The way you find out who is winning a FIDE election is that you go to the hotel where the delegates are staying. This week the hotel is in Samarkand, the General Assembly votes on Saturday, and roughly 200 federation presidents are wandering the lobby doing the arithmetic out loud, and often badly, to whoever is nearest. There are no polls. The federation has existed since 1924 and its electoral tradition is a man in a blazer telling you he has "at least ninety" while looking at his phone.
So it is worth paying attention when a number appears, even a small one. On Monday, a little after midnight local time, a Manifold user (Manifold is a prediction-market site) opened a market titled "Which ticket will win the 2026 FIDE presidential election?" and set the opening prices himself. Turlov/Anand at about 40 percent, Rosenstein/Tang at about 23, Buettner/Pein at 10, and, at 2 percent, "None of the above," which on this market means nobody gets formally elected on Saturday at all.
You can argue with those numbers, but you can't say they were written by an outsider. That is a reasonable read. Favorite, funded challenger, respectable third, and a small tip of the hat to the fact that FIDE elections might end up in front of a lawyer.
At around noon on Tuesday, the odds changed. A dozen traders arrived inside the same hour and put ₼1,100 through a market that had ₼100 of liquidity in it, which in practical terms means the link got dropped into a group chat and the group chat was probably in Samarkand.
Here is what they did with their hour. Turlov/Anand went from 40 to 82, which is what a favorite does when the election reaches an endgame and delegates are making decisions. Buettner/Pein drifted from 10 to 7, a move so small it reads as an absence of opinion. And Rosenstein/Tang went from 23 to 4.
Two smaller things from the same hour, both of which I'd put above the headline if I were a delegate. Turlov's line touched 100 before someone sold it back to 82. So there was, at that table, a person who considers this over and a person who was willing to take the other side, and 18 percent is what the disagreement settled at. And "None of the above" went from 2 to 7. Somebody, with the whole race in front of them, chose to buy the scenario in which Saturday produces no president. We don't know what they know. But it is now, per the only public forecast in existence, as likely as Buettner/Pein winning.
The people in the lobby will keep counting until Saturday, and then FIDE will count for real.