India’s top Grandmasters Pravin Thipsay, SL Narayanan, Abhimanyu Puranik, Srinath Narayanan, SP Sethuraman, and Shyam Sundar M (Designed by TimesofIndia.com)

NEW DELHI: Earning an official FIDE (the primary governing body of chess) rating has never been easy. A player must participate in FIDE-rated tournaments, which are organised under strict regulations and often require travel, entry fees, and consistent preparation. To receive a rating, a player needs to face already rated opponents and achieve the required performance in rated games.That tradition, however, may soon change.In a sweeping policy shift that has sparked a profound existential debate, FIDE and World Chess, an official commercial partner of the governing body, recently unveiled the “First Rating Experiment”. The two-year pilot program will allow casual enthusiasts to earn their very first official over-the-board (OTB) blitz and rapid ratings entirely through online play on worldchess.com. It is an audacious attempt to democratise a historically insular sport, as the governing body aims to expand the current global pool of 500,000 rated players into the millions so that every Tom, Dick, and Harry will then have a chance to earn their first FIDE rating.To govern this new digital frontier, FIDE plans to employ an AI-driven fair-play screening framework and a specialised technical coefficient designed to align online performance with physical standards. To protect the upper echelons of the sport, the governing body has also installed a regulatory firewall, where these online-incubated ratings will be strictly capped at 1,800 Elo.Though FIDE intends to launch the program this July, following a period of community review, India’s Grandmasters, the vanguard of the modern chess renaissance, are locked in a fierce cerebral tug-of-war over the decision.For some, it represents a visionary dismantling of economic barriers; for others, though, it is a dangerous compromise of the game’s ultimate currency, which lies in the integrity of the rating system.

‘An unnecessary move’ by FIDE?

According to several Indian Grandmasters, the boundary between online and offline chess must remain completely sacred. In an exclusive interaction with TimesofIndia.com, Grandmaster (GM) SL Narayanan was blunt in his disapproval.“I think it was an unnecessary move from FIDE. You can’t combine online tournaments and then translate the rating into over-the-board rating because the rules are different for online and offline chess,” he said. “For recreational players, they would consider this a welcome move, but the real problem is (that) it could affect the credibility of rating system.”This sentiment was fiercely echoed on X (formerly Twitter) by prominent coach GM Srinath Narayanan, who expressed deep reservations about online security. He wrote, “Very skeptical about the efficacy of fairplay checks. Online play and over the board ratings shouldn’t be mixed.”GM SP Sethuraman also took to X to highlight how this integration could destabilize an already fragile rating ecosystem, “I already feel that the chess rating system is far from perfectly calibrated across different regions, formats, and levels of activity. We have already seen significant rating inflation and deflation issues over the years, making it difficult to compare ratings across generations. “Introducing official online ratings that can be converted into OTB ratings may create even more noise and uncertainty. While the intention is to make chess more accessible, I hope FIDE proceeds very carefully.”Offering a more relaxed but similarly cautious take, GM Abhimanyu Puranik told this website, “Generally, (it’s) not great to link online and OTB play, but rating itself starts so low that it doesn’t change so much.”‘It’s a very tough decision to doubt players just based on the moves’Speaking to TimesofIndia.com, Chennai’s one of the most reputed coaches, GM Shyam Sundar M, admitted to being highly surprised by the news, weighing the massive operational shift against the dark cloud of digital cheating:“The good thing is that FIDE is trying some new initiatives… But, combining online chess for over-the-board rating, I’m not sure. I mean, that too playing without physical board. Like, a hybrid system, I understand. That makes some sense as well.”Shyam Sundar suggested that a hybrid system, where players gather in physical regional halls monitored by local arbiters and 24-hour Zoom surveillance, would be far more secure and equally economical for organisers.Expressing his core concern about anti-cheating algorithms, he added, “I firmly believe that even one innocent should not be punished. It’s not easy, and it’s a very tough decision to doubt players just based on the moves, on the game quality in two or three or four games.”However, he remains open to the future, adding, “Maybe based on AI or even based on the server. Maybe something like that browser with AI, maybe it is possible. If it happens, maybe it’s good.”

Grandmaster Pravin Thipsay welcomes the initiative

In stark contrast, Arjuna Awardee and veteran GM Pravin Thipsay hailed the initiative as a visionary leap as he noted that less than 1% of the world’s chess enthusiasts actually have the means to play in physical, rated tournaments.“I think FIDE has taken a bold step… There are crores of players… who play chess online, and they play quite regularly as Karpov had founded one-third of the Western world play chess almost every day, but they play with the computer, and then they remain away from the mainstream. And somewhere, the barricade between the online chess players and over-the-board chess players had to be removed, and it’s a good step towards that,” he told TimesofIndia.com.Thipsay acknowledged that the system could face serious problems if cheating is left uncontrolled or if the rating coefficient is calculated incorrectly, pointing out that FIDE’s previous coefficient changes for under-18 players had “boomeranged and failed”. Yet, he believes the 1,800 ceiling is an excellent filter.“If somebody crosses 1,700 or 1,750, there’s a reasonable chance of that particular player trying to play chess more seriously, be an over-the-board player,” he added. “So I think a good initiative, we’ll have a large number of players coming to over-the-board chess.”With FIDE currently gathering feedback before its final rollout, the chess world stands at an unprecedented crossroads. What do you think about this proposal? Let’s know in the comments.