Amateur Chess Association

[Roger de Coverly]

I wasn't sure what was alarming FIDE when I saw this
http://www.fide.com/component/content/a ... ution.html
to cause them to say

This is to inform all chess players / organisers / officials that any chess event organized under the banner of "Amateur Chess Association" is not recognized by FIDE.

There doesn't seem much Google presence but this website exists
http://www.amateurchess.com/

There's a reference to Paris 1924 (foundation of FIDE) but otherwise the website is low on factual content. I don't myself believe as the website asserts that most amateur players aren't interested in ratings.

I got the impression, possibly wrongly, that it's just another entrant into the blitz and turn based server market. If that's the case you would not expect FIDE recognition.

In any event, if it were to organise over the board tournaments, these could be rated by national federations on their merits and compliance with FIDE rating requirements.

[David Sedgwick]

If you play through the video, you'll find that they plan to organise the "World Amateur Championship" and the "World Youth Championship". That's probably what's upsetting FIDE.

[Roger de Coverly]

If you play through the video, you'll find that they plan to organise the "World Amateur Championship" and the "World Youth Championship". That's probably what's upsetting FIDE.

Yes I see. I've signed up for the newsletter but I expect it's so much vapourware.

[Alex McFarlane]

He also seems to have circulated this throughout Canada

Dear chess friend!

My name is Lothar Hirneise. Together with several partners from different
countries we founded last year the Amateur Chess Organization (ACO) and I
was elected to be the first president of the ACO.
ACO will host the first World Championships for Amateurs and Youth in 2012.
But organizing world championships is only one small part of our work. This
summer our web pages will go online and we will have the most modern chess
server in the world. But our chess server will not only be a place to play
live chess or correspondence chess but will be an outstanding chess
community where people can share their love to chess, can go to a chess
marketplace to find chess friends, chess trainer and chess students and
there will be so many exquisite possibilities for chess friends we can´t
tell you all in one mail.For over one year we have been preparing the start of ACO for summer 2011 and we have already many partners in different countries, but not yet for Canada. I am contacting you because I know that you are the representative of a chess club who showed in the past that you love and promote chess. May I take the liberty of asking you whether you, your chess club or somebody else you know could be interested to work with us as our official representative in your country. We are looking for somebody who is able to organize:
1) National ACO Youth Championship
· We have a different age group system (U9, U11, U13, U15, U17, U19,
U21) as FIDE to give young players an extra chance to become National- or
even World Youth Champion.
· The best youth players are qualified automatically and don’t need
to qualify over several tournaments. This means they are not depended on any
federation structure or chess federation. Additional you can give wildcards
to very talented young players who maybe do not have enough rating points.
2) National ACO Amateur Championship

The National Amateur Championship will be played in the following rating
groups:
Group A plus Rating above 2300
Group A Rating 2101 – 2300
Group B Rating 1901 – 2100
Group C Rating 1701 – 1900
Group D Rating 1501 – 1700
Group E Rating 1301 – 1500
Group F Rating up to 1300
For the National Amateur Championship, there are 2 possibilities to handle:
With or without qualification tournaments. In some countries it makes no
sense to make any qualification tournaments and in some countries it makes
sense to make own tournaments or to cooperate with already existing
tournaments. THIS POINT we would like to discuss in details with you if you
are interested in a cooperation with us. For a better understanding of the
ACO we invite you to have a look on following website:
<http://www.amateurchess.com> http://www.amateurchess.com. This page is only to
explain to you the ACO a bit better and has of course no content of the
final web pages. Please use Name: aco and the Password: chess2011 to login.
If you think that you are able to organize the two championships alone or
maybe together with other people in your country, it would be nice if you
come back to me within the next few days. Of course, there are many other
points (financial possibilities, deeper cooperation…) we can discuss, but I
do not want to overload you with information in this mail to save your time.
You can always contact me by mail or by Skype (my Skype name is:
ACO-President) and it would be a pleasure for me to answer you all your
questions.
Looking forward to hearing from you,

Lothar Hirneise
ACO President

[Alex Holowczak]

The same message has been sent to some English club secretaries, seeking for a representative from Great Britain. I was forwarded this e-mail on January 31st, so it has been going on for a while now.

[Roger de Coverly]

Lothar Hirneise
ACO President

The ACO President played at Gibraltar in 2010, so may be known to a few people.

http://ratings.fide.com/individual_calc ... 2010-03-01

[Alex Holowczak]

A more careful Google suggests that he is sceptical of treating cancer using chemotherapy, instead preferring other methods of treatment. Which is considerably less problematic.

[Jon D'Souza-Eva]

Definitely the same person.

Here he is playing chess:
http://www.chessbase.de/nachrichten.asp?newsid=8941

And here he is explaining that cancer can be cured by eating organic food:
http://www.hcc-usa.com/

Alex - I read quite a few of his articles before I posted. It's not as simple as chemotherapy = bad.

[Rob Thompson]

It's not as simple as chemotherapy = bad.

You could find yourself with a libel case. Or then, Carl could because it's on his forum.

Carl could only be held responsible if he was alerted to the comment by those complaining about but refused to do anything about it. It's the same principle as the copyright issues with youtube - the host is not responsible for the comments of users.

[Alex Holowczak]

Carl could only be held responsible if he was alerted to the comment by those complaining about but refused to do anything about it. It's the same principle as the copyright issues with youtube - the host is not responsible for the comments of users.

Agreed. I'd alerted Carl to it using the reporting mechanism.

[Carl Hibbard]

A bit of moderation applied just in case, sorry...

[Mike W. Richardt]

Dear chess friend!

My name is Lothar Hirneise.
Lothar Hirneise
ACO President

I wonder if this the father of the young german IM Tobias Hirneise??

[Roger de Coverly]

I wonder if this the father of the young german IM Tobias Hirneise?

The chessbase.de link would suggest so.

Here it is again
http://www.chessbase.de/nachrichten.asp?newsid=8941

[AustinElliott]

Well, speaking as a scientist (and husband of a doctor), I'd have to say Herr H's theories about cancer therapies strike me as pretty loopy.

Hunting round some of his websites, his ideas on alternative cancer treatments (nutritional/diet therapy, "detoxification", "energy therapies") tick all the boxes of, and are very similar to those made by other, alternative / new age types, especially in Germany but also in the US. I don't doubt it is all sincerely believed, but that doesn't make it plausible. And in the UK it would almost certainly be illegal to claim you could treat cancer with this kind of stuff under the 1939 Cancer Act. From my perspective, if you had cancer and a "therapist" you were seeing started talking about "detoxification" or "energy healing" I would personally strongly suggest you run (not walk) in the other direction.

[PS There is what says it is an extract from one of Herr H's lectures here, if you would like to read more on his ideas for yourself]

Now, none of the above has anything to do with chess, of course, and Herr Hirneise seems to be a genuine chess enthusiast - apart from playing in tournaments, on one of his websites he says that:

"...beside the [natural therapy stuff], for me it is only interesting to achieve one day 2000 ELO in chess."

But... in reference to the earlier discussion, if someone were to say that Herr H's ideas about cancer treatment were "weird", I would say that was IMHO a perfectly reasonable comment, based on what we know about cancer therapies and which ones have been tested and found to work. And comments are not libellous.

Though in a world where some people claim to have met aliens, weirdness is obviously a , errrm, relative concept.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"I would say that was IMHO a perfectly reasonable comment, based on what we know about cancer therapies and which ones have been tested and found to work. And comments are not libellous."

But Simon Singh found himself in a pretty heavy libel case for making a comment, so caution is a good idea!