Buettner and Pein Deny Any Second-Round Deal With Turlov
By Douglas C. · Sun, 20 Sep 2026
Jan Henric Buettner and Malcolm Pein issued a joint statement pushing back directly on speculation reportedly circulating among delegates in Samarkand: that their real goal is simply to deny Wadim Rosenstein the presidency.
Jan Henric Buettner and Malcolm Pein issued a joint statement pushing back directly on speculation reportedly circulating among delegates in Samarkand: that their real goal is simply to deny Wadim Rosenstein the presidency, and that if their own ticket falls short, they'd throw their support behind Timur Turlov in a subsequent round.The denialThe statement doesn't hedge. "Neither of us has agreed to deliver support or votes to Timur Turlov in any subsequent round," it reads. "Neither of us has been promised or accepted a position in a future Turlov administration. There is no deal, no promised position and no second-round arrangement." They also note, correctly, that no candidate can actually guarantee a federation's vote in any round, delegates decide for themselves each time, so any talk of a coordinated bloc arrangement was always going to be more assertion than certainty regardless.Why this rumor exists in the first placeFIDE's presidential vote can go to additional rounds if no ticket wins a majority outright, and Buettner and Pein have generally been treated as the field's third-place ticket behind Turlov and a rising Rosenstein. That positioning naturally invites exactly this kind of speculation, if you're not expected to win outright, who you'd back afterward becomes a live question whether you've said anything about it or not.The platform, restatedThe statement re-grounds their campaign in the same three-part structure they've run on since June: Reform, meaning professional management, transparency, and reduced presidential discretion; Empower, meaning a fixed 20% of FIDE revenue distributed to federations, turning them into stakeholders rather than what the statement calls "clients"; and Grow, meaning new commercial partnerships and audiences while explicitly protecting classical chess alongside the expansion of rapid, blitz, and freestyle formats. Their tagline for it: "Governance first, growth follows."A pointed argument that never names anyoneThe statement's sharpest section doesn't mention Turlov or Rosenstein by name, but it's not hard to see who it's aimed at. "Recent events have also reinforced another fundamental consideration: FIDE needs stability," it reads, before adding that federations are entitled to weigh which ticket can offer "stable, independent and professional leadership" for a full four-year term "without exposing FIDE to uncertainty surrounding its President." It goes on to explicitly decline to speculate about "allegations, investigations and possible sanctions" involving the other candidates, saying those belong with the appropriate authorities and that everyone is entitled to due process. Given everything that's surfaced around both rival tickets in recent weeks, citizenship and governance questions around Turlov, a sponsorship dispute and an anonymous dossier around Rosenstein, this reads as Buettner and Pein positioning themselves as the stable, drama-free option without having to spell out what the instability actually consists of.Where it leaves thingsWith the vote six days away, the statement is as much about reassurance as persuasion: telling federations weighing a vote for Buettner-Pein that doing so isn't a wasted vote destined to end up helping Turlov by default. Whether that message changes many minds this late in the race is another question, but it's a clear, deliberate attempt to close off one specific line of attack before delegates actually cast their ballots in Samarkand.