From a Local Chess Club to FIDE: Timur Turlov’s Next Move

SAMARKAND, Uzbekistan, September 24th, 2026, FinanceWire

Timur Turlov, founder and CEO of Freedom Holding Corp., a Nasdaq-listed financial and technology group, may be about to take the next major step in his involvement in chess - becoming president of FIDE. That may sound unusual, not least because he has never been a professional chess player. His path into the sport began in a much more ordinary way: with the club his children attended.

Turlov first decided to help a small chess club, then began sponsoring tournaments, became president of the Kazakhstan Chess Federation in 2023, and now wants to bring that experience to the global stage. If elected, he says he is prepared to invest around $10 million in the development of chess.

But why is a major entrepreneur so interested in chess in the first place?

It All Started With His Children

Turlov’s first real involvement in the chess world came through his own children. They began attending a chess club, and he became interested in how it operated and what was preventing it from accepting more students.

“I first started by helping the chess club my kids attended,” Turlov recalled. “I started talking to people at the club about how we could help, how we could do more, how we could help them work with more children and find better ways to spread chess.”

At some point, he also began taking lessons from his children’s coach.

“My kids and I started working with the same coach, and he started teaching me as well,” Turlov said. “Of course, I don’t pretend to be a professional chess player, but the experience was amazing for me.”

Chess unexpectedly became a way for him to gauge his own mental performance.

The game taught him a simple lesson that, by his own admission, had not been obvious to him: the quality of his decision-making depends heavily on his physical and mental state.

“I think the main lesson I learned was how my own brain works,” he said. “I learned when I make better decisions and play better games, when I perform poorly, and what affects the quality of my play.”

He noticed that when he was well rested, under little pressure, and not overloaded with work, he played noticeably better. When he was stressed or sleep-deprived, the quality of his decision-making deteriorated sharply.

“If I’m under stress or haven’t slept well, the quality of my decision-making goes down dramatically,” Turlov said.

The insight carried over into business. Turlov said he had previously assumed that his ability to make decisions remained roughly constant regardless of how he felt.

“My initial perception was that my decision-making ability in business was more or less the same all the time - that I could make decisions of roughly the same quality regardless of my condition. But that turned out not to be true,” he said. “I definitely made many more mistakes when I was tired, sleep-deprived or stressed.”

In that sense, the chessboard became a kind of personal diagnostic tool for him: the result of a game could quickly reveal how clearly he was thinking at a given moment.

There is another reason for his interest as well - children. Turlov sees chess as one way of helping them develop the ability to concentrate on a single activity for extended periods.

Against the backdrop of smartphones, short-form videos, and endless social media feeds, he believes it is becoming increasingly difficult for children to sustain their attention. Chess, by contrast, can keep them focused for long stretches without parents having to force them to take part.

“When they’re sitting with a smartphone and scrolling through social media and other content, it’s very difficult for kids today to concentrate,” Turlov said. “I think they need activities they genuinely enjoy, so they don’t have to be forced to take part. At the same time, they can sit and look at a chessboard, completely focused, for 20 or 30 minutes at a time.”

From Tournament Sponsor to Federation President

Turlov’s involvement in top-level chess began with a proposal to support the Women’s Grand Prix in Astana.

The former president of the Kazakhstan Chess Federation told him that the country would be hosting a Women’s Grand Prix stage and asked whether he would like to sponsor the event. Turlov agreed almost immediately.

“He asked me if I wanted to sponsor it, and I said, ‘Yeah, why not?’” Turlov recalled. “It sounded interesting. Some legendary players were going to be there.”

His motivation was not purely business-related. He was already following chess closely, watching instructional videos and games by well-known players, so the opportunity to meet people he had previously only seen on a screen made a strong impression on him.

“Because I’d become so interested in the game, I was happy to come, meet people from FIDE and see chess players whose online lessons I had watched on YouTube,” he said.

Meeting chess figures in person felt a little like unexpectedly encountering someone you knew from television.

“It was like: ‘I’ve seen you on TV, and now you’re here in person. A legend.’”

What began as one-off support for a tournament gradually grew into broader and more sustained involvement. In 2023, Turlov became president of the Kazakhstan Chess Federation.

In the years that followed, Kazakhstan significantly increased its focus on chess, especially the development of young players. The federation expanded school programs, worked with coaches, supported young talent, and organized international competitions.

Turlov tried to apply the same entrepreneurial approach he used in business: rather than funding a single high-profile event, he sought to build a system.

Holding one prestigious tournament a year is not enough. You need clubs, coaches, a strong pipeline of young players, competitions at different levels, a clear pathway for talented players, and, finally, major international events that bring chess to a wider audience.

Turlov now wants to take this model beyond Kazakhstan.

What He Wants to Change at FIDE

In his platform for FIDE, Turlov focuses on several areas: digitalization, the development of youth chess and chess education, support for national federations, attracting new sponsors, and promoting the game in a more modern way.

The logic is fairly straightforward: chess has long since become a global digital product. Millions of people play online, watch tournaments on the internet, and follow grandmasters on social media. Yet the way the sport is organized in many countries remains relatively traditional and heavily dependent on the resources available to each federation.

Turlov wants to close that gap - in particular by helping federations with technology, education, tournament organization, and promotion.

The most eye-catching part of his proposal is the money. If he becomes president of FIDE, Turlov says he is prepared to commit around $10 million to chess development.

For an international sports federation, that kind of sum is about more than simply increasing the budget. It also reflects Turlov’s broader approach: he is approaching the FIDE presidency as an entrepreneur and investor who wants to grow chess’s audience more quickly and find new sources of funding for the game.

His path through the chess world has followed a fairly clear progression.

First came the club his own children attended. Then came an effort to understand how to make that club better. Next came sponsorship of a major tournament, followed by leadership of the national federation, and now a bid to lead FIDE.

Turlov does not try to present himself as a great chess player. Perhaps that is precisely why he looks at the game somewhat differently, not only as an elite competitive sport, but also as an educational tool, a form of mental training, and a game whose audience can be expanded.

A few years ago, his main question was how to help a children’s chess club accommodate more students. Today, the question is much bigger: how can chess reach more people around the world?

About Timur Turlov

Timur Turlov is the founder and CEO of Freedom Holding Corp. He has served as head of the Kazakhstan Chess Federation since 2023 and is a candidate for president of the International Chess Federation (FIDE).

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