Olympiad

[NickFaulks]

I hope they bought refundable tickets! If they aren't able to go, I imagine the Norwegians will weasel out of paying their the travel fund money.

[Andy Howie]

Have the Norwegians blundered here? 3.7.2 states that you can give team details up to 20 hours before round 1 at the cost of 100 euros per player

[Roger de Coverly]

Gets worse, 10 teams are not going. No details of who yet other than Russia!

The case for exclusion of the Russian Women is weakened by the point that the Russian Federation was sent an invoice, which they claim to have paid, for an "organisation fee" to cover both teams.

http://ruchess.ru/news/all/norvezhskie_ ... hempionok/

(needs Google translate or an ability to read Russian)

The other point which might become relevant is that it was not formally confirmed that the Olympiad was actually taking place until after deadline for submission of teams. Do we think another CAS dispute is about to break out?

[Andy Howie]

I think it is a cert

[Andy Howie]

Only problem is CAS take a while to get together. Olympiad is in a couple of weeks. What then FIDE postpone the Olympiad?

[Carl Hibbard]

Only problem is CAS take a while to get together. Olympiad is in a couple of weeks. What then FIDE postpone the Olympiad?

Possible?

http://kevinspraggettonchess.wordpress. ... -to-sochi/

[NickFaulks]

In fairness, I should point out that Kenneth Pedersen, the besieged staff member who is in charge of accommodation ( it's not his fault they haven't got enough ), has been very helpful. Bermuda had a special request to which, while it causes them no inconvenience, he could easily have said no if he wished to be awkward.

[Andy Howie]

Latest on who's not going Excluded teams from @Tromso2014: Cambodia, Central African Republic, Gabon, Côte d'Ivoire, Oman, Pakistan, Senegal (men) In addition to the women teams of Afghanistan and Russia.

[NickFaulks]

In some of those cases they probably couldn't agree on whose job it was to register ( or select? ) the teams. I assume they had all indicated their intention to be there. The Russians say they had paid their fee, and for everyone else it would have been deducted ( controversially ) from the travel fund.

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".

[Roger de Coverly]

In some of those cases they probably couldn't agree on whose job it was to register ( or select? ) the teams.

I don't imagine it helps that after FIDE gives you a mailing list, you send invitations and receive acceptances only to find that the President or even the entire organisation have, according to FIDE, been replaced or never existed in the first place.

[MartinCarpenter]

Actually that letter doesn't suprise me enormously - the Nordic countries really can be incredibly strict about sticking to rules. Looks entirely consistent with how you might expect them to behave.

FIDE (and various chess organisations) are obviously used to working rather differently!

[Chris Rice]

Actually that letter doesn't suprise me enormously - the Nordic countries really can be incredibly strict about sticking to rules. Looks entirely consistent with how you might expect them to behave.

FIDE (and various chess organisations) are obviously used to working rather differently!

Kirsan clearly is not a closing date of entries type person....

FIDE President comments on the teams exclusion saga

In a conversation with Itar-Tass, FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov stated, “The Chess Olympiad Organizing Committee forgot its true purpose – to provide equal opportunity to all players of the world chess community to attend the tournament.”

[Roger de Coverly]

Kirsan clearly is not a closing date of entries type person....

His sentiments would have more value if he hadn't advocated the profoundly chess prevention rule of zero tolerance and continues to support it to this day. So the Russian women's team, complete with Lagno are allowed to enter and are paired with China in a critical match. They turn up one minute late ...

It's all a bit puzzling, as whilst there's a deadline for nominating teams, there's also a late substitutions additional entry fee clause. It's by no means unknown for late substitutions to be allowed. the Soviet Union once had to find a substitute for Tal at the last minute. Fortunately Smyslov was at hand.

[Andy Howie]

His sentiments would have more value if he hadn't advocated the profoundly chess prevention rule of zero tolerance and continues to support it to this day. So the Russian women's team, complete with Lagno are allowed to enter and are paired with China in a critical match. They turn up one minute late ...

Then the old Chief Arbiter trick of extending the speech at the start of the round will come into play...

[Paolo Casaschi]

His sentiments would have more value if he hadn't advocated the profoundly chess prevention rule of zero tolerance and continues to support it to this day.

In this case the position of KI is not contradictory at all. The goal of the zero tolerance is to make official FIDE events more presentable to the media: imagine the opening speech of Norwegian authorities before the Olympiad first round, with Norwegian TV showing some big shot declaring the start of play, the cameras turn on the playing all with most of the seats empty, players sloooowly walking towards their seat; not a nice picture for the media. Similarly, excluding for bureaucratic issue a strong candidate for winning the women section would not look good in the press either. It might be the rightful thing to do according to the rules, I agree, but I understand the attempt to avoid it regardless of who's at fault: again making the event more presentable to the media. KI is certainly the villain on many fronts, maybe not so much in this occasion.