FIDE and the Samarkand Gamble: The Promise to Bring Magnus Carlsen Back and the Conflict-of-Interest Problem

On September 26, national chess federations will cast their votes for the next FIDE president in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. There is an empty seat in that hall. It belonged to Arkady Dvorkovich, who left the position after his name was placed on the European Union sanctions list. For a sport where power usually changes hands in silence, the disappearance of an incumbent from the race is a major disruption. It opens the door for three businessmen competing for the right to govern the destiny of hundreds of millions of players worldwide.

Reviewing the notes on how this vote was prepared, memory takes me back to an afternoon in Shanghai in 2026, when I first realized that what happens in a federation's meeting room can decide the fate of a game before the first move is played. This Samarkand summer, I went looking for the champions whose names are not on the control panel — the people who hold power without ever having won a major tournament.

Three names are competing: Wadim Rosenstein, a German businessman and organizer of elite chess events; Jan Henric Buettner, also a German entrepreneur; and Timur Turlov, a Kazakh businessman. None of them comes from the professional chess administration apparatus. That is the first notable point, and also the easiest to overlook when the media focuses only on one Rosenstein line — that he wants to bring Magnus Carlsen back into the world championship cycle.

The vote takes place only days after news of this race emerged, during FIDE's General Assembly in Samarkand. The window between candidates presenting their platforms and federations casting votes is short enough that it can hardly be called a full public vetting process. That makes each ballot heavier, and makes what is left unsaid in interviews more important than what is said.

The legal backdrop also overlaps with a political one. In June, FIDE temporarily suspended the Russian Chess Federation because it failed, within the prescribed deadline, to comply with a Court of Arbitration for Sport ruling concerning the federation's incorporation of organizations from occupied Ukrainian territories. This is the most sensitive file on FIDE's entire agenda, and it cannot be resolved by a campaign statement.

Rosenstein speaks plainly about this file: he commits to following the CAS decision, arguing there is no way around it. Legally, this is the plank with the least discretionary room in his entire platform. The paradox is that the part where he has the least choice is the part he presents most clearly.

What truly shapes this vote is not Russia, but format. For years, classical chess — long time controls, deep preparation, high draw rates, a slow media cycle — has held symbolic supremacy. But faster formats are winning the attention war.

Freestyle chess, a Chess960-style variant with randomized starting positions, reduces the value of memorized opening preparation and shifts the skill axis toward raw calculation and adaptability. Rapid, blitz and online events carry higher variance and are tightly bound to the commercial flow of streaming platforms. These three ecosystems differ in more than clock settings. They differ in who benefits from which skill.

I have spent many hours analyzing classical games that stretched six hours, and I have realized that most of their technical value lies in areas the general audience cannot see: an opening laboratory prepared over months, an endgame technique that only surfaces at move forty. That technical pond is deep, but its shore is narrow. The new formats have shallower ponds but far wider shores.

Chess's commercial value is shifting faster than its governance machinery can adapt.

This is the crux the Samarkand election must confront, even if no candidate wants to say it aloud. FIDE can issue rules, set qualification conditions, adjust the calendar. FIDE cannot issue a rule compelling a player to want to become world champion.

Magnus Carlsen is a five-time world champion. In 2026, he announced he would not defend the title in the following cycle. He remains world number one with an estimated rating around 2830, and still competes at the highest level across formats. Hikaru Nakamura, world number two with an estimated rating in the 2790–2800 range, is one of the sport's biggest commercial assets thanks to his streaming appeal.

What stands out is that both are drifting away from the center of the classical cycle, while that cycle keeps running without them. Here a gap appears that keeps widening between the question of who plays best and the question of who holds the title. Those two questions used to be nearly identical. Now they have separated.

Rosenstein assesses himself as having the best relations with Carlsen and Nakamura among the candidates. This must be stated clearly: it is a campaign statement, not a verifiable data point. No agreement has been published. No mechanism has been named. No special qualification clause has been written into a document.

A promise without an enforcement mechanism is just a promise packaged more carefully.

In chess, for a player to return to the title cycle, one of a few things is needed: a wild card, a tailor-made qualification path, or a prize structure attractive enough to make participation economically rational. The published platform mentions none of these mechanisms. That silence is meaningful.

There is a power asymmetry worth naming. Carlsen needs FIDE less than FIDE needs Carlsen. The classical world title loses part of its commercial value when the sport's most recognizable figure stands outside it. That creates a structural incentive for the organization to concede, not for the player to return under the old format.

At the same time, Rosenstein's own platform acknowledges a financial gap that anyone following chess recognizes: the game is known globally but has only a handful of sponsors truly inside its ecosystem. Global awareness is very high; sponsor count is very low. That gap is precisely the space he wants to exploit through commercialization plans.

Economically, this is the most credible part of his platform, because it targets a real, measurable weakness rather than a promise dependent on someone else's will.

From my experience covering international tournaments, chess has a structural paradox that has existed for decades: the number of people who know the rules far exceeds the number who pay to watch. Online platforms understood this earlier than FIDE. They built products around speed, around player personalities, around streaming cadence. The classical cycles were built around tradition.

This is where the hardest part appears, and where a serious analysis must speak plainly.

Rosenstein has had business activities tied to Russia. His WR Group previously took part in logistics, certification and oil-and-gas projects in Russia, and according to the information released, those activities were withdrawn after the 2026 sanctions were imposed. He is also the founder and chairman of WR Chess, an organizer of elite chess events.

At the same time, he proposes a rule that FIDE employees would not be permitted to work simultaneously for private chess organizations.

On its face, that proposal is a strong anti-conflict-of-interest measure. But it raises a self-application question the source text does not resolve: if the person proposing the rule is himself the head of a private chess organization, how would that rule constrain his own ecosystem?

The FIDE presidency confers control over championship-cycle rules and the commercial rights attached to them. For someone who simultaneously runs an event-organizing entity, the conflict-of-interest question is no longer purely ethical. It is material, convertible into money and into power.

It must be stressed that no allegation of wrongdoing is made here, and the campaign questions themselves are not conclusions. But a vote held only days after platforms were published, without an independent pre-election conflict-of-interest disclosure mechanism, puts member federations in the position of deciding with incomplete information.

Interestingly, the most legally sensitive part of his platform — compliance with the CAS ruling on the Russia file — is the least controversial, because it is framed as an unavoidable obligation. Meanwhile, the part he designed himself to raise integrity standards is the part generating the most doubt.

All three candidates are businessmen. This signals that commercial capital is entering chess governance at the highest level. There is an upside: organizational capability, financial resources, product thinking. There is also a risk: governing while competing.

At the industry level, this vote is a contest over schedule power. Whoever controls the calendar controls the flow of attention. Whoever controls the flow of attention controls commercial value. Over the years, that power has been slowly leaking from federations toward platforms and private organizers.

A new FIDE president will have to answer three questions at once. Which format holds primacy, and whether that remains compatible with where audiences actually are. How to bring the most magnetic players back into the cycle without turning the classical title into a byproduct. And how to reform governance without putting themselves in the position of having to explain themselves.

If Carlsen returns, the classical title's commercial value rises, and his leverage over the organization rises with it. If he does not, the title still exists, but its commercial ceiling stays where it is, while alternative formats keep growing. Both scenarios share one thing: the power of decision does not rest entirely with the winner of the election.

In my previous analyses of the championship cycle, I usually focused on the move. This time, the most important move is made off the board, and it is made with a ballot.

There is one small detail worth keeping. The candidate admits that inside chess there are only a few sponsors. This is a confession of a structural weakness that existed before and will exist after any presidential term. It cannot be solved by a statement, nor by a seat.

So when federations raise their hands in Samarkand, they are not merely choosing a leader. They are choosing a format for the future — or choosing to postpone the debate about it for another term.

Many will watch the result to see who wins. I will watch to see what gets written into law, and what is merely said in an interview. In sport, a promise is the cheapest thing. Structural change is the most expensive. And in a game where every smallest mistake is recorded in notation, we should read candidates' platforms the way we read a chess game: ignore the pretty moves, focus on the ones that cannot be taken back.