Lobbing brickbats at Fide, the International Chess Federation, is always in fashion. The organisation celebrates its centenary this year, but Russia’s top player Nepomniachtchi tweeted a bitter New Year greeting: ‘Let 2024 bring Fide everything that it lacks: transparency, integrity, clear rules, unified standards, wise judges, attentive organisers, recognisable sponsors!’

To that litany of gripes, one could add that a democratic deficit is woven into the fabric of the organisation. Member countries, no matter how few constituent players they have, each get one vote, which inevitably distorts the incentives at election time. Fide’s current president, Arkady Dvorkovich, is a former deputy prime minister of Russia, which is ‘problematic’, as the modern euphemism goes. But he is broadly respected as an administrator, and there was no serious opposition to his re-election in 2022, despite it taking place just a few months after the invasion of Ukraine.

In December, Vladimir Putin announced that he will run for a fifth term as Russian president in 2024. In the same month, Fide voted to scrap the limit on presidential term limits, leaving Dvorkovich free to run for a third term in 2026 – a particularly brazen move considering that the two-term limit was one of Dvorkovich’s own campaign promises back in 2018.

But on other matters, Fide is damned if they do and damned if they don’t. In the past, one place in the Candidates tournament – which selects a challenger for the world championship – was awarded by wildcard. One point in favour was that prospective sponsors might be enticed by the perk of selecting their local champion to participate, but it drew justified criticism when the wildcard entry excluded other more eligible candidates. So the rule was scrapped, and for next year’s event in Toronto, seven out of eight spots were awarded based on high finishes in elite events, while the last spot was to be allocated to the next player with the highest published international rating in January 2024. What could be more meritocratic?

In fact, the rating spot turned into a circus. It’s as well to remember Goodhart’s Law: ‘When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.’ In December, Wesley So was the favourite to secure the rating spot. But Alireza Firouzja would need just a little rating boost to overtake him, and who can blame him for trying to catch up? Just a few wins would do it, and so a tournament was organised for that very purpose, in which he faced three grandmasters, each twice over. That raised a few eyebrows, since they were nowhere close to Firouzja’s elite level and in any case well below their peak.

Fide warned that the circumstances were so unusual that they might not permit the event for rating purposes. But even if one game was resigned prematurely in comical circumstances (see below), winning six consecutive games against grandmasters is a stretch even for an elite player. A draw in the final game meant Firouzja narrowly missed his target, but he was back the next week at an open tournament in Rouen, where he won seven games in a row, thereby overtaking So and grabbing the spot.

Firouzja has just played 28 Na5-c6. There was nothing wrong with 28…Rb8-c8, but his grandmaster opponent Shchekachev simply resigned, almost certainly foreseeing 29 f5 Bxf5 30 Qxf5, when 30…gxf5 31 Rg8 is mate, or 30…Rxc6 31 Qxd7 wins a knight. In fact 30…Re1+! would turn the tables, as Black wins after 31 Rxe1 gxf5.