English Chess Forum

Had a player at my tournament at the weekend, first time OTB with Gold ECF. When he submitted his entry he didn't give his FIN, and to be fair I never checked before the event.

Turns out he has a FIN, but with the federation set as FIDE. This was generated via his free membership of the arena and there is likely a charge of 60 euro's coming my way for the rating.

His FIN says he is unlicensed and he needs to pay an annual fee of 60 euro's to be licensed. Appreciate the Arena is run as a commercial venture, but this seems like a money grab.

I am assuming he will need to ask the IRO to seek a change of federation, and at least he will only have to pay the 50 euro fee once for that.

Anyone dealt with this before and can offer a solution or confirm that a change of federation is the way to go.

The obvious solution would be either to scrub his results from the tournament and not send them in for grading or to simply not pay any unreasonable demands for fees sent to you and never run any fide rated events again - in the long run it's better for all concerned, less admin and expense for you, lower entry fees for future entrants and you get to boycott a broken and worthless rating system and the scammy website they use.

Yes,

Ignore his Arena details and enter him as a new player. Make sure you have his date of birth.

The ratings do not cross over anyway.

It saves FIDE some effort too.

Alex McFarlane wrote: ↑

Fri Sep 27, 2024 11:53 am

Ignore his Arena details and enter him as a new player. Make sure you have his date of birth.

I think Arena will put the nationality down as FID if they don't have any information about affiliation, registration or membership with or of one of the national federations.

FIDE Online Arena is a commercial operation run by "World Chess plc" which is the outfit previously known as Agon.