By candidate master Peter Zhdanov, editor of Pogonina.com
As the Editor-in-Chief of Pogonina.com, I am acquainted with most of the people who run the leading international chess sites. What strikes me so odd in many of them is superfluous competitiveness and undisguised hostility towards their colleagues. Without giving you the names, here are a few telling phrases that I have heard from the managers of some of the top chess portals:
- They will never quote our articles, because our news posts are much better than theirs.
- You wouldnt tolerate someone posting links to a different chess site at Pogonina.com, right?.
- We are working on our own products, so we wont be publishing anything that promotes competing services.
- There is no need for the readers to know about other chess projects. Our own site is good enough.
I guess it has much to do with the essence of the game of chess itself. The pie is fixed; there is just one point per match. Either you get it, or your opponent, or its a draw and you split the prize. Hence, many chess entrepreneurs carry over this paradigm into business: they believe that if a person purchases someone elses product, then they wont buy theirs. As a result, they start treating their colleagues with ill-will and trying to harass them in any possible way to make sure they dont get away with a share of the pie.
My attitude is completely different. I strongly believe in the principles of cooperation and free exchange of ideas. Dont censor people who have a different opinion than yours: unfortunately, deleting innocent-looking comments on a regular basis is a widespread practice at many chess sites. Dont be afraid of posting links to other online resources: if they are doing a good job, you should be happy for them and their readers. If you feel like competing, do it by providing better services and products, as opposed to trying to ignore the existence of other chess companies.
We have many real competitors, e.g., poker or video games. Also, chess as an industry is not a fixed pie. For example, if one site manages to get a thousand new people interested in chess, another one can potentially benefit from selling them chess software or books. And then we will have the snowball effect and will observe the industry growing. Its a win-win scenario, which many CEOs who run chess sites struggle to understand. We should be trying to promote chess and to expand the size of the market, not fighting over the current miniscule population of active club players. Moreover, quite a few of the top managers are not even battling over real financial stakes: instead, they focus on virtual ratings and debate whose site is more popular, i.e., gets more visitors and clicks. Some of them can keep arguing zealously for days and even years over who is more successful according to one kind of rankings or the other. The same can be said of Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and other social media accounts. All I see in such cases are inflated egos and lack of wisdom. Guys, if you are doing it for the follower count only, you are doing it wrong!
In fact, I have to admit that I used to have an unhealthy obsession with website ratings myself. I would wake up in the morning, turn on my laptop, grab a cup of coffee and exclaim something like: Wow, were the #2 most popular chess site in Russia! or Cool, we have surpassed X on the rankings!. Now I realize how silly and ridiculous it looks, but a while ago it seemed to me that this was a big deal.
Why dont we respect the FIDE Gens Una Sumus motto and start helping each other instead of competing and harming potential friends? Ive been trying to convey this idea in private conversations for a couple of years, but now I feel like I need to verbalize this appeal in public. Thanks for your attention!
P.S. In part this post was inspired by our son Nikolai. When he was 3 years old, I asked him after a chess game he had with Natalia what the outcome was.
- So, Nick, did you win?
- Yes! (He said with a broad smile)
- And what about Mum? How did she perform?
- She has also won! (Another broad smile)
Sometimes we need kids to remind us that the world can function in a number of ways
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hehehehee...! 
