged: the history of well-known world champions playing long Interzonal tournaments, candidates matches, etc. at classical time controls has been lost forever.
In the past decade there have been a flurry of controversial tournament formats that crowned a new World Champion virtually every year, with tiebreakers going to 5-minute blitz games to decide a clear match winner.
In a classic battle between two world champions, Fischer takes the measure of Tigran Petrosian.
