Chess Player Strip Searched

[Roger de Coverly]

They have announced that their next move will be against organisers, requiring that every event must have an arbiter on site

I thought that was already implicit in B.03. Would it really be possible to submit a rating report and have it accepted with the name of the arbiter left blank on the grounds there wasn't one?

English practice is that only events with arbiters present are FIDE rated. Hence the lack of progress in having league or county games internationally rated.

[Alex Holowczak]

I don't think the FIDE system can be that simple as the ECF have yet to load the results for the British Championship Congress.

If you take a look here: http://ratings.fide.com/tournament_list ... ountry=ENG

You will see that the ECF submitted the results to FIDE by the latest of 4th August, if you look in the "Received" column. The events from the first week and weekend were rated in the July list.

FIDE haven't clicked the button to rate those yet, but that is what I would expect; given the rating list is not produced until the end of the month, there's no real reason to do so.

[NickFaulks]

Would it really be possible to submit a rating report and have it accepted with the name of the arbiter left blank on the grounds there wasn't one?

Of course not. The arbiter named at the point of registration is responsible for ensuring that results are submitted to the national Rating Officer. They must be on the list of paid-up Licensed Arbiters.

English practice is that only events with arbiters present are FIDE rated. Hence the lack of progress in having league or county games internationally rated.

The ECF has every right to impose this condition if they wish to restrict the number of English competitions submitted for FIDE rating. That is their decision, and has nothing to do with FIDE regulations.

[Paolo Casaschi]

The Arbiters are a trade union, and they operate a closed shop. Nobody may work as an arbiter unless they have paid their union dues.

They have announced that their next move will be against organisers, requiring that every event must have an arbiter on site - in their minds that person will be paid, because otherwise there's no point. Perhaps we shall see minimum rates set out in the regulations. This will encourage more people to pay to join their union. It is not a novel business plan.

The next step then could be to forbid registered arbiters from officiating at events not endorsed by FIDE or the national organization

[Roger de Coverly]

The arbiter named at the point of registration is responsible for ensuring that results are submitted to the national Rating Officer. They must be on the list of paid-up Licensed Arbiters.

So an arbiter is named even though they are never required to be present at the event or to have any involvement with how it is run. But as you say, it's not about standards, as it should be, but about collecting money and arguably restricting the number of chess events. Apologies then, if I mistook FIDE for a body interested in the promotion of chess.

[Stewart Reuben]

Paolo >The next step then could be to forbid registered arbiters from officiating at events not endorsed by FIDE or the national organization<

This is not what has been agreed. But it has been agreed that there will be sanctions against administrators officiating at competitions which have been specifically disallowed by the federation or FIDE. This is likely to have more effect in the US or India than Britain. I don't remember an event ever being blacklisted in Britain.

To describe the arbiter fee as a union one is stretching the English to breaking point. The money goes to FIDE, not the non-existent Arbiters Union.

[Paolo Casaschi]

Paolo >The next step then could be to forbid registered arbiters from officiating at events not endorsed by FIDE or the national organization<

This is not what has been agreed.

I was just playing devil's advocate, I have no idea what has been discussed/agreed/planned within FIDE.
However, I believe a similar requirement has been introduced in the past by some national federation (just to be clear, not in the UK, as far as I know), making it a lot more difficult to organize chess activities outside the national federation.

[Roger de Coverly]

However, I believe a similar requirement has been introduced in the past by some national federation (just to be clear, not in the UK, as far as I know), making it a lot more difficult to organize chess activities outside the national federation.

It's usually used as a means of enforcing compulsory membership, and where there's a license either implicit or explicit as a condition of playing chess, to keep players away from unofficial events.

[IM Jack Rudd]

I am planning a limited swiss event eligible for GM norms to begin just after the Classic (15-23 December) and to run for 7-9 days. I hope to agree terms with a venue in Hampstead this week, and I have expressions of interest from a lot of IMs, and hope to encourage a lot of visitors to the Classic to stay on and play. I expect the entry will be strong, possibly limited to players with higher ratings, depending on the size of the venue, perhaps two events. Add your name to my mailing list for more details!

I'm potentially interested. You've got my email address, yesno?

[NickFaulks]

To describe the arbiter fee as a union one is stretching the English to breaking point. The money goes to FIDE, not the non-existent Arbiters Union.

and then directly to the Arbiters, to balance their budget, since they are self-financing.

[NickFaulks]

The arbiter named at the point of registration is responsible for ensuring that results are submitted to the national Rating Officer. They must be on the list of paid-up Licensed Arbiters.

So an arbiter is named even though they are never required to be present at the event or to have any involvement with how it is run. But as you say, it's not about standards, as it should be, but about collecting money and arguably restricting the number of chess events. Apologies then, if I mistook FIDE for a body interested in the promotion of chess.

You are only partially correctly. FIDE does have an interest in standards, and for title events it is applied through the arbiters. For other rated events, it is applied through the federations. The Licensed Arbiter scheme has not affected this.

[JustinHorton]

Talking of arbiters, congraulations to Stewart for his award. The caption is very good, by the way.

[Chris Rice]

It's not just Caruana that's doing superbly lately. There is also a young guy, Ivan Tetimov, from Blagoevgrad (ring any bells?) in Bulgaria who also played in Pamplona and for the same club team as a certain other guy we all know. Ivan plays quickly, doesn't look at the board and always looks nervous. He's just had the best result of his life 7.5/9 not bad for a player rated 2067. I'm sure its all a coincidence.

http://chess-results.com/tnr141905.aspx ... BUL&wi=821

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Do you have a link to something stating what you said there? "Ivan plays quickly, doesn't look at the board and always looks nervous." That needs substantiating. (For those new to this, Borislav Ivanov is from Blagoevgrad - maybe it is something in the water?)

[NickFaulks]

Where did you find this?

edit - seen post above. Is there a way to remove a post?