English Chess Forum

No offence to "Chess" but this truly is a ****ing pathetic escpade......... Ill pay the £6 Howard.........

I mean Seans events have allowed Peter Poob for example to get IM norms+ FM title and numerous other norms/things.

To me they are superior to the CCF events as those events took longer etc so harder for average players.

adam is a great guy, very good for British chess.

Howard on the other hand accused one of my players for falsifying his idenity to play 4NCL, which was funny as it was an ECF/4NCL error.

To have such a big loss to British chess for effectively a packet of cigerettes really shows us why sponsors would be unattracted by the Politics off all this.

Ben

Ben Purton wrote:No offence to "Chess" but this truly is a ****ing pathetic escpade......... Ill pay the £6 Howard.........

I mean Seans events have allowed Peter Poob for example to get IM norms+ FM title and numerous other norms/things.

Howard on the other hand accused one of my players for falsifying his idenity to play 4NCL, which was funny as it was an ECF/4NCL error.

To have such a big loss to British chess for effectively a packet of cigerettes really shows us why sponsors would be unattracted by the Politics off all this.

Ben

Ben - Just to be clear, this is nothing to do with money. I've even been known to spend more than £6 on a round of drinks at least once in my life

One of the other issues in the background is that as soon as Howard Grist took on the post in a temporary capacity he emailed me about the IM norm I signed for Peter Poobalasingam stating "Whilst browsing the e2e4 web site I see that in last year’s Uxbridge International Peter Poobalasingam is down as achieving an IM norm. This seems dubious to me as the requirement of B01 1.11 (Tournaments where the composition is changed (without FIDE approval) during the tournament or those where players have different conditions in terms of rounds and pairing are not valid.) does not appear to have been met." It took a fairly strongly worded email from me, backed up by David Segdwick and Stewart Reuben, to stop this from blowing up.

I understand Sean, of course it wasnt the £6 but a response from the ECF guys made it out to be this way...

Im a dyslexic bafoon who reads things too quickly.... but

"Howard asked Sean for £6............then Sean asked Howard to Quit" is worded sort of to make you seem like its about £6...

maybe im 100% a plonker instead of 99%.

Ben

Ben Purton wrote:"Howard asked Sean for £6............then Sean asked Howard to Quit" is worded sort of to make you seem like its about £6...

maybe im 100% a plonker instead of 99%.

Ben

Sadly, Adam did say that. But it's not true.

Sean Hewitt wrote:

Ben Purton wrote:"Howard asked Sean for £6............then Sean asked Howard to Quit" is worded sort of to make you seem like its about £6...

maybe im 100% a plonker instead of 99%.

Ben

Sadly, Adam did say that. But it's not true.

"Howard,

I'm not going to die in a ditch as they say over this provided that the filler games are rated in the appropriate section to ensure that unrated players get their part ratings, and provided the ECF covers the additional FIDE rating fees that your pedantry will incur." (email of 16th September 2010)

Adam Raoof wrote:

Sean Hewitt wrote:

Ben Purton wrote:"Howard asked Sean for £6............then Sean asked Howard to Quit" is worded sort of to make you seem like its about £6...

maybe im 100% a plonker instead of 99%.

Ben

Sadly, Adam did say that. But it's not true.

"Howard,

I'm not going to die in a ditch as they say over this provided that the filler games are rated in the appropriate section to ensure that unrated players get their part ratings, and provided the ECF covers the additional FIDE rating fees that your pedantry will incur." (email of 16th September 2010)

You do read emails Of course I can't quote any of your emails because you didn't send any

You haven't quoted Howard Grist's reply to my email, so I'll remind you

Howard Grist wrote:I am prepared to rate the event as a whole and invoice you for each player in the event. To do this you will need to send the results of the Minor that I am currently missing.

Alternatively I can rate the Open and Major sections as separate events and invoice you for two separate events i.e. a total of £190.

So my suggested compromise was thrown squarely back in my face.

Hopefully you will appreciate now that this has always been about ensuring that players get their part ratings. Thankfully that wasn't an issue at Sunningdale but may not be so lucky in future.

Perhaps Adam or Howard could advise which FIDE reg states that different sections have to be rated as separate events? And why the same regs don't apply to the 4NCL??

I'm not saying I understand all this but is it a case of an ECF official making a mistake and one or more board members seeking to cover up for the official. If someone has made a mistake why not put it right ? I think I would include as making a mistake unnecessarily changing the basis of rating or dealing with it inconsistently. This all sounds a bit familiar - CFS and the like.

Its all very unfortunate if rating it separately sets a precedent for future rating of these events.

The 4NCL is a league and it's quite possible that different rules apply (e.g. the one about the tournament not taking more than 90 days for one).

Here is the crosstable for the Sunningdale Major (May 2010): http://www.e2e4.org.uk/sunningdale/May2010/major.htm
And is the crosstable for the Sunningdale Open (May 2010): http://www.e2e4.org.uk/sunningdale/May2011/open.htm

And here is tournament report, as submitted to FIDE: http://ratings.fide.com/view_source.phtml?code=50327

I must be missing something obvious, but how does lumping the two sections together help anyone get a half rating?

Are there any cases of different tournament sections being put together as one for the FIDE report, either here or abroad?

Jon D'Souza-Eva wrote: I must be missing something obvious, but how does lumping the two sections together help anyone get a half rating?

Hi Jon - I'll give you an example. A player plays 2 rated players in his section. In a subsequent round he receives a bye. The organiser pairs him against a player from the other section. If the event is rated as two separate events, the player does not get a part rating. If rated as one event, he does.

Jon D'Souza-Eva wrote: Are there any cases of different tournament sections being put together as one for the FIDE report, either here or abroad?

Yes!

Howard Grist wrote:
I am prepared to rate the event as a whole and invoice you for each player in the event. To do this you will need to send the results of the Minor that I am currently missing.

Alternatively I can rate the Open and Major sections as separate events and invoice you for two separate events i.e. a total of £190.

The argument seems to be that the event can only be rated as a single event if ALL sections are included, including the Minor section which wasn't rated! Which seems pretty obviously ludicrous. Nevertheless if this is an insoluble problem whilst the Minor, Major and Open are all part of an e2e4 congress, perhaps the solution is for Sean to run two events simultaneously - one being an e2e4 congress (containing a Major and Open) and one being, I don't know, a d2d4 congress which only contains a Minor. d2d4 is after all a superior move and should be granted some recognition.

Well I have scoured the FIDE ratings regulations and cannot find the word sections or equivalent. It all comes down to the definition of Tournament (going by FIDE handbook on ratings) - is this a section or the whole; in my humble opinion I word go for the whole. As Richard states the whole would include all the sections.

I hope that all is resolved, handbags at dawn are put away and if what seems to be an error has happened things can move on, lessons learnt, etc. All involved are doing their respective roles on a voluntary basis.

Gavin Strachan wrote:Well I have scoured the FIDE ratings regulations and cannot find the word sections or equivalent. It all comes down to the definition of Tournament (going by FIDE handbook on ratings) - is this a section or the whole; in my humble opinion I word go for the whole. As Richard states the whole would include all the sections.

I hope that all is resolved, handbags at dawn are put away and if what seems to be an error has happened things can move on, lessons learnt, etc. All involved are doing their respective roles on a voluntary basis.

That's my point Gavin. I actually called their bluff and, as requested, emailed a FIDE rating report for the Minor to Howard Grist a month ago. However, he back tracked and decided not to rate the entire event.

Perhaps I should take up poker

Seriously though, all I want is FIDE rated events being rated as a whole (where the organiser registers that in advance, of course).

Anyway fundamentally it is not the job of the ECF to interpret regulations in such a way as to boost FIDE's coffers. If regulations are unclear or ambiguous then they should be interpreted in such a way as to advantage English chess. If FIDE ultimately pick up on this and are unhappy about it then they should tighten up the wording of their regulations.

Not wanting to bring politics into it, but this is all a bit akin to the complaint of the British being one of the most hostile nations to the EU, because of the strain of British officialdom which insists on rigidly enforcing every EU regulation and going out of their way to 'interpret' poorly drafted regulations in such a way as to enforce the EU's intention. Whereas most other countries just ignore anything they are not unambiguously required to do.

Ljubica Lazarevic wrote:Adam, Howard and Sean are good guys. Just a shame someone couldn't compromise.

Exactly. The dispute is out of all proportion to the issues involved.

Personal attacks on people don't help, of course.

David Sedgwick wrote:

Ljubica Lazarevic wrote:Adam, Howard and Sean are good guys. Just a shame someone couldn't compromise.

Exactly. The dispute is out of all proportion to the issues involved.

Personal attacks on people don't help, of course.

It is and I am watching, surely three grown men can reach some sort of conclusion to this - but Sean needs to sit back and take a deep breath first I think...

Be nice to resolve this nonsense before the AGM please