CheckBreak - When Chess Attacked Its Biggest Players

I'd hardly call it 'Chess Attacked Its Biggest Players' when these amendments were added to prevent people like Hikaru or Alireza gaming the system. Think about all the other candidates and the hard work and stress they endured to qualify whereas these two looked for loopholes to ensure their place.
Neither of these changes will have an effect on 99+% of FIDE rated players.

@mkubecek said ^

Hikaru from playing amateurs to pad his rating and game count

It wasn't about his rating, he didn't have to worry about rating at all. It was only to fulfill the 40 games condition.

He is padding his rating. He isn't playing against his top player colleagues.

Instead of playing top tournaments he plays amateurs to fulfill game count and to pad his rating.

And FIDE quickly adding another pointless exception from an exception (which did not really change anything in practice) rather than rethinking the qualification rules properly only illustrates the point.

Actually FIDE CEO Emil Sutovsky said they would make a proposal to eliminate the rating spot qualification (a good idea). - "Going forwards, I'll submit a proposal, eliminating rating spot altogether towards Candidates-2028."

So FIDE are rethinking the qualification rule properly and strengthening the validity of the Candidates Tournament.

Recently they introduced an exception from the "400 point rule" for players rated 2650 and above. It was added in response to Hikaru Nakamura playing a series of non-elite opens.

It was 'triggered' by Nakamura, however there were at least five 2650+ players who were abusing the system as well. So FIDE put out this rule to stop such behavior in general. It was a well planned action which safeguards against manipulation of the rating system which occured in multiple instances, not just Nakamura.

"@EmilSutovsky 29 Sep 2025

Just to be clear.

The rule is not about Hikaru. He did trigger it, but when we started to dig, it turned out there were at least five players more of 2650+ level who, in 2024-25 regularly played events with a string of very low-rated opponents, abusing 400-points rule.

It was not occassional 450 or 500 points difference - but 700-800, often close to 1000 points. And not a single game like that per event, but rather most of them.

Hundreds of events were examined. Dozens of hours spent. Several solutions were reviewed, and it passed through three different panels before getting approved. I do think it is fair and balanced."

Overall, I think this info is good news. FIDE is looking out for the Candidates system and safeguarding against rating abuse from players who try to take advantage of the system.

@RuyLopez1000 said ^

@Toadofsky

Funny how the thumbnail shows three corrupt people lol (Carlsen and Nakamura defaming people through false accusations and Rozman's sycophancy on top of their combined efforts to try to force gambling on the chess world for profit).

Evil FIDE is trying to stop Mangus from wearing his jeans and Hikaru from playing amateurs to pad his rating and game count.

Oy, such combative words... fine.

I have no quarrel with Carlsen and I take issue with your accusation against him.

I have some issues with Nakamura and Rozman, however... "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra." For me picking a fight with them seems futile.

About "Evil FIDE" did you not watch the video? I don't agree with everything in it, however I agree with Hikaru: if players paid to participate and the tournament organizer followed the rules, players' games should be rated (and the tournament reports should be accepted).

@Toadofsky

I have no quarrel with Carlsen and I take issue with your accusation against him.

You mean to say that Carlsen never defamed anyone through false accusations?

@RuyLopez1000 said ^

@Toadofsky

I have no quarrel with Carlsen and I take issue with your accusation against him.

You mean to say that Carlsen never defamed anyone through false accusations?

What's your problem? Carlsen isn't stupid; I agree with this summary (seemingly, Carlsen was correct):

Carlsen released a statement saying that Niemann's behavior during their Sinquefield Cup game, taken together with earlier suspicions, had persuaded him to withdraw from the tournament. Carlsen expressed the belief that Niemann had cheated more often and more recently than he had admitted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlsen%E2%80%93Niemann_controversy

Additionally, I agree with Hikaru:
https://youtu.be/s5K__VTV7iE?t=680

@Toadofsky said ^

@Toadofsky
What's your problem? Carlsen isn't stupid; I agree with this summary (seemingly, Carlsen was correct):

That's a paragraph from Wikipedia.

However, the best source is Carlsen's own words and statements:

"throughout our game in the Sinquefield Cup I had the impression that he wasn’t tense or even fully concentrating on the game in critical positions" (Niemann had an improper level of 'tenseness').

Carlsen 'game analysis': https://ethics.fide.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Decision_Case_2_2023_final_final.pdf

"12.5 The Respondent gives an analysis of Round 3 of the Sinquefield Cup game, where he states that GM Niemann made a series of good moves, which were not expected of him, given observation from past games. The Respondent also states that GM Niemann chose a much more complicated line to win when Grandmasters of his level would have readily found the obvious line to win. The Respondent also addressed the disposition of GM Niemann, where he claims Niemann did not show signs of nerves, which were usually exhibited in their previous games. There were also no signs of exerting himself or actual thinking. The reservations held by the Respondent were compounded after their Round 3 game, when Niemann in his post-game commentary apparently referenced a non-existent game the Respondent supposedly played against another Grandmaster and provided as nonsensical explanation as to how he was able to exploit a rare opening line the Respondent used in their game"

Speaks for itself. The most ridiculous excuses and body language analysis.

Carlsen also lied to FIDE about having 'secret evidence' of Niemann's cheating.

"9.8 The Respondent, in his public announcements and motivation for a stay of proceedings to the EDC suggested he had knowledge of some relevant information regarding cheating by GM Niemann, which he was not at liberty to disclose because
of the lawsuit.'

"12.8 The EDC notes its disappointment with the lack of evidence provided by the Respondent. Throughout the communication in the initial stage of this matter, when the Respondent pressed for a stay of proceedings because he was unable to provide the evidence he possessed, the Respondent held out to the EDC that he had some concrete evidence he could provide after the US litigation was settled or decided upon. This was never provided to the EDC"

To sum up:

1. He withdrew after Niemann defeated him at Sinquefield.
2. He said Niemann wasn't tense enough, concentrating enough, no nerves, no exertion, no thinking, didn't play good enough (but also played too good XD).
3. He knew Niemann cheated on Chess.com before the game.
4. He has played against multiple online cheaters with no problems.
5. He has boycotted Niemann multiple times.
6. He went on the Rogan podcast in 2025 and directly said: "But there’s still something off, both then and now." (Niemann is still cheating!)

Carlsen isn't stupid

@RuyLopez1000 said ^

He is padding his rating. He isn't playing against his top player colleagues.
Instead of playing top tournaments he plays amateurs to fulfill game count and to pad his rating.

The point is that was not the reason why he did it, only a side effect. I'm absolutely sure that even if he knew in advance he wouldn't get any rating at all for them, he would still have played those tournaments.

Actually FIDE CEO Emil Sutovsky said they would make a proposal to eliminate the rating spot qualification (a good idea).
"Going forwards, I'll submit a proposal, eliminating rating spot altogether towards Candidates-2028."

Which exactly illustrates my point. Rather than "We are going to discuss and rework the qualification criteria for next cycle.", he quickly tweets first thing that comes to his mind. A heretic idea: for the image of the world champion title, it's already bad enough that both open and women No 1 players chose not to participate; does FIDE really want to eliminate also the next positions in the rating lists?

Seriously, Emil Sutovsky is exactly the kind of manager who would, in a reasonably working company, be prohibited from making any public statements without consulting the PR manager first. He is an expert in alienating important people, including elite players. A cynical take would be that his main role is to make Arkady Dvorkovich look like the good guy; which, considering that guy's background should be really hard - but somehow he succeeded.

The rule is not about Hikaru. He did trigger it, but when we started to dig, it turned out there were at least five players more of 2650+ level who, in 2024-25 regularly played events with a string of very low-rated opponents, abusing 400-points rule.

The infamous "400 point rule" is actually an exception which goes against the logic of the rating system. When it shows that some players were abusing this unfortunate and unsystematic exception, does FIDE drop the exception? No, they create an ad hoc exception from this exception for players above an arbitrarily chosen level.

Overall, I think this info is good news. FIDE is looking out for the Candidates system and safeguarding against rating abuse from players who try to take advantage of the system.

Still ignoring the fact that Hikaru Nakamura case had absolutely nothing to do with "rating abuse"?

@Toadofsky said ^

however I agree with Hikaru: if players paid to participate and the tournament organizer followed the rules, players' games should be rated (and the tournament reports should be accepted).

Technically, FIDE has right not to rate any tournament (which can be appealed to FIDE Council, article 0.4). However, I agree that such right should be seen as a last resort option reserved for extreme cases, e.g. tournaments with serious fair play concerns or severely mishandled by organizers or arbiters. Abusing it to moderate actions which are perfectly within the regulations and are only inconvenient or unexpected is a bad idea.

@mkubecek said ^

I wonder how the URS http://universalrating.com/ team are handling this situation: can they offer a more useful rating list than FIDE, or do I need to start my own better rating list?

URS is definitely an interesting project and the basic idea is very promising. In practice, though, some of the ratings do not look very convincing and the project feels a bit too opaque to me. It's not even clear which games exactly are the ratings calculated from. For FIDE or national ratings I can check which games or at least events are counted; I couldn't find such information for URS.

Basic idea is more or less behind any semi modern rating system. Except putting rapid/blitz/classic onto same number but even that is probably not much. It is easy to see from new players rating how they form almost gaussian distribution ja weird jagged on FIDE.

FIDE/Glicko type single game evidence system are doomed to fail by definition.

But rating were not such an issue. Why FIDE is so dominated by russian? Why there have so much bad administration. Nigel Short also was also Vice President and not really a role model.

Very hard to sell chess sponsorship with current or past administrations.

@mkubecek said ^

The point is that was not the reason why he did it, only a side effect. I'm absolutely sure that even if he knew in advance he wouldn't get any rating at all for them, he would still have played those tournaments.

I agree that it's not the main reason. I listed both reasons because they are contributing, as you say the rating padding is a beneficial side effect.

Actually FIDE CEO Emil Sutovsky said they would make a proposal to eliminate the rating spot qualification (a good idea).
"Going forwards, I'll submit a proposal, eliminating rating spot altogether towards Candidates-2028."

Which exactly illustrates my point. Rather than "We are going to discuss and rework the qualification criteria for next cycle.", he quickly tweets first thing that comes to his mind.

What's wrong with tweeting what comes to mind? It's his account, he can say whatever.

Also he said he was gonna make a proposal. I don't see what the problem with making a proposal, he isn't forcing it on anyone.

A heretic idea: for the image of the world champion title, it's already bad enough that both open and women No 1 players chose not to participate; does FIDE really want to eliminate also the next positions in the rating lists?

And why aren't they playing? You imply it's FIDE's fault. Professor Yifan went back to University and Carlsen retired from World Championship saying "It doesn't mean as much anymore as it once did" and that "If someone other than Firouzja wins the Candidates Tournament it's unlikely I will play the next World Championship match".

Yifan and Carlsen made personal decisions to step back.

The infamous "400 point rule" is actually an exception which goes against the logic of the rating system. When it shows that some players were abusing this unfortunate and unsystematic exception, does FIDE drop the exception? No, they create an ad hoc exception from this exception for players above an arbitrarily chosen level.

They had it for a reason! I put the exclamation mark cos I actually wrote about this once:

"The reason the 400 point rule exists was for high rated players who happened to face an extremely lower rated player on rarer occasions (e.g. in open tournaments). This was to guarantee getting 0.8 points (the amount for a 400 point difference) when winning a game, as opposed to the possibility of not getting any points for a win which would be tough. However multiple GMs decided to take advantage of this rule by deliberately playing opponents who were more than 400 points below them, this meant they would get far more points than they would normally for winning and they got a lot of undeserved points. So FIDE amended the rule on the 1st of October 2025, stating that the 400 point rule only applies to players below 2,650. Players above 2,650 will have the ratings calculated based on the real difference between ratings."

You're not giving FIDE any credit here. You act as though they are thoughtless buffoons lol. There are a committee of people who work on this stuff.

Overall, I think this info is good news. FIDE is looking out for the Candidates system and safeguarding against rating abuse from players who try to take advantage of the system.

Still ignoring the fact that Hikaru Nakamura case had absolutely nothing to do with "rating abuse"?

I have always agreed that Nakamura engaged in rating abuse. I never denied it and I agree with you!

FIDE is looking out for it now. Like they are taking steps to address it. That's why I said it's good news.