 "FIDE CEO Emil Sutovsky admitted the Lausanne-based governing body should have done better to prevent the loophole in Candidates rating qualification spot that is currently being exploited by world No 2 Hikaru Nakamura. Image credit: FIDE/Reuters")
Fabiano Caruana is the only player so far to have qualified for next year’s Candidates Tournament, having finished top of the 2024 FIDE Circuit Standings. Fellow veteran American Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura could be joining him in the prestigious competition next year, with the world No 2 another hot favourite to qualify.
Nakamura, however, isn’t attempting to qualify either through the 2025 FIDE Circuit, or the ongoing Grand Swiss in Samarkand or next month’s World Cup in India. He is, instead, attempting to qualify via the lone spot that is reserved for the highest-rated player, the qualification period for which has been set between August 2025 and January 2026. And unlike Caruana, Nakamura is facing a barrage of criticism for his strategy to confirm his ticket for the Candidates.
It’s not the rating spot itself, which Nakamura had described as FIDE’s attempt to lure world No 1 Magnus Carlsen back into the World Championship cycle, that is the problem. It’s how Nakamura has been going about business, particularly with his choice of tournaments, since the qualification period began last month.
FIDE responds to Nakamura qualification controversy
FIDE CEO Emil Sutovsky, for one, admits that the Lausanne-based world governing body could have done better to ensure Nakamura’s Candidates qualification could have been fairer towards other top players who are in contention.
The Israeli GM accepts that Nakamura is exploiting a loophole in the ratings qualification, and while the world No 2 competing in the Candidates isn’t anything out of the blue, the path taken towards achieving the goal is what has left a bad taste in the mouth.
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“We, you know, being immersed in so many organisational regulatory issues, we somehow missed the notion of the loophole where the player would, from certain moment basically qualify using the loophole. Maybe we though better of our top players not doing that and it didn’t come naturally to our mind what would happen because with the same way we should ask that now ourselves and we are already asking and we will be swift in our action,” Sutovsky told ChessBase India.
“What if anyone just decides, not for the same qualification, but just to play 50 games like that within a month against opposition which is thousand points lower and so on. Yes, I acknowledge that we should have been looking at it more scrupulously and to prevent such a loophole from happening,” he added.
‘There are legal sides of it and there is a moral side’
The 47-year-old disagreed with the notion that the blame lay with FIDE and their rules, and not the players, stating that the loophole in the qualification system was only brought to the notice of the chess community after Nakamura started exploiting it.
“I don’t agree with the notion that blame the rules, don’t blame the players. For some reason, no body or almost no body was doing it. Because there are legal sides of it and there is a moral side. They are two different things. so I don’t imagine many players doing the same, let’s say in such a clinical way. But again it’s not forbidden and if it was poorly regulated by FIDE, okay that created the loophole. So yes, small mistakes can happen like that.
“It feels fair that the No. 2 is in candidates even if through a loophole but it feels unfair that farming the number of games indirectly also leads to farming the rating points and that’s upsetting. But again, I can agree that we should have done better. But the very fact that Hikaru could qualify for the candidates is very normal. But I still think that he could have farmed it in a tournament with a couple of Grand Masters and a few International Masters, not necessarily with 18 and 1900s playing,” Sutovsky added.
Nakamura finds himself in pole position to clinch the spot after pulling off clean sweeps in the Louisiana State Championship and the Iowa Open – tournaments where there is understandably a massive gulf between him and the rest of the field.
The 37-year-old pulled off perfect scores of 7/7 and 5/5 in Louisiana and Iowa respectively, and enjoys a substantial lead over India’s R Praggnanandhaa and Arjun Erigaisi, who are competing in the Grand Swiss. And with Magnus Carlsen already making it clear that he won’t be challenging D Gukesh for his world title and world No 3 Caruana having already qualified, Nakamura appears set to book the spot.
Nakamura had played only a handful of Classical matches this year, including in Norway Chess in Stavanger, and competing in the lower-rated tournaments in Louisiana and Iowa is helping him get closer to the benchmark of 40 games from 1 February to 1 January without affecting his overall rating.