FIDE Arbiter Fees

One thing that was passed at the recent FIDE Congress was fees for Arbiters. Not fees that Arbiters receive, but the fees arbiters have to pay to receive their accreditation. The full fee schedule (and associated regulations) are over at my other blog.
I am in two minds on this one. While on the one hand other titles (IM, IO, FIDE Trainer) require a fee to be paid, and this just extends this to IA/FA titles, on the other, FA/IA titles could be considered somewhat different. As IA's and FA's facilitate the holding over events that bring FIDE income (via rating fees), FIDE are in a sense biting a hand that feeds them. Now it may not seem much of a distinction (especially as the same argument can be made for the IO title), but an organisation charging its own officials does seem a little odd to me.
The fees don't come into effect until the 1st January 2013 and there may be a little tweaking before then, but the bottom line is that from that date, only paid up arbiters can direct FIDE rated events.

1.Nh3

Following on from yesterdays post, I realise I must have met IM Herman Grooten, without remembering it. Rupert Jones reminded me that Grooten played board 1 for the Dutch Antilles in the 2008 Olympiad, a team we (PNG) played in the 3rd round. Grooten beat Stuart Fancy on Board 1, while Rupert drew on board 3, and Craig Skehan lost on board 4.
As for me I managed to win against Marvin Dekker, but not before a few moments where I was worried I would go down in history as a player who lost to 1.Nh3!

Dekker,Marvin AHO (2130) - Press,Shaun PNG (2090) [A00]
38th olm final Dresden GER (3), 15.11.2008

Forced mate with 2 knights?!

I've purchased a couple of books recently, including "Chess Strategy for Club Players" by Herman Grooten. While I have yet to work my way into the book (let alone through it) I did discover an amusing story (which came via Time Krabbe) from the 1953 Candidates Tournament. In the diagrammed position Najdorf decided to end the game with 1. ... Rxf4+ 2.Kxf4 Rxg7 3.Nhxg7+. He apparently thought this was quite amusing, but for some reason Kotov, his opponent, played on. He asked Kotov why he was playing on in a theoretically drawn position. Kotov then informed him someone in Tbilisi had finally found a way to win this difficult position! It was only after the blood had drained from Najdorf's face did Kotov let him in on the joke by offering a draw.

Heard on the bus

Given the scarcity of serious chess players in Australia (3000 to 4000 in a population of 22,000,000) it is always surprising to hear chess being discussed away from the chess environment.
While catching the bus home from work the other day I began to hear fragments of a conversation taking place a couple of seats behind me. "Queen went here", "this one moves diagonally", and "I took this guy and he couldn't take me back". It seems that someone was explaining the rules of chess to his girlfriend, I assume using his iPhone (or similar device). The conversation seemed to be going ok until the topic of pawn moves came up. "So the little guys get to move 2 squares on their first go, but only 1 after that" asked the girlfriend. "Yes" was the reply. "Well that's stupid isn't it" she continued. But the last word went to the boyfriend. "That's 2000 years of chess rules you're bagging out there". And the conversation then drifted on to other topics.

The World against Bobby Fischer

The documentary "Bobby Fischer against the World" was shown as part of the Canberra International Film Festival, and I went along to this evenings screening. As a chess player I guess I would appreciate the subject matter more than most, but as a documentary it was still quite good. I was particularly impressed by the amount of direct footage they had of Fischer, and I thought the use of music throughout was a very good.
In terms of the people they interviewed for the documentary IM Anthony Saidy was the real star (at least in my eyes), while the late GM Larry Evans was also a wealth of information. Chief Arbiter of the 1972 World Championship Match Lothar Schmid was also interviewed, revealing a somewhat physical approach to his arbiting duties.
If I had to have a criticism of the film it was that it didn't cover Fischer's post 1972 life in great depth, although I guess source material for that period would have been difficult to find. However it did manage to include film of him after he moved to Iceland, which I was surprised to see, given his normal hostility to the media.
There is another screening of the film on November 5 at 2:15pm at the National Sound and Film Archives, so if you missed tonights showing, I would recommend getting along to that session.

On the other hand

In this earlier post I mentioned the Ian Rout theory of 'handedness'. Buried in this report on a couple of studies on what makes someone good at chess is another measure of handedness. The statistic quoted is that 18% of chess players are left handed, as opposed to about 10% found in the general population. Now as a right hander I'm not really sure of the significance of this, but I am sure that left handed chess players will be able to explain it as some sort of evidence for the innate superiority of left handers.

Shalom

Chessdom is carrying the news that GM Ghaem Maghami (Iran) has been excluded from the Corsica Masters after refusing to play FM Ehud Shachar (Israel) in the 4th round of the tournament. Maghami requested a different opponent, but the organisers refused to change the pairings, and stated that Maghami had entered the tournament in the knowledge that there were 5 players from Israel in the field.
Seems like a pretty straight forward decision to me, although in other events (eg last years Olympiad) organsiers have let the forfeit stand, but have not disqualified the player from the tournament.
This of course may now open the floodgates in terms of scoring extra points off Iranian GM's. A well timed "Shalom" as you go to shake hands may result in a surprisingly quick victory, as well as eliminating a potential rival for the top prizes.