We already have enough drama. I think not enough. Not enough. Timur Turlov runs a multi-billion dollar business. Now he wants to lead FIDE. When you're short of $1,000, somebody is short of billions of dollars. Can one chess tournament offer $100 million in prize money? I'm absolutely sure that we will achieve the same in chess very fast. We discussed his rivals and he had a message for one of them. Vadim, please come to debates. We also talked fantasy novels and playing real life on hard mode. So you do have a cheat code then. Do not miss our game at the end. I had one minute. Timur had five. You're not doing well.
Hi Timur. Hello. You are a family man and you repeatedly said in many interviews that your kids have influenced your desire to participate in chess. I was wondering, do you play against them these days?
Absolutely. Usually on weekends, when I just get back from work to home, that's I think one of the best times because I can spend like 20 minutes, half an hour, sometimes a couple of hours sitting one with another and playing with them. I think it's great because it's quite unique moments when we can really talk to each other, sit relaxed, discuss something. That's very exciting moments for me.
Yeah, I can imagine. I'm waiting for the moment me and my wife have kids to play against them because this is such a fun thing. I guess usually it's interesting even since five, six years old. And who wins more often these days? Still you? So you still have some time. Is it like a simul or do you play one at a time?
Usually one, but they usually in a line waiting when I finish one game to play another game. Yeah, this is definitely fun.
Okay. I wanted to talk to you about you first and foremost. I don't want to repeat. You've done lots of interviews over the last couple of months, but I will talk about the elections as well because this is a topic that fascinates me. It's the first time I'm very closely following the election process. I don't know about you, have you followed the previous elections? So this must be new to you as well. Tell me, how crazy is this? Like the last, let's say, month, how busy are you? What are your emotions?
That's a real election with a real competition. It's very interesting. And I think lots of... so we have three competitors as you know, and I think all of us invest our time and resources to this campaign, and I think campaigns of my competitors is also professional and interesting to follow.
And I'm wondering, like obviously you're very busy with running your own multi-billion dollar business, but how many hours, how big of a proportion of your time are you spending these days on the FIDE election?
I think some people expect that I do some operational activities in holding, but I actually don't. I have a very strong team, a lot of top managers who is in charge of different operations of our bank, insurance, lifestyle businesses, stock brokerage in many different countries. That's a very adult team. So I'm more focused on key partners, key customers, some strategic vision and discussions with my team. And in this case, this job is not much different with what I do usually during my life. In this case, yes, I have to travel a lot, which I usually do, and try to spend on each visit. I try to visit chess events and I also try to visit my business partners and build some relationships. I hope it could become, it could be complimentary enough because in FIDE we also need not just an operationally active president, but a president who will be able to assemble the right team, inspire this team, make sure that the resources will be in place, the money will be in place, and who will be able to be in charge of key relationships with the governments, with the key sponsors, almost the same which I do in my real life. In this, that's not much difference, not much different job from what I do now. And I see that, of course, now I think I spend the majority of time to campaign, but at the same time I was happy to visit a lot of my partners in different parts of the world, even traveling especially for this election.
So you try to combine, like kill two birds with one stone as they say, I think, when you come to one place, right? Business and election stuff.
Probably yes, because when you're running a large financial company, it's still a lot of politics, and chess politics is also a sort of politics. So I try to leverage everything I know in business to chess and everything which I learned in chess to business.
Hey guys, Chess Reps, the sponsor of this podcast, has had a huge update. They have launched courses by GMs, IMs and other titled players, including for example the Candidates participant Amin Tabatabaei. For example, he has this course on the Ruy Lopez. I've already started learning it. I've just had my wedding. You can congratulate me in the comments. So I've just started, but I will definitely learn the whole course. And this is the Ruy by one of the leading theoreticians in openings of these days. And I've actually for this course I've chosen the training depth of full mastery. But if you are an amateur player, you can choose essentials for any course and you will just have the main gist, the main ideas of any given opening. Chess Reps is an amazing website. It's the best value for money in my opinion for chess courses on openings. You should check it out. You just pay a small monthly subscription and you get access to huge amounts of information. Check it out. The link is in the description.
Tell me more about campaigning because I know nothing about it and I have a unique opportunity to find out from the person who is doing this most of their time these days. So how exactly does this work? Like walk me through a typical day of your campaign. I know that this is not like a groundhog day. Not every day is the same obviously, but some things may be similar.
So we have a little bit more than 200 delegates, 202, who is actually our electorate, and my key goal is frankly to present myself to each of them. And for that reason we try to organize some meetings and I try to participate in all possible conferences when the chess world is being assembled to present my vision, to present my strategy. I'm trying to take all media opportunities to present my vision, to make sure that everyone who wants to know me better will have a chance just to Google me and find enough interviews to take from different angles, my strategy to some other stuff. Of course, some hours in a day I try to make some calls and to participate in gatherings of some federations who actually want to talk to each candidate to make sure about their voice. Sometimes I also participate in some continental or zonal gathering when delegates from like English-speaking Africa is meeting with me, or French-speaking, or some delegates from Caribbean or from Europe. I had a chance to actually visit some gatherings when I also not just presented myself in a conference, but also in between had a chance to speak one-on-one for like half an hour with many delegates to answer some specific questions, to provide some more colors. So I try to be as open as possible. I try to keep my phone as open as possible. And of course, I truly believe that each election is a stress test for each candidate. Many people just have not much experience of participating in elections, but I think FIDE is a very respectable federation and we need a person who will be able to handle all that pressure of chess politics, which definitely exists. And if you can keep this pressure, don't crack under it, that's important to understand for most delegates that the person with whom they will work further will be reliable, will be able to be transparent, not to hide from any interviews, not to shy to answer any difficult questions. And that's the reason why I actually visit a different kind of interviews, very difficult and hard and complimentary, both of them actually.
Yeah, I like the fact that you went on Peter Heine Nielsen's podcast.
Yes, one of the most interesting because of these questions. And it's okay. I'm ready to talk about that because that's definitely the... and frankly, I really regret that many of my competitors doesn't do that. And because for me it's also will be very interesting to learn their answers to the same questions, which still doesn't exist.
Okay. You mentioned the pressure test. Judging by your schedule and appearances in different parts of the world, you definitely are not afraid of jet lag. That's what I definitely learned about you over the past several weeks. I was wondering, obviously, many things for you are maybe a bit new, but you're used to meetings with important people, decision makers, calls. You do that in your business as well. But probably since it's your first election and since some things must be new to you, probably you were surprised to find out some new things during those elections. What are your takeaways? I'm interested maybe a couple of things that you were surprised to find out during all this campaigning.
Difficult to say that I was really surprised by something. It's great to have competitive election and I think it's very beneficial both for FIDE, for candidates, for delegates, for all the chess world. And because of this competitive election we finally can better understand with whom we are, who is who and what we can expect from these people further. I think it's very helpful and anyway it will help me to adjust my strategy. Even despite this very competitive election, I still believe that we should keep some unity and should be able to continue to work together because after election, despite who will win, because there's not so many people ready to invest their time, money, resources to our game, and of course we don't have to lose people during that process. I came to chess much earlier than this election happens and I hope to be there despite any election results. And of course, the better I know all the community, the more efficient I will be, and the more I understand community needs, the more efficient action we can make further.
What exactly did you find out during those weeks of talking to your delegates, campaigning? Some new information probably? What do people talk about most often?
People definitely require more equality in terms of access to opportunities because some regions has a lot of open tournaments for example and some region has very few of them. So the barriers are also very different. So the cost of travel in Europe is much less than cost of travel in Africa for example and amount of tournaments in Europe is much higher than amount of tournaments in Africa. Even despite that, in Europe also we have to apply a lot of efforts and pay a lot of attention to some small nations who is still struggling with amount of arbiters, amount of tournaments. Even despite developed nations anyway have some advantage in this development, we also have to pay attention to them because events in most rich countries is creating a much bigger participation of larger sponsors. For example, it was my initiative to make two tournaments in the United States. One of them was Rapid and Blitz in New York City, corporate tournaments in New York City a bit before that. And then a school teams championship in Washington DC. I'm sure that that played some role in attracting sponsorship of Salesforce for example. And that's definitely a current administration achievement. But I'm sure that it's a great achievement because it's the largest contract, largest sponsorship, largest single contract of all time for FIDE.
Yes, yes. It's very visible and very great amount. I think Freedom contributed to FIDE in the last four years more, but with different events, with different circumstances. But we definitely want much more different sponsors and for that reason we have not just to help emerging federations to catch up, but also to help other developed countries' federations to shine even brighter because that will open up a lot more opportunities for all community, for all FIDE. And that's I think also a way to attract much more money. We have to deal with global companies if we want to attract sponsorship to FIDE level, to then be able to distribute this money through development fund for example. So of course if we will provide some subsidies for travel of young players, even maybe for a couple of them in a country, that will change the world. I'm sure because it's a lot of different players who can't get a title because it's not enough tournaments, it's not enough arbiters to make these tournaments happen, and the cost of travel sometimes is very crazy, especially in some not the most rich countries. And if in Europe you can travel sometimes for less than €100, in Africa it's impossible in most cases. It's much more difficult to get a visa, it's much more difficult to pay for a ticket. And of course we have to make this more equal. And I'm sure that if we will provide more equal opportunities for people, we will open up a lot of grandmasters because in Africa for example it's so much young people, so much energy, so much talent, presidents in different organizations who is definitely invest all their time and efforts. And if we will just empower them and help them to get at least equal opportunities to participation, now I'm 100% sure that we will see a lot of new African grandmasters. This potential is already there. We just need to help a little bit and then they will be very sustainable and their governments I'm sure also will invest more to national federations.
Absolutely. You talked about some financial issues of some federations and in different interviews you talked repeatedly about the fact that you believe that chess is underfunded and underfinanced. And I was just thinking while driving to this podcast yesterday, the US Open finished, I watched the final part of the final match and I checked about the prize fund. Turns out it's more than $100 million for US Open alone. Obviously, tennis is much much more popular and probably more watchable for the general public than chess is. What is the ceiling for chess in your opinion? Like currently we discuss a contract with Salesforce for 9 million as something unprecedented, huge and great. And I agree obviously, but here is just one tournament with over 100 million. So could chess strive to even reach at least a bit closer to more popular sports? What do you think?
Absolutely. I'm sure that chess has a great potential. We have to work with broadcast to make beauty of chess more understandable and more accessible for people with low ratings. I think that's the future because now when you watch some greatest competition like the rapid and blitz championship, the classic match, sometimes you have to be a chess professional to understand whole beauty of game. And if you are not a chess professional, even with some help of commentary, it's still difficult to understand this beauty. The level of complexity is too big. But I'm sure that with the help of learning all the experience from cyber sport, and chess is definitely somewhere in between. It's a very classical and long-standing history sport. And at the same time it's a cyber sport because most games is already being played online. And I'm sure that chess could become... I know that Olympic committee is thinking about e-sport and how to approach this e-sport, and maybe chess could be the first one because it's definitely not something new. It's a long-standing game with a huge history and traditions. If we will solve this problem of broadcast and make broadcast much more accessible for regular people with more visualization, with more AI features during broadcast, with more drama on back of that, and maybe before as much after, enough drama, I think not enough, not enough. We have to work with showmakers to make sure that this story will be interesting and accessible not just for professionals. And in this case I'm sure that we will open up much much wider commercial market because I think chess is one of the best sport in terms of if you want to build an image of smart nation, so what kind of sport you have to support? In my opinion chess is definitely the best and first choice and the first association there. If you want to build an image of smart business, AI-centric, so AI was born in chess and first algorithms to actually help to try to solve chess. It was I think the first experiments with AI happens around chess. I think it definitely should be the key beneficiary of this AI boom and definitely we should be a key partner for all these AI companies. And I hope that all my experience dealing with international companies in business, all my business relationships, what we do with Nvidia to build national AI cluster here in Kazakhstan now with the help of Citibank to finance this deal, with the help of our governments to support this initiative, is resonate to chess world. And that's definitely should be potential partners for FIDE because the key developer of AI is definitely should be somewhere near chess as well as all AI community and all big hyperscalers and startups. And not just AI, so everybody who wants to indicate that they value human capital, that they value intelligence and intellectual approach to their businesses have to sponsor chess in my opinion. And we will increase in some period of time, with my help or without my help, sooner or later we will approach all that advertisers and I will try to promote my experience of sponsorship of FIDE as a success story actually to other advertisers.
By the way, you've invested huge amounts of money obviously with Freedom in chess both globally and in particular in Kazakhstan. And you definitely talk a lot as you already said with other entrepreneurs, important people who may invest as well. And you said that you will be able to promote your case as a successful one. Obviously as a nonprofit idea, amazing stuff supporting chess, but I assume that you also say some things to those guys about how this has helped you in your business somehow. I don't know, promoting the brand of your business or something like that. I wonder what you tell those guys when you try to convince them to invest as well.
