I’m Ilya Merenzon. I run World Chess, the official FIDE gaming platform, from Berlin. The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange, which makes me one of a small number of people who have to explain chess to the City and the City to chess.
This site is where I keep the parts of that work that don’t fit into a press release: how a rating becomes official, what a federation of two hundred countries actually wants, why a chess club in Charlottenburg has to earn its rent seven days a week, and what I would do differently if I were starting World Chess today.
What you’ll find here
Projects are the things I build: the platform, the books, the venues, the World Series of Chess, the odd collaboration with a watchmaker. Each one has a page that stays current as the project moves.
Opinion is where I argue with myself in public, mostly about the business and politics of chess, sometimes about publishing, cities and running a very small listed company.
Press collects interviews and coverage, so you don’t have to search for them.
Everything is filed by topic along the top of the page. Pick one and you’ll get the whole thread, oldest post to newest, with a count of how long it will take to read.
A bit of background
I founded World Chess in 2018 and took it public in 2023. Before chess I studied business and economics at the New School University in New York, and was a professor at FIT. I founded and managed a PR agency in New York and Moscow, and moved to Berlin from Israel in 2022 and live here with my wife and two children.