Nigel Short to run for FIDE President

Various sites have announced that Nigel Short will run for FIDE President. I believe the news was broken by Nicholas Bergh in the Norwegian paper Aftenposten, and has since been confirmed many other places, including on Nigel Short's Twitter feed.

I don't usually editorialize on the Club blog, as firstly the Club does not really have an official viewpoint on anything, and secondly we have no way of really establishing such a viewpoint other than unanimous acclimation. So I will put my personal editorial viewpoint of this announcement immediately beneath the fold.

My position on the Short FIDE Presidential Candidacy:

Perhaps some elaboration is in order.

First, Short bears significant responsibility for the current mess in FIDE. The break with FIDE that he initiated with Garry Kasparov in 1993 created a great deal of uncertainty in the Chess world for over a dozen years. That mess led to Kirsan Ilyumzhinov's election and long tenure as President of FIDE, which has been disastrous.

Do Short and Kasparov bear the most responsibility? Not even collectively, as FIDE was a mess before their split. But the split resulted in no net positives for the game of chess, and Kasparov's various failed corporate sponsorships arguably did damage beyond that which FIDE did on their own. Short certainly does deserve a decent helping of the blame for that mess and its aftermath. Good intentions (if there were any besides simple greed) mean nothing in and of themselves. Results matter.

Secondly, there are questions about his path to a victory. Three bigger names have run against Ilyumzhinov in the last three elections, and all got squashed: Bessel Kok* lost 96-54 in 2006, Anatoly Karpov lost 95-55 in 2010, and Garry Kasparov (with the backing of Rex Sinquefield's fortune) lost 110-61 in 2014.

The significance of those results is that the Kok/Karpov/Kasparov tickets failed to build any momentum over time. I don't see how Short can do better.

But perhaps he doesn't have to, as this year it appears to be a three person race between Ilyumzhinov, his one-time deputy and supporter Georgios Makropoulos, and now Short. Short may have a numerical chance in a three-way race, but I frankly doubt it.

For one thing, it is not completely clear that Short will even get the English Chess Federation's endorsement and vote, as their delegate, Malcolm Pein, seems set on joining the Makropoulos ticket. For another, FIDE votes are often bought, and I doubt Short has the inclination to do so. Running an honest campaign is admirable, but will almost certainly lose in the FIDE General Assembly.

Thirdly, how well would Short be able to manage FIDE? Has he ever run an organization? Does he know all the key players, or will he have enough insiders on his ticket to manage the situation? I suppose these questions will be addressed in follow-up announcements.

In the meantime I will simply be laughing at the absurdity of yet another candidate for FIDE President who has done everything in his power to utterly destroy the organization from without. From "BURN IT DOWN" to "Please elect me" is not a good look.

* If you don't know who Bessel Kok is and his importance to the chess world, the short version is that he was a huge organizer for the game in the 1980s and 1990s, using his own considerable fortune and organizational skills.