Olympiad

[NickFaulks]

Or why didn't FIDE make it clear before the poor Norwegians were dumb enough to bid for the Olympiad in the first place?

If there is effectively no deadline then teams could turn up on the start day I suppose with a little note from FIDE which would lead to utter chaos.

The Norwegians knew the score perfectly well. Kirsan, like Campo before him, has always had the pre-eminent desire that everyone who wants to play must be allowed to do so. Teams with only two players have regularly been allowed in, as have teams who rolled up not on the start day, as you mention, but after several rounds have been played! The President has always invoked his right to allow such cases and, despite complaints from some of their opponents, this right has never been questioned. Morten Sand, the architect of the Tromso bid, has been involved in innumerable Olympiads and knows all about this.

By the way, these rules have recently been tightened up a bit after a rare rebellion by federations at a General Assembly.

[Paolo Casaschi]

Clearly Lagno is to be paraded as a Russian trophy captured from Ukraine in a political war driven by Putin and from the events of yesterday we've already seen the costs of that.

Aren't you getting a little bit too excited here?
Kateryna Lagno can decide for herself which team she wants to play for, like Karjakin did and many other players if you look at the FIDE records. I doubt she voluntarily put herself forward to "parade as a Russian trophy captured from Ukraine".
What's happening in Ukraine is very serious and dangerous, do you seriously compare the transfer of a chess player to those events?

If you start mixing politics into this, which is clearly what FIDE are doing, then unintended consequences can follow. That's the point I was making not that the two events are literally related. FIDE shouldn't be basically bending over backwards to get Lagno in just to help Putin's PR machine. Lagno can of course play for who she wants to but if it was to be for Russia then the next Olympiad would have been the right one and not Tromso. Does that sound fair?

I was just reacting to a very colorful expression that I'd have expected on the Daily Mail (if they had any interest in chess olympiads) rather than here.

I agree, mixing Russian politics with FIDE administration can have nasty side effects; unfortunately, none of the FIDE presidential election candidates will get rid of all those side effects for FIDE.

About the K. Lagno issue, if you apply the spirit of the law (letting as many teams play at the chess olympiad and as many players play for the team of their choice) then in my opinion Russia should probably play with K. Lagno (as the other countries with a late registration).
If you wan to apply the letter of the law, the FIDE website on players transfers reports that K. Lagno is allowed to play for RUS as of 2014-07-12 (with transfer fee). Since the chess olympiad starts after July 12th she should be able to play. Instead, the letter of the law (forgetting about the presidential power of changing those decisions) would probably disqualify the Russia team from being accepted entirely. Accepting a Russian women team without Lagno does not make much sense to me.

[NickFaulks]

Lagno can of course play for who she wants to but if it was to be for Russia then the next Olympiad would have been the right one and not Tromso. Does that sound fair?

That used to be how the system worked, but it seemed a shame that a player had to miss an Olympiad. The current idea is that they can be allowed not to miss an Olympiad if a compensation fee is paid to the old federation. This has generally worked well, except where there is real ill will between the federations. In such cases, nothing will make both sides happy.

[Chris Rice]

Lagno can of course play for who she wants to but if it was to be for Russia then the next Olympiad would have been the right one and not Tromso. Does that sound fair?

That used to be how the system worked, but it seemed a shame that a player had to miss an Olympiad. The current idea is that they can be allowed not to miss an Olympiad if a compensation fee is paid to the old federation. This has generally worked well, except where there is real ill will between the federations. In such cases, nothing will make both sides happy.

Given the past relaxed Olympiad entry policy which you describe (and I was largely unaware of) its easy to see how issues were going to come up when its in a country like Norway who are sticklers for procedures. The past precedents created will make it nigh on impossible I guess for the Tromso organisers to hold their position of banning the Russian women and Lagno particularly when the Russians are preparing all sorts of legal action and FIDE are threatening to cancel the Olympiad. I do feel sorry for the Norwegians though who probably naively thought they were running a conventional international tournament.

[Ian Thompson]

Given the past relaxed Olympiad entry policy which you describe (and I was largely unaware of) its easy to see how issues were going to come up when its in a country like Norway who are sticklers for procedures.

I don't understand how the organisers can possibly have come to the conclusion they did. The rules seem very clear. Teams are required to name all members of their delegation 2 months in advance (Rule 3.7.1), but if they don't meet that deadline they can still do it up to the day before the event starts on payment of a late fee (Rule 3.7.2). What's absent from the rules is any provision for changing the composition of a delegation after it's been submitted, so you can see why a country that hasn't finalised its team 2 months before the event might want to delay registration until they're sure about the team.

[NickFaulks]

I do feel sorry for the Norwegians though who probably naively thought they were running a conventional international tournament.

I just can't accept that. Not only did Morten Sand know exactly how Olympiads work, but in Khanty I spoke at length to other members of the organiseing team, who were keen to beat the previous record number of teams by a wide margin. They were certainly not of a mind to restrict numbers by arbitrary cutoffs.

If this attitude has changed, it is because

a) they discovered at a late stage that they were short of money and accommodation, and

b) some matters got tangled up with the election and moved into the hands of Kasparov's lawyers, for whom the Olympiad is just collateral damage.

[Chris Rice]

I do feel sorry for the Norwegians though who probably naively thought they were running a conventional international tournament.

I just can't accept that. Not only did Morten Sand know exactly how Olympiads work, but in Khanty I spoke at length to other members of the organiseing team, who were keen to beat the previous record number of teams by a wide margin. They were certainly not of a mind to restrict numbers by arbitrary cutoffs.

If this attitude has changed, it is because

a) they discovered at a late stage that they were short of money and accommodation, and

b) some matters got tangled up with the election and moved into the hands of Kasparov's lawyers, for whom the Olympiad is just collateral damage.

I do have to agree that a) may have had quite a lot to do with it. We all know they have had funding problems and one suspects the Norwegian government told them that's it you're not going to get any more. They did made quite an issue of the extra 10,000 euros per team if they let the teams in question in.

[Roger de Coverly]

The regulations for the 2012 Olympiad were posted by the then ECF International Director on this very site.

http://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.php?t=4262&p=87291

The penalties for not playing by the book are that the offer of free accommodation is withdrawn

The Online Pre-registration will open on 10 May 2012 and will close on 01 June 2012.
In Pre-registration period all federations asked kindly to send organizers their interest of participation with accommodation details. No need for names on this stage. If a federation does not make pre-registration organizers will not provide free accommodation.
Registration will be closed on 01 July 2012.
Important Note:
In any case of late registrations the Organizers do not guarantee the accommodation of the respective participants. In these cases Hotel expenses will be charged to the Federations.

That Olympiad was allowed to charge what it liked for room upgrades and was even permitted to make a per head charge, denied to Tromso, for participation. Arbitrary exclusion of journalists and arbiters was permitted as well.

I don't think anyone queried it at the time, but is there a justification in the letter of the FIDE rules for allowing participation but declining to pay the resulting hotel bills?

[NickFaulks]

I don't think anyone queried it at the time, but is there a justification in the letter of the FIDE rules for allowing participation but declining to pay the resulting hotel bills?

That's exactly what I was driving at when I wrote on Thursday

"If these teams were now to find the extra money mentioned in the organisers' letter, I wonder whether they would still be told "sorry, no room"."

[MartinCarpenter]

It has to be far from impossible that there just isn't any more room at any price.

Norway isn't a huge county population wise etc so I presume not that much intrinsic spare capacity to start with and mid August is a truly terrible time to be trying to get even remotely last minute accommodation anywhere in mainland Europe. Absolutely everyone goes on holiday at once.
(Its a daft time to be trying to hold it really, but presume the schedule is long fixed.).

For non trivial sizes of bookings for a couple of weeks you'd want to book months in advance to have a sensible chance. In a few countries you might just be able to 'arrange' cancelled bookings for other people but.....

[Matthew Turner]

To a certain extent August is off-peak tourism wise for Tromso because the main tourist attraction is the Northern Lights and they are rather hard to see in August . So, it should be perfectly possible to secure quite a lot of accommodation in August booking a few months in advance. However, Tromso isn't huge by any means and suddenly adding a few hundred rooms relatively late in the day could be very difficult (if not impossible). That seems to be the problem the organisers are faced with and I am not sure what they can do.

[Ian Thompson]

However, Tromso isn't huge by any means and suddenly adding a few hundred rooms relatively late in the day could be very difficult (if not impossible). That seems to be the problem the organisers are faced with and I am not sure what they can do.

If there is a shortage of hotel rooms and the extent of it is those teams that didn't specify their teams by the first deadline for doing so, it would be a few dozen rooms, not a few hundred. There is an obvious solution - do what hotels and airlines routinely do when overbooked; i.e. offer teams incentives to take hotel rooms further away from the venue. Make the incentive big enough and someone will take it.

[Matthew Turner]

Talk of a shortage of hotel rooms has been a persistent issue, so I think it goes beyond the ten 'late' teams. Having them not compete might alleviate the problem for the organisers. I know some arbiters are staying 70km away, but I imagine the hotel rooms are in Tromso itself, there isn't going to be a lot of anything within easy travelling distance.

[Chris Rice]

David Levy weighs in asking the Tromso organisers to be reasonable and find some rooms at the inn for these people. Using FIDE's motto "Gens Una Sumus" he compares the current situation to a family squabble citing FIDE as the father and Tromso as the mother who is expecting a child (the Olympiad) in two weeks time. http://www.chessdom.com/im-david-levy-o ... committee/

I decided to have a look on TripAdvisor regarding how large an issue this accomodation problem really was and had a look at Tromso on the map. Tromso is not really near anywhere and has just 17 hotels and 3 Bed and breakfasts. For the dates listed I couldn't book even one room, completely full up. I then went on Booking.com and found 50 properties in and around Tromso which provided accomodation. But even here I could only find five properties that had anything available and there was a grand total of seven rooms available for the dates in question.

If the organisers are going to relent and let some or all of these excluded teams in then as Ian and Matt have suggested above I suspect the organisers would have to get creative and offer teams incentives to move an hour's drive away although I doubt may teams would want to do that. Either that or perhaps some locals can offer accomodation at private houses in Tromso maybe.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Was there not talk of using a cruise ship as a hotel? Maybe one is already being used or FIDE can stump up for one?