How Russia lost chess

0:00 [Sam] Vladimir Putin loves sports.

0:02 He's mastered soccer, weightlifting, and badminton.

0:05 He schooled the Russian Jujitsu team, and in this ice hockey all-star game,

0:09 he scored eight goals while skating beautifully.

0:13 [Announcer] Putin!

0:16 [Sam] But I imagine the sport Putin probably loves the most is chess,

0:20 because Russia dominates chess.

0:23 (dramatic music) Russian and Soviet chess

0:25 players have won 26 world championships, far more than any other country,

0:31 and at least 200 grandmasters are Russian,

0:33 more than double the next nationality.

0:37 Russians have also led chess's governing body for three decades.

0:42 In chess politics, Russia has played a dominating role.

0:45 It is definitely important for the Russian

0:48 leadership to maintain its historic control.

0:53 But take a closer look and it's quite clear that under Putin,

0:57 Russian chess is in decline.

1:01 When Putin rose to power in 1999,

1:02 nearly half of the top 10 chess players were Russian.

1:05 But in July 2025, none of them are, for the first time ever.

1:10 And if you're at a major chess tournament,

1:11 you won't see a Russian flag anywhere.

1:16 Russia is losing the dominance,

1:17 but there is obviously also political reasons behind this.

1:22 They have completely collapsed.

1:25 [Sam] This is the story of how Russia took control

1:27 of the chess world and how it's letting it slip away.

1:31 (dramatic music) (keyboard clacks) (calm music) In the sixth century,

1:50 chess was invented in India, but it was a much slower game than today's.

1:54 The queen, for example, could only move one square diagonally.

1:59 But in the 15th century, chess spread to Europeans,

2:01 who created the modern quicker version.

2:04 The queen, for example, could move to any number of squares in any direction.

2:08 In the 1700s, Russian czar Peter the Great

2:10 came across it and brought it to Russia.

2:14 There, chess was played mostly by Russia's elite.

2:17 But in the 1920s, Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin gave chess to the people.

2:22 (dramatic music) Lenin believed chess could

2:26 help sophisticate his mostly peasant population.

2:29 Plus it was cheap to play, so anyone could do it.

2:34 By the 1930s, the Russian government was building chess clubs for workers,

2:38 publishing chess magazines,

2:41 and establishing rigorous chess schools for children.

2:46 By getting everyone to play chess, the Soviets built a fire hose of talent.

2:52 From 1948 to '72, every Open Chess World Champion was from the Soviet Union,

2:57 every Woman's World Champion was from the Soviet Union,

3:00 and every Chess Olympiad, a biennial tournament between national teams,

3:04 was won by the Soviet Union.

3:07 It's hard to think of another country

3:08 that dominated one sport like the Soviets dominated chess.

3:13 I think it was a bit of a snowball effect.

3:14 [Sam] Peter Doggers is a chess journalist and author

3:16 of "The Chess Revolution."- They would more quickly than,

3:19 let's say, Western talents, get access to strong trainers,

3:23 to a library of books,

3:25 which was very important in a pre-internet area that you had access

3:28 to the theoretical books and the magazines that were showing the latest games.

3:32 In Russia, that was all centrally organized.

3:36 [Sam] The Soviet's chess champions were smart, disciplined, and cultured,

3:39 and the Soviet state used them to prove its superiority over its rivals.

3:45 Here is where a Russian called Boris

3:47 Spassky and an American called Bobby Fischer

3:49 are to fight out the most intellectually

3:52 exhausting battle known to the mind of man, the World Chess Championship.

3:57 [Sam] The 1972 World Championship match was more than a chess match.

4:00 It was America versus the Soviet Union, capitalism versus communism.

4:05 (dramatic music) The match was even played

4:10 midway between the two rivals in Iceland.

4:17 Fischer beats Spassky,

4:18 but the Soviets regained the title and held it for several more decades.

4:22 It also held onto the women's World titles and won most Chess Olympiads.

4:26 In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, but Russia continued to dominate chess

4:31 and eventually dominate the politics of chess.

4:34 (playful music) Meet Kirsan Ilyumzhinov.

4:38 In 1995, he was elected the president of the International Chess Federation,

4:42 or FIDE, and he believes that chess comes from space.

4:46 I was taken by my apartment in Moscow through this space ship,

4:51 and we went to some star.

4:56 Russia's all over the news, but I'm keeping my eye on one story in particular,

4:59 Russia ending its moratorium on nuclear capable submarines.

5:03 And what really stands out to me is how different outlets are covering it.

5:06 This level of insight is possible thanks only to Ground News,

5:09 the sponsor of today's episode.

5:11 Ground News is the only website and app

5:13 that doesn't just track global events, but dissects them.

5:16 It gathers news stories from all over the world

5:18 and tells me exactly how they're being covered,

5:20 whether that's political bias, reliability, even ownership.

5:24 So in this case, 220 news outlets covered

5:27 this story and most are from the center and right.

5:29 Comparing some of the headlines can reveal some interesting points.

5:32 Outlets on the right are emphasizing how the move

5:34 is a warning from the Kremlin to the west,

5:36 while outlets on the left focus on the new reality.

5:39 In other words, how this could spark a new arms race.

5:41 Ground News also lets me explore stories from all over

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5:47 Basically, Ground News makes it easy to understand the news.

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5:58 So we've partnered with Ground News to offer you 40% off their Vantage plan.

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6:07 Ground News and I share the same mission.

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6:12 And now we'll take you back to the episode.

6:17 FIDE is a lot like FIFA, football's governing body.

6:20 It declares the world champions and runs the major tournaments.

6:24 Many of its decisions are voted on by over a hundred national federations.

6:28 And its leaders tend to be pretty shady guys.

6:33 Kirsan Ilyumzhinov was the president of a small Russian

6:36 republic when he was elected FIDE president in 1995.

6:39 He was eccentric, insisting that aliens once abducted him.

6:43 I talked with them, yeah.

6:44 I understand.

6:45 [Sam] And he was corrupt.

6:47 Ilyumzhinov was linked to offshore firms

6:49 that held the commercial rights to chess events,

6:51 was suspected of rigging FIDE votes, and most importantly,

6:56 Ilyumzhinov often acted in the interests of the Russian state.

7:00 He favored selling sponsorships to Russian companies,

7:02 like the state-owned oil company, Gazprom.

7:04 And while traveling the world for FIDE,

7:06 he served as a sort of shadow Russian diplomat.

7:09 He was making visits with some of country leaders

7:12 that we look back on as, well, let's say dubious.

7:16 Hard to believe that he really only played a game

7:18 of chess and they really only talked about chess there.

7:21 [Sam] His corruption and connection to Russia attracted a lot of criticism.

7:24 The chess world deserves a much better choice than Kirsan,

7:28 who has brought the organization to the brink of financial ruin.

7:34 Basically serving as a Kremlin envoy.

7:36 He saw the critical points,

7:37 and of course numerous cases where corruption were quite apparent.

7:43 [Sam] In 2015, the US sanctioned Ilyumzhinov

7:45 for having business dealings with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

7:48 And in 2018, after leading FIDE for 23 years, he resigned.

7:54 But since FIDE proved to be such a powerful tool for Russian soft power,

7:59 Vladimir Putin pushed for a replacement, Arkady Dvorkovich.

8:03 He was another Russian politician, but even closer to Putin.

8:07 And in 2018, he was easily elected to be FIDE president.

8:11 Even though many in FIDE didn't want a second Russian president,

8:14 Dvorkovich was viewed as a major improvement.

8:17 He was a down to earth career politician and he had some very good ideas.

8:21 One of the things he announced when he was

8:23 a candidate is that he wanted to introduce term limits.

8:27 [Sam] Dvorkovich also increased FIDE's budget substantially,

8:29 but he also continued to keep FIDE close to the Russian state.

8:34 A 2024 investigation found that up to half of FIDE's

8:37 tournament budget comes from companies in or connected to Russia.

8:41 And he had many Russians serve in key positions in FIDE.

8:45 But despite all these Russians leading chess,

8:47 Russians weren't winning chess like they used to.

8:51 Technology was killing their advantage.

8:54 (calm music) Chess was one of the first games

8:57 we taught computers to play as early as the 1950s.

9:01 By the 1990s, so-called chess engines were defeating grandmasters,

9:05 even Russian grandmasters.

9:07 [Announcer] Garry is not...

9:09 He looks, he looks disgusted, in fact.

9:11 Are we missing something on the chess board now?

9:13 And whoa, Kasparov has resigned.

9:17 (audience applauds)- [Sam] Chess engines, then chess websites,

9:19 made it easy for players anywhere to play and train against top talent.

9:24 Meaning you didn't need a Russian coach to get good at chess anymore.

9:27 In my youth, living in a Danish city, I had no one to play with.

9:31 I would travel to Moscow to get some knowledge, some atmosphere.

9:35 That, of course, is completely different.

9:37 [Sam] Peter Heine Nielsen is a Danish

9:39 grandmaster and coach for several world champions,

9:41 including the most famous player in the world, Magnus Carlsen.

9:45 Magnus Carlson was also living in the outskirts of Oslo,

9:48 but he could just log on and play online chess all the time, right?

9:51 That, of course, makes a difference and makes the game much more democratic.

9:56 [Sam] In the 2000s, non-Russian players started winning a lot of chess.

9:59 World champions emerged from former Soviet states,

10:02 but also India, Norway, and China.

10:06 In women's chess, China built a dynasty.

10:08 And almost every Chess Olympiad after 2002 was won by a non-Russian country.

10:14 Russia was still producing great chess players,

10:16 but the internet let other countries produce great players too.

10:19 Now China has been quite successful on the elite level,

10:23 but India is perhaps taking over.

10:25 There are so many Indian kids who cares about chess.

10:28 They have now building a coaching tradition,

10:31 but it's just an incredibly popular sport.

10:37 Now, the internet revolution isn't Russia's fault, but what happened next was.

10:41 (suspenseful music) Russia's invasion of Ukraine has killed tens

10:45 of thousands of Ukrainians and possibly a million Russians.

10:49 Pretty much every sport has banned or punished

10:52 Russian teams and chess is no different.

10:56 In 2022, FIDE cracked down on Russia,

10:58 banning it from sending teams to the Olympiad,

11:01 and barring Russian players from competing under the Russian flag,

11:04 leading to a massive exodus of talent.

11:07 Several Russian grandmasters switched to play for different countries,

11:10 dramatically reducing Russia's talent pool.

11:12 And Russian players are receiving fewer invites to major tournaments,

11:16 meaning fewer opportunities to climb up the rankings.

11:19 More invites are going to Indian players.

11:22 Russian players who support the invasion are being shunned from tournaments.

11:26 Russia's top grandmaster, Sergey Karjakin,

11:29 is somewhat of a spokesperson for the Russian war effort.

11:32 (Sergey speaks in foreign language)- [Sam] He would

11:40 be close to ranking among the top 10 players,

11:42 but he's listed as inactive for not playing in enough major tournaments.

11:46 They still have their super talents

11:48 that are showing great results here and there, but at the same time,

11:52 as long as this war is continuing,

11:53 it will remain problematic for some tournaments to invite them.

11:58 [Sam] While the internet allowed other countries

11:59 to produce players as good as Russians,

12:01 the war in Ukraine is preventing Russian players from keeping up.

12:05 It's also dividing the chess world, with Arkady Dvorkovich,

12:09 the Russian FIDE president, right in the middle.

12:14 It's clear the Russian government is pressuring

12:16 Dvorkovich to maintain Russia's influence in FIDE.

12:19 After the invasion, Dvorkovich said his thoughts were with Ukrainian civilians,

12:23 but then backpedaled by saying the war is a campaign against fascism.

12:28 In 2024, the Russian Chess Federation annexed some Ukrainian chess clubs.

12:32 FIDE decided to suspend it, then reversed its decision.

12:36 And major FIDE sponsors are still companies like Freedom Holding Corp,

12:39 a Kazakhstan-based bank linked to Russia.

12:42 Dvorkovich scrapped the term limits he promised,

12:45 paving the way to stay in power longer.

12:47 Like every grandmaster,

12:48 Peter Heine Nielsen is looking for the strategy behind it all.

12:52 He's trying to kick the can down the road and try to balance it.

12:55 They allowed, I think, youth teams back in team competitions and now the most

12:59 recent decision is that female teams can come back, but not in the open section.

13:03 It's a typical Kremlin strategy.

13:05 Perhaps time will solve the problems.

13:08 [Sam] But Dvorkovich is also being pressured by the rest of the chess world.

13:11 Many players are opposed to letting Russian players in major tournaments.

13:15 I would say, at least in Garry's honor,

13:18 I'm sure he would take the opportunity to advise

13:22 against reinstating the Russian and Belarusian chess federations.

13:26 That is what I will do as well.

13:29 And despite leading FIDE,

13:30 Dvorkovich hasn't lifted any of the major punishments on Russia.

13:34 But what does a divided, embattled FIDE mean for chess?

13:39 (calm music) The sport is booming.

13:43 Newer, faster formats are gaining popularity

13:45 and more chess is being played online.

13:48 The attention and money are following.

13:51 So what Russian influence does remain may just be holding chess back.

13:56 We should ask ourselves,

13:56 are we actually happy with this deal that we are sort of Russian soft power too?

14:02 For me, the answer is extremely obvious.

14:04 It's a hard no.

14:06 But it's a completely hypothetical question.

14:08 It's not gonna change.

14:12 Alright, thanks for watching.

14:14 That's our 33rd episode.

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