No more e2e4 events?!

[Jon D'Souza-Eva]

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.

Thanks, that explains a lot. So how may players do you think this would affect? If it's only a couple, then it would be great if you could accept the "lumping sections together" decision for now and uncancel your future e2e4 events before the hotels get rebooked and the weekends filled with other, lesser, chess events. I'm sure you can work things out soon, if not with Howard then with whoever takes over his role. Several people I've spoken to recently have said that they are the best tournaments they've ever played in and it would be a crying shame if they stopped.

[David Shepherd]

If you do not get anywhere would it be possible to approach FIDE direct for an opinion.

Also is there any scope for making the time limit of the minor such that it would not be eligible for FIDE rating - would that alter things.

[Roger de Coverly]

If you do not get anywhere would it be possible to approach FIDE direct for an opinion.

I doubt if FIDE care one way or the other whether you count an event with multiple sections as one event or two. I also doubt if they care whether there's an unrated (in the international sense) event alongside it. Don't the ECF directors have to make a decision that it doesn't matter to the ECF whether an event with multiple sections counts as one event or two and therefore give event organisers the choice of presentation? If necessary the ECF directors would have to overrule "managers" who may have a different opinion.

[Sean Hewitt]

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...

Carl - I've been taking deep breaths since 13th September when this became an issue for the ECF. It's not a knee jerk reaction. The ECFs attitude (until now) has been that it is entirely up to Adam and Howard what to do and as you know they have been intransigent. I told the ECF (privately) on 29 September that we had cancelled all events after Brighton as a result of their unilateral decision. The response from Adam was not to reply and from one other source "I'm sorry that you have felt it necessary to cancel the Uxbridge and Sunningdale congresses next year. They will be missed." The only reason I didn't tell the forum earlier was that Loz was trying to resolve things behind the scenes. It's only when he told me yesterday that he had been "banging his head against a brick wall" that I thought it fair to announce the position to the world.

That said, discussions are now ongoing with the ECF so maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel! It's a pity it took all this to get them to communicate.

[Alex McFarlane]

This situation is all the more unfortunate as I believe FIDE are moving towards giving a partial rating on just one game. I assume though that for a first partial you may have to win that game. I don't know when this will come into effect but think that it was passed at the Olympiad. When this is implemented players may prefer to have the bye as this might increase their first partial.

[E Michael White]

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.

One of the regulations for FIDE rating an event is that it has to be preadvertised on the FIDE calendar. Was the event under discusssion 12-14 Sept 2010 Sunningdale ? The archive entry for that one is:-

http://www.fide.com/index.php?option=co ... w&aid=5682

which does not preadvertise the minor section. It seems to me that the minor section cannot as a result be FIDE rated and should be regarded as a separate unrated event running alongside.

[Roger de Coverly]

One of the regulations for FIDE rating an event is that it has to be preadvertised on the FIDE calendar. Was the event under discusssion 12-14 Sept 2010 Sunningdale ? The archive entry for that one is:-

http://www.fide.com/index.php?option=co ... w&aid=5682

The heading reads

e2e4.org.uk Sunningdale Congress - Sep, 10 - Sep, 12 2010

In which we read under Remarks

FIDE rated Open and FIDE rated Major for players rated below 2000.

[David Sedgwick]

I don't think that FIDE Rating the Minor section was ever a serious possibility. The mere fact that the idea was mooted indicates that the dispute rapidly got out of hand. I don't wish to inflame matters, so I'll leave it there.

[Carl Hibbard]

That said, discussions are now ongoing with the ECF so maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel! It's a pity it took all this to get them to communicate.

Fair enough, lets hope sense will prevail then...

[David Sedgwick]

We seem to have two threads running on this, so I'll take the liberty of posting my final comments in both.

In the case of a Swiss, is there any good reason why the Open and Major sections (or the like) need to be FIDE rated separately rather than en bloc?

If there is such a good reason, the ECF should explain it to e2e4 and e2e4 should accept the situation.

If there is no such good reason, the ECF should accept the wish of e2e4 to have their events rated en bloc.

With this seemingly trivial issue resolved one way or the other, all parties should set aside personality issues and clashes, apologise for any intemperate language used, shake hands and move on.

[Sean Hewitt]

In the case of a Swiss, is there any good reason why the Open and Major sections (or the like) need to be FIDE rated separately rather than en bloc?

If there is such a good reason, the ECF should explain it to e2e4 and e2e4 should accept the situation.

If there is no such good reason, the ECF should accept the wish of e2e4 to have their events rated en bloc.

With this seemingly trivial issue resolved one way or the other, all parties should set aside personality issues and clashes, apologise for any intemperate language used, shake hands and move on.

David is as ever the voice of reason and I agree with everything that he has said.

[Ian Thompson]

In the case of a Swiss, is there any good reason why the Open and Major sections (or the like) need to be FIDE rated separately rather than en bloc?

I think FIDE would say yes. One of the functions on their website is the display of a tournament cross table for an event, with players sorted in finishing order. This is meaningless if two different tournaments are combined into one report.

I suspect FIDE would not be swayed by arguments about players getting part-ratings. They would probably regard making a player who has won by default play a game against someone who isn't taking part in their tournament as an even more bizarre English practise than repairing two players from the same tournament who have won by default against each other.

[Roger de Coverly]

I think FIDE would say yes. One of the functions on their website is the display of a tournament cross table for an event, with players sorted in finishing order. This is meaningless if two different tournaments are combined into one report.

Did you mean this one? http://ratings.fide.com/view_source.phtml?code=50327

I agree it has the Open players and Major players mixed up. As an historic record of the event it's incomplete anyway because it doesn't record half or full point byes and players defaulting or withdrawing.

[Howard Grist]

Why do I rate the events as one rating report per section? This is my interpretation of the FIDE reporting requirements (given at http://ratings.fide.com/download/Fidexchg.txt) This format is essentially a cross table, and it strikes me as only a matter of time before these cross tables are readily available on FIDE's web site. obviously, if you have two section's results in one report it is not possible to produce a sensible cross table of it.

Event organisers are asked to send me results - preferably in an electronic form that I can deal with - which means either a FIDE rating report or ECF grading result file. These usually require some manipulation to get it into the required format. I don't see that the number of reports that I send to FIDE is a concern for the event organiser.

Finally, and what appears to be Sean's actual area of concern - although I was not aware of this until reading this thread - is the treatment of unrated players. I have been IRO for 4½ years and am well aware that rating reports need to be manipulated to maximise the number of part ratings acheived and have indeed gone to great lengths with the 4NCL to ensure this. To my mind this goes without saying, just as one congress section equates to one rating report.

[Sean Hewitt]

If Sean has said that Howard’s removal/resignation is now the price for the reinstatement of the tournaments then that should be declined as unreasonable.

I think I should be clear on this point to correct Adam's previous misleading statement on the subject.

I have not asked for Howard Grist to be sacked. I did say that e2e4 would not run any more events until his replacement was in post, but this was in the context that Adam Raoof had openly stated to me and others that Howard was filling the IRO post on a temporary basis. Consequently I was expecting Howard to be replaced by a permanant IRO at some point anyway at which point (I assumed) we could resume e2e4 events unhindered.

If in fact Howard is to be the permanant IRO that is no problem to us. We would run events provided that the ECF revert to rating our events on a combined basis as they have done previously.