English Chess Forum

David Sedgwick wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 19, 2019 12:39 am

That is pretty much what I said when I questioned the value of the "Ask a Director" facility on the ECF website. If I remember correctly, you responded that many people wouldn't be capable of looking up an ECF Director's email address.

I'm not sure that I said that, and I'm not sure the parallel is equivalent. The idea of Ask the Director was that you would tick the box of the Director you wanted, so it would be targetted to the person directly; which is convenient. This is an improvement on just emailing the Office, which is what happened here.

Alex Holowczak wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 19, 2019 6:21 pm

David Sedgwick wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 19, 2019 12:39 am

That is pretty much what I said when I questioned the value of the "Ask a Director" facility on the ECF website. If I remember correctly, you responded that many people wouldn't be capable of looking up an ECF Director's email address.

I'm not sure that I said that, and I'm not sure the parallel is equivalent. The idea of Ask the Director was that you would tick the box of the Director you wanted, so it would be targetted to the person directly; which is convenient. This is an improvement on just emailing the Office, which is what happened here.

Plagiarising Roger Lancaster in another thread, maybe I was a bit harsh.

FIDE have announced a Task Force for the Reform of the FIDE Statutes. I want to believe that this is an initiative to produce a more professional FIDE which will be attractive to sponsors. I really, really want to believe that and then it occurred to me that if the same press statement had been made under Kirsan/Makro's reign I would have immediately jumped to the conclusion that this was chance for a knees up and a few beers in Lausanne all at FIDE's expense with nothing substantive coming out of it at the end.

Chris Rice wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 21, 2019 5:49 pm

FIDE have announced a Task Force for the Reform of the FIDE Statutes. I want to believe that this is an initiative to produce a more professional FIDE which will be attractive to sponsors. I really, really want to believe that and then it occurred to me that if the same press statement had been made under Kirsan/Makro's reign I would have immediately jumped to the conclusion that this was chance for a knees up and a few beers in Lausanne all at FIDE's expense with nothing substantive coming out of it at the end.

I am waiting to hear more about this, but one matter on which I can put your mind at rest is that Roberto Rivello does not do knees ups.

Looks like coffees after some very large meal. Trying to think who that reminds me of?

Alex Holowczak wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 19, 2019 12:08 am

John McMorrow wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 18, 2019 6:14 pm

asked for there to be more online Arbiter courses in English, and queried the cost of running an arbiter seminar in Dublin.

This sort of enquiry that might have been better directed to Laurent Freyd directly, rather than going via the Office. I realise the Office is the public face of the organisation, but if it's about Commission business it can't hurt to use the FIDE Directory to go straight to the people at the pointy end.

The FIDE Office have now requested that such correspondence be copied to them.


From: Directory Elista FIDE Office <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2019 at 10:04
Subject: Memo for National chess federations
To:

Dear National Federations,

We are constantly working to improve our communication and efficiency of services on all levels. For this purpose, you are kindly requested to always copy the Secretariat at [email protected] with all your correspondence, especially containing:

Requests, complaints, suggestions, information

To enable the Secretariat to correctly streamline and follow up on each of your communications.

Thank you so much in advance.

Best regards
FIDE Secretariat

The FIDE Presidential Board had its first meeting of the year at Astana during the World Team Championships from 4-6 March.

Briefly the prize fund for the Candidates has risen to half a million Euros. Really great news for the players, but I'm finding it jaw dropping that the major sponsor appears to be Russian Railways!

The Presidential Board also supports the proposal made by Wales to hold the World Championship for players under 18 years old with disabilities. Let's hope the Welsh can bring this really great idea to fruition.

They are still banging on about the dress code as a way to improve the image of the game and bring in sponsors.

Another initiative seems to be to get more women into senior positions within FIDE. Do we think the Presidential Board is male dominated? Let's have a look at a Group photo and see what the ratio is.

Oh dear, not good. Where's Nigel Short? Well he's been working hard on an Expansion Tour of the Caribbean, doing what he's been doing for years and is clearly best at. This time though with the full backing of FIDE. More detail here and here.

Chris Rice wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 07, 2019 11:46 pm

Another initiative seems to be to get more women into senior positions within FIDE. Do we think the Presidential Board is male dominated? Let's have a look at a Group photo and see what the ratio is.

27 male, 3 female, plus one I'm not sure of. Probably a higher percentage of women than one sees at most congresses and chess clubs. However, getting more women in at the top should help in bringing more in to the game.

Reg Clucas wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 08, 2019 9:56 pm

Chris Rice wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 07, 2019 11:46 pm

Another initiative seems to be to get more women into senior positions within FIDE. Do we think the Presidential Board is male dominated? Let's have a look at a Group photo and see what the ratio is.

27 male, 3 female, plus one I'm not sure of. Probably a higher percentage of women than one sees at most congresses and chess clubs. However, getting more women in at the top should help in bringing more in to the game.

I can't see Anastasia Sorokina in that photograph. If she is indeed not there, she was presumably attending to her duties as Chief Arbiter of the World Team Championships.

Chris Rice wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 07, 2019 11:46 pm

Where's Nigel Short? Well he's been working hard on an Expansion Tour of the Caribbean, doing what he's been doing for years and is clearly best at. This time though with the full backing of FIDE. More detail here and here.

He has also been attending numerous cricket matches, in which England has done very well. So much so, I'm hoping he can go on an Expansion Tour of Australia in 2021/22.

Off the board in Astana the Presidential Board have been making a lot of decisions Of those decisions here are a few that stood out:

Q1PB-2019/18 To approve GSC proposal to ban draws by mutual agreement before move 40 in Candidates and World Championship Matches starting 2020.

Q1PB-2019/19 To approve GSC proposal in regards to the tie-break criteria for the Swiss-system events of the World Championship Cycle.

Q1PB-2019/21 To grant an organizing committee led by John Lluton the right to hold the 2019 World Inclusive Cadet and Youth Chess Championship as a pilot project in Cardiff, Wales.

Q1PB-2019/26 To approve the concept of the yearly FIDE Awards to be presented during a FIDE Gala.

Q1PB-2019/30 To consult a Fischer Random Chess expert panel including Eugene Torre (PHI), Nigel Short (ENG), Gunnar Bjornsson (ISL), Berik Balgabaev (KAZ) and Jeroen Van den Berg (NED) to propose in the next two weeks recommendations and guidelines for the 2019 Fischer Random World Chess Championship.

Q1PB-2019/31 To consider the nomination of a minimum of 25% of women in overall FIDE Commissions.

Q1PB-2019/33 To approve the idea to preserve the good image of our game endorsing the proposal regarding the dress-code. A panel including Anastasia Sorokina (BLR), Emil Sutovsky (ISR) and David Llada (ESP) will report with recommendations to the next PB.

Approach with scepticism, obviously, but this piece caught my eye yesterday.

JustinHorton wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 02, 2019 7:56 am

Approach with scepticism, obviously, but this piece caught my eye yesterday.

I expect everyone involved had a dossier including such nuggets of information as "Jack Warner would vote for “whoever offers him the most”". Not that you would pay much for that one.

Those of us "in the know" were expecting the FIDE President's opening remarks in Hamburg to include, at last, details of the 2019 General Assembly. It turns out that we knew nothing.

Instead, according to Twitter, he did inform the waiting world that the 2020 Olympiad in Khanty-Mansiysk was off. It will instead be held in Moscow, dates and venue to follow.

...which is unfortunate since the British Chamionship has been arranged to take the previously-arranged dates into account, I think.

But anyway, what's going on?