"Kirsan Ilyumzhinov announced his resignation as FIDE President"

[David Sedgwick]

Makropoulos makes a move, "no one asked Ilyumzhinov to resign and the meetings were recorded". Judging by the letter Makro wrote it looks like Ilyumzhinov is finished, Kirsan to move... http://www.fide.com/component/content/a ... hinov.html

In the letter Georgios Makropoulos accuses Kirsan Ilyumzhinov of being unfair to Garry Kasparov.

Now I've seen it all.

[Nick Grey]

Kirsan's - I resign and repeated twice is 3-fold repetition & game over.

Thanks for the posts.

[shaunpress]

Makropoulos makes a move, "no one asked Ilyumzhinov to resign and the meetings were recorded". Judging by the letter Makro wrote it looks like Ilyumzhinov is finished, Kirsan to move... http://www.fide.com/component/content/a ... hinov.html

In the letter Georgios Makropoulos accuses Kirsan Ilyumzhinov of being unfair to Garry Kasparov.

Now I've seen it all.

Oh, blaming everything on Kasparov is so 2016!

[Mick Norris]

Makropoulos makes a move, "no one asked Ilyumzhinov to resign and the meetings were recorded". Judging by the letter Makro wrote it looks like Ilyumzhinov is finished, Kirsan to move... http://www.fide.com/component/content/a ... hinov.html

In the letter Georgios Makropoulos accuses Kirsan Ilyumzhinov of being unfair to Garry Kasparov.

Now I've seen it all.

Actually, he blames it on Gary Kasparov, not Garry

[Roger de Coverly]

Zurab Azmaiparashvili with his Continental President of Europe hat on has made a statement.

He's also been speaking to news agencies.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/ ... nov-resign

The Georgian grand master Zurab Azmaiparashvili, a member of Fide’s presidential board who attended Sunday’s meeting, told AFP there was a “crisis” at the federation, but said its details were “confidential”.

Azmaiparashvili said that Ilyumzhinov had in fact threatened to resign during the course of the meeting.

[David Sedgwick]

Makropoulos makes a move, "no one asked Ilyumzhinov to resign and the meetings were recorded". Judging by the letter Makro wrote it looks like Ilyumzhinov is finished, Kirsan to move... http://www.fide.com/component/content/a ... hinov.html

In the letter Georgios Makropoulos accuses Kirsan Ilyumzhinov of being unfair to Garry Kasparov.

Now I've seen it all.

Actually, he blames it on Gary Kasparov, not Garry

I made the same spelling mistake a few months ago and I had to apologise to Kasparov quickly. I wasn't going to repeat the error in my post.

But the point is that Makropoulos condemned Ilyumzhinov for blamimg things on Kasparov

[LawrenceCooper]

Zurab Azmaiparashvili with his Continental President of Europe hat on has made a statement.

He's also been speaking to news agencies.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/ ... nov-resign

The Georgian grand master Zurab Azmaiparashvili, a member of Fide’s presidential board who attended Sunday’s meeting, told AFP there was a “crisis” at the federation, but said its details were “confidential”.

Azmaiparashvili said that Ilyumzhinov had in fact threatened to resign during the course of the meeting.

It's worth noting that Azmai is an expert on well publicised retractions

[Roger de Coverly]

It's worth noting that Azmai is an expert on well publicised retractions

The anti-Kirsan group retains control of the FIDE website and have now reposted the Axmai statement.

http://www.fide.com/component/content/a ... urope.html

sport.ru has a brief quote from Dominic Lawson.

http://www.sport.ru/other/Glava_Shahmat ... icle348009

As presumably translated from English to Russian and back again

According to the incident with Ilyumzhinov I can only say one thing: the situation in FIDE is a complete chaos, which, however, for them is absolutely normal, - quotes "R-Sport" Lawson.

[NickFaulks]

A long overdue revolt by the insiders then.

Why does everything have to be so dramatic? What's wrong with the simple explanation given that he said he was resigning, they believed him and had to decide what to do next?

Nick Faulks apparently thinks we are all idiots.

Not idiots necessarily, but certainly conspiracy theorists. I've never minded a good conspiracy theory myself, but where there is a perfectly good and simple explanation available, it should not just be ignored.

I'm sure he did say that he was resigning, I expect they did believe him and it would have been irresponsible not then to consider their next steps. One possibility would of course have been to beg him to change his mind, but there was clearly little enthusiasm for that.

[David Sedgwick]

ChessBase reports a sensational new development.

http://en.chessbase.com/post/malcolm-pe ... -president

[Christopher Kreuzer]

For those unaware, Chessbase have a tradition of posting several April Fools' stories on 1 April. They sometimes post several, with only one actually being true. They may not have finished posting amazing stories yet today.

For the record, the other stories (which include a standard report from the US Championships and a seemingly ordinary DVD review) are:

http://en.chessbase.com/post/us-champio ... nd-swagger
http://en.chessbase.com/post/viktor-bol ... nch-review

http://en.chessbase.com/post/pal-benko- ... s-problems

That last one is another Chessbase tradition for this day. Some nice Pal Benko problems to think about.

[Tim Harding]

Fun anyway. But I think Malcolm should have promised to build a wall around Bulgaria.

[IanCalvert]

ChessBase reports a sensational new development.

http://en.chessbase.com/post/malcolm-pe ... -president

David, I trust your April 1 post is deadly serious and Malcolm wins but...

in Star Wars analogy terms KI is clearly the Emperor: does that make Malcolm Pein a Yoda character??

[David Sedgwick]

The ECF weighs in:

http://www.englishchess.org.uk/statemen ... ederation/

[Angus French]

The ECF weighs in:

http://www.englishchess.org.uk/statemen ... ederation/

From FIDE’s President and Deputy-President, there have come completely contradictory accounts of the nature of discussions at the recent meeting of its Presidential Board. In order that all affiliated national federations can know the truth– both about what the President said, and what recent developments caused other board members to lose confidence in him — we call upon FIDE to release the full transcript of the recording of the meeting.

— Dominic Lawson, ECF President; Mike Truran, ECF Chief Executive; and Malcolm Pein, ECF Director of International Chess and ECF Delegate to FIDE

Is that going to happen? The ECF Board doesn't release full transcripts of its meetings. Indeed it's not unusual for sections of the published minutes to be redacted.