It’s time for change in chess

The ‘puritans’, who abide by tradition, find it hard to reconcile to the four-hour for game format and have started quoting the script and legalities to resist the changes.

The legal point against the rule change is that according to FIDE statutes, the General Assembly would have to pass it. The next assembly is scheduled for only Bled (Slovenia), 2002, during the next Olympiad, which means the rule will have to wait another year. FIDE’s reply is that the assembly had entrusted the Presidential Board to take a decision. Existing FIDE rules state ‘for a game to count for title applications a six-hour session is required at least. This can be altered by the General assembly upon recommendation of the Qualification Commission.’ If the FIDE handbook still has this condition there is trouble for the new rule.

At a time when popular events like badminton and volleyball underwent vast changes in form, chess, basically not an “action sportâ€, had to find ways and means to get into television and market itself.

The best way to bring action into chess was to add the “lightning†component to it. Hence the reduction in time limit.