"If it weren't for Kramnik, chess wouldn't exist anywhere for many years. The recent surge of interest in chess was due to his activities" — Russian YouTuber Ilya Levitov

Ilya Levitov

Russian content creator

“[Interviewer: Timur Turlov says that chess is underrated. I gave him an example from the world of tennis…]

You can’t compare tennis and chess. Tennis is interesting to watch, but chess is not. I think the idea of ​​promoting chess is criminally overrated. You can promote chess up to a certain point.

It is not about the result, but about the process. It’s not the result, but the process. You still need to build some kind of process and see if there will be results or not. So far, I believe that, throughout FIDE’s existence in the 21st century, the process hasn’t been structured in such a way that one could say: “They worked like this for 10 years and nothing came of it. I guess no one will ever succeed at this.”

That is, in recent years, the stealing has essentially stopped, and there’s more money, especially in women’s chess. Some minimal order has appeared. But at the same time, I believe that dramatic improvements in chess life have not happened.

But this mess with the World Championship formula, time controls, and so on, has only worsened. Entropy is increasing.

[Interviewer: Do you think that with the right management, the chess world could actually achieve anything good? After all, according to various estimates, 500-800 million people play chess worldwide.]

Well, send Gukesh out onto the streets anywhere other than India or Uzbekistan, and you’d bet even one person would recognize him. I’d be surprised if even one person in America recognizes him as the World Chess Champion. These are all some kind of illusions.

“500 million people play chess” — I think that’s complete nonsense. What 500 million people? It simply can’t be.

We are somewhere in the backyards of public and sports life, and nobody is interested in us. There is no interest in us — neither public, nor commercial, nor media, none at all.

If it weren’t for Kramnik, chess wouldn’t exist anywhere, for many years now. Essentially, the last surges of interest were connected with the activity of the 14th World Champion. And otherwise, who is interested in the World Championship match that is coming up now?

There are two countries right now where a chess boom is really happening — India and Uzbekistan. And, okay, Kazakhstan. And the rest of the world, in my opinion, as usual, is in a somnambulant chess sleep and waiting for someone to wake it up.

Well, maybe Timur will be able to handle this task.”