Tuesday 11 September 2012

A day of R&R

Even with the Olympiad finished, I had still had a little bit of work to do. A service that has been offered in the past is an opportunity for players who have made their final title norm at the Olympiad, to come and register for the title. It turns out that no one took the opportunity to do so, so instead myself and the other members of the Technical Administration Panel (TAP) had an informal meeting with the organisers of the Olympiad to work out future improvements to the running of the tournament. The major emphasis was on the use of technology to make team registration and information sharing easier, and the Turkish Chess Federation have offered their expertise to make this work for future Olympiads.
After this meeting Rupert Jones and myself went into the centre of Istanbul for some shopping and sight seeing. A nice dinner with friends followed before I sent Rupert off to the airport at 3am(!) for his morning flight home. I will depart in a few hours, and will spend most of the next day and a half in the air. I get back home Wednesday night, so expect light blogging for a little while.

7 comments:

Stephen said...

speaking of the use of technology - putting the pgns of the games online and live updates for the olympiad were amazing. Much kudos to the turkish organisers!

James said...

I'm surprised Max Illingworth didn't jump at the opportunity to register his IM title.

Shaun Press said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Shaun Press said...

I spoke to Max this morning about it (5am Singapore Airport) while we travelling back together. When he told me his rating had passed 2400 (2401 at one point), my initial thought was that someone dropped the ball on this. He said that no-one had told him it was possible, and I didn't speak to him until we were both departing Istanbul. Maybe it will be expedited anyway, but otherwise it will be confirmed at the next FIDE Presidential Board (in around 3 months)

*This is just an textual edit of the previous removed comment - 'anyway' was misspelled*

Kevin Bonham said...

Titles are in most cases applied for by federations, not players, because there is a title fee and the federation must confirm that it accepts the fee. If the federation refuses, then the player can apply for the title themselves.

I was well aware that Max had already passed 2400, and had copies of his two previous norms. When aware that Max had reached his final norm I checked with various FIDE Qualification Commission officials concerning the correct path to take. As a result of this I completed and submitted the application for Max's title on the final day, and later that day Michalis Kaloumenos of the QC advised me it was checked and accepted. I advised Max of this before leaving. I gather that it will take a week or so before titles applied for at this Congress are up on the website, and there was a suggestion it would be 60 days before the title became active. But it was certainly submitted as an application arising from this Congress rather than one that has to wait for the next PB.

I was told that at least 41 direct titles were also processed by the QC from this Olympaid.

Yes, I was told by some people that in the past there had been some kind of instant-registration system. But if there was - at this Olympiad - a process by which a person could register their title through avenues other than the QC and have it become effective immediately (as opposed to a service for provision of result certificates) then the key QC personnel were either not aware of it or else not telling people about it. As I'm relatively new to the world of title applications and Olympiads, and as there have been key QC personnel changes in recent times it's quite possible there is more to it than I'm aware of, but it seems hard to believe nobody else would have been aware of it or used it either, given the number of titles that arise at Olympiads. So by what FIDE authority and instruction, if any, was this "service" Shaun refers to permitted? And by what process would such a registration have been conducted?

Anonymous said...

LOL!! Kevin you always make me laugh! Good on you.
But Kevin, is there a possibility you could one day get a life? Tasmania isn't exactly the centre of the chess world, or the real world, or any world.
Surely you have better things to do! (*Or do you?)

Kevin Bonham said...

I don't think I'll be taking any lessons on how to get a life from inane and puny cowards who don't post under their own name, engage in witless personal trolling, don't address the post they respond to, throw in irrelevant braindead references to Tasmania, and clearly have never acquired even half a life (let alone half a brain) themselves.