Wednesday 22 May 2013

A delay in the new FIDE Laws of Chess

Normally the FIDE Laws of Chess get updated every 4 years. The last update came into force on the 1st July 2009, which means that on the 1st July 2013 an updated set of Laws was to be published. One of the reasons for this is that changes to the Laws of Chess must be approved  by the FIDE General Assembly, which normally meets every 2 years.
However the process went a little of the rails last year, meaning that the new Laws will not be published on the 1st July. One of the reasons was that despite the efforts of all involved (including myself), there were a couple of issues unresolved when the GA was in session. At first it was thought that the best way to deal with this was to leave the final approval of the proposed changes to the FIDE Presidential Board. However the PB then came back with proposed changes beyond what was discussed before the last GA, leading to a kind of confused impasse. Members of the PB wanted to see their changes go forward, while members of the FIDE Rules and Tournament Regulations Commission weren't happy with changes that had not been discussed by the committee.  As a consequence the FIDE website has just announced that that proposed changes (which haven't been officially agreed upon) will be discussed at the FIDE Congress in Tallinn later this year, with the possibility of publishing them in 2014.

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