Like past editions of the Candidates, the race to qualify for the eight-player event has gone down to the wire with multiple players trying to scramble to secure a spot in the event. Like previous editions, there was some controversy about the way players earned the ratings spot to the Candidates, which is given to the player who is rated highest in the FIDE rating list but has not qualified through other pathways like the FIDE World Cup, the Grand Swiss and the FIDE Circuit. Now, FIDE CEO Emil Sutovsky has said that he will table a proposal to eliminate the ratings spot pathway altogether from the next world chess championship cycle.
The Candidates is the second-most prestigious tournament in classical chess, an eight-player event that finalises the candidate to challenge the world champion.
With World No 1 Magnus Carlsen not interested in playing in the Candidates or the World Championship, Hikaru Nakamura earned the rating spot. But due to a FIDE regulation on the number of games a player has to play in a year to secure the ratings spot, Nakamura had to play in state chess championships in the USA, which became a point of debate.
After Nakamura secured his spot in the Candidates, five-time world champion Carlsen bashed the way the ratings spot was awarded.
“The fact that Nakamura is going around playing these — as he calls it himself, referring to something I said many years ago, Mickey Mouse tournaments in order to qualify for the Candidates, in order to play the 40 games that are required by FIDE. I think that’s absolutely… it’s wild. It’s insane, why would you require somebody who’s very clearly good enough to play in the Candidates, why would you require him to play these tournaments which he doesn’t really have time for? Well, you want to have the best players in the Candidates and he’s clearly one of them,” Carlsen had said on the sidelines of the Freestyle Chess event in South Africa’s Cape Town.
This evoked a sharp response from Sutovsky, who said he would move to “eliminate” the ratings pathway altogether.
“‘Clearly good enough’ is a bad definition to select a player in FIDE Candidates. Unless we return to wild card system in Candidates (not under my watch!), it can’t work,” Sutovsky posted on his X handle reacting to Carlsen’s comments. “‘He doesn’t really have time for’ is more alarming though. Really? We are talking about qualification to the most important tournament in two years. How come a top pro, who is supposed to qualify by rating that proves he is still a very top pro, does not have time? It is wrong on so many levels. The requirements were actually very modest – and in a hindsight too modest, easy to game. Our fault. But to call a requirement to actually play chess ‘wild’ is wild.
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“Going forwards, I’ll submit a proposal, eliminating rating spot altogether towards Candidates-2028. World Cup, Grand Swiss, FIDE Circuit, and now Total World Championship Tour will be the paths to qualify.”