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International Matters |
The 2020 ICCF Congress was scheduled to be hosted by the Scottish Correspondence Chess Association (SCCA) at the Golden Jubilee Conference Hotel in Clydebank, Glasgow from 23rd to 27th August 2020. With the ongoing pandemic situation, ICCF decided to cancel the Congress and conduct all its matters via email exchanges and through its portal iccf.com.
The National Health Services of Scotland is the owner of the Golden Jubilee Conference Hotel, Glasgow (Clydebank). On Friday, 20th March 2020, they conveyed to the Scottish delegate that the Government had instructed the venue to close its commercial operations with immediate effect until, 1st October 2020 and possibly beyond. The venue's website contained the following message:
Consequently, the Congress was cancelled and the following procedure was adopted:
- The online process of submitting proposals was continued upto June 23, 2020.
- Voting was only available online by the delegates. There was no need to appoint proxies or delegate designees. Online voting started on July 8, 2020, and extended through July 28, 2020.
- Because voting was to be online, delegates were highly encouraged to use the comment feature of each proposal to air concerns, ask questions, and so on.
- While the state of the hospitality industry will remain in flux, it was encouraged for Member Federations to consider putting in a proposal to host the 2021 Congress.
- Due to the time, cost, and effort, medals and certificates were not distributed this year.
- Official's reports would be posted as they become available in the Congress 2020 Documents tab.
- After voting is tallied and reported, the EB will meet (in person or virtually) to define the priorities and specific actions needed for the implementation of the proposals.
We received the following message from ICCF President:
For the first time since 1990, no ICCF Congress will be organized this year. Whereas three decades ago the Congress was only organized every other year, we had planned to meet in Scotland this summer. The pandemic situation due to the COVID-19 combined with the lockdown imposed in many countries and the disruption of the airline traffic made no other choice than to cancel the ICCF 2020 Congress planned to be held near Glasgow. My sincere thanks go to the Scottish Federation and especially to Gordon Anderson who has spent a lot of time preparing this Congress. I hope that all these efforts will not be wasted and that ICCF will meet in Scotland in the near future. Our annual meeting was not only the week during which the Delegates voted new proposals and discussed the future of ICCF but the occasion to meet friends, to play chess, to collect titles and medals ― all activities that the social distancing will prohibit this year.
Let’s hope that the pandemic will be behind us next year and that we will be able to meet face to face during the 2021 Congress.
In honor of all chess players who have been affected by the COVID-19 disease, ICCF has announced a unique one-off event, the "ICCF Lockdown Open". This event has welcomed players who are currently unable to play OTB chess because of national lockdown as well as well-established correspondence chess players. For this first time, a large open played on the server will use the Silli system and the Triple Block time control, which is sure to be seen much more in the future ICCF opens. I would like to thank all correspondence chess players who have entered this event (more than 650 entries have been registered) as their entry fees will be donated to the COVID-19 Solidarity Fund for the World Health Organisation (3,750 Euro will be donated by the Member Federations and the ICCF).
In 2021, ICCF will celebrate his 70th anniversary and several tournaments will be organized to celebrate this platinum Jubilee! World champions, elite players, officials, and correspondence chess players from all over the world will have a unique opportunity to play in traditional chess as well as in Chess960. I am convinced that every player will find the right tournament to celebrate our anniversary.
In 2019, ICCF will benefit from a positive financial year with a surplus of about 7,000 Euro resulting from lower expenses than budgeted while maintaining our efforts in the development of the server and the distribution of cash prizes to the players. As you know, Jan Vosselman (NED) has decided to resign and I would like to thank him for serving ICCF as Finance Director (FD) after the sudden passing of George Pyrich (SCO). The Executive Board has been considering nominees for the position. Please expect further information and a request for mid-term voting by this Tuesday.
In 2020, ICCF will surely benefit from another positive financial year with a budgeted surplus of about 15,000 Euro due to the savings resulting from the cancellation of the Congress in Scotland.
On a more positive side and based on the financial health of ICCF I have agreed with Jan to propose to the Delegates to reduce the fees of the ICCF tournament (see proposal 2020-13) which, if adopted will impact the financial result of ICCF by about 5,000 Euro (assuming that the lowering of the fees will not result in an increase in the number of entries, which is a cautious assumption). This reduction will benefit the Member Federations and the players, especially to those who cannot afford the current level of our tournament fees.
I consider this proposal as a first step, and if adopted this year by the Delegates, I intend in coordination with the FD elect to propose further entry fees reduction in the coming years, probably up to 10.000€ yearly.
This may result in some financial losses if not totally covered by the increase of incomes but ICCF can afford it. The accumulated funds in the ICCF savings account and in the investments will probably reach 200,000 Euro by the end of the year and I do not see any reason to maintain it at this peak level.
During the last 4-5 years, the yearly budget of 20,000 Euro for the server development has proved to be sufficient to pay the necessary implementation of the congress decisions as well as a number of priority tasks (it should be noted by the Delegates that we are also limited in our development efforts by the available time of the Officials who are all only working on a voluntary basis).
I ask the Delegates to vote the next year budget of 20,000 Euro for the server development.
Austin Lockwood (WLS), ICCF Services Director, and I will now focus more specifically on player-oriented development to enhance the customer experience.
A few years ago, ICCF introduced the online voting system to help those Delegates unable to travel to the congress venue to express their views and voting rights. This system will prove its usefulness, allowing us to follow the ICCF democratic process even without organizing a face-to-face meeting and with as few perturbations as possible on our future developments.
Although all proposals are important, some of them will have a major impact on the future of ICCF. The possibility to use the Triple Block time control system as an official option for our standard tournaments will be a major step in ICCF modernization, as our current time control system has not changed in nature since the golden ages of the postal era and we need to prepare the future of ICCF.
"By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail" -Benjamin Franklin.
Delegates, please remember that online voting with start on July 8 and end 2-weeks later at the end of July 28. Fingers crossed, we should have the results soon after and we can get started on implemented Delegate approved changes and enhancements.
I sincerely hope that the current pandemic crisis will be over next year and I expect to see you all during the ICCF Congress in 2021.
Eric Ruch
ICCF President
MESSAGE FROM ICCF GENERAL SECRETARY
- NEW TOURNAMENTS
- LOWER FEES
- SPECIAL AWARDS
- NEW TYPES OF TOURNAMENTS
- A NEW WAY TO PAY BESIDES PAYPAL
The 2020 ICCF Congress voting on potential rule and procedural changes has been completed. Most of the changes listed below will not be implemented until 1/1/2021.
Proposal 013: Entry fees were reduced. Here is the summary (DE stands for direct entry), the numbers being in euros:
- World Championship Preliminaries and Semi-finals: DE: change from 39.00 to 31.20
- World Individual events (7 player sections): DE: change from 5.46 to 4.68
- World Individual events (11 player sections): DE: change from 9.36 to 7.80
- World Cup events: DE: change from 14.04 to 12.48
- Master Norm events: DE: change from 31.20 to 28.08
- CCE Norm events: DE: change from 23.40 to 18.72
- Champions League team events: DE: from 46.80 to 31.20
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The 70th ICCF Jubilee World Champions event:
- Winner and runner-up (tie-break apply) will qualify for a World Championship final
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The 70th ICCF Jubilee World Elite event:
- Section A: winner and runner-up (tie-break applies) will qualify for a World Championship final
- Section B: winner and runner-up (tie-break applies) will qualify for a World Championship final
- Section C: winner (tie-break applies) will qualify for a World Championship final
- Section C: players from places 2-5 (tie-break applies) will qualify for a World Championship Candidates (upon payment of the entry fee).
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The 70th ICCF Jubilee Chess 960 World Elite event:
- The winner (tie-break applies) will qualify for a World Championship final
- Players from places 2-3 (tie-break applies) will qualify for a World Championship Candidates (upon payment of the entry fee)
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The 70th ICCF Jubilee World Cup final:
- The winner (tie-break applies) will earn the SIM title
- The winner (tie-break applies) will qualify for a World Championship final
- Players from places 2-3 (tie-break applies) will qualify for a World Championship Candidates (upon payment of the entry fee)
- Players from places 4-13 (tie-break applies) will qualify for a World Championship semi-final (upon payment of the entry fee).
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The 70th ICCF Jubilee Chess 960 World Cup final:
- The winner (tie-break applies) will earn the SIM title
- The winner (tie-break applies) will qualify for a World Championship final
- Players from places 2-3 (tie-break applies) will qualify for a World Championship Candidates (upon payment of the entry fee)
- Players from places 4-9 (tie-break applies) will qualify for a World Championship semi-final (upon payment of the entry fee)
Proposal 036: A new tournament was approved - the World Team Cup:
- A knockout multi-year team tournament, played in a 20 board "friendly" match format, with 2 games per player
- Triple Block Time Control with guaranteed time to be utilised with each round
- First-round to commence in June 2021 and subsequent rounds each following June
- Winning teams to advance until a single champion team remains
- Tournament to be managed by the Non-Title Tournament Commissioner or appointed officer
- Multi-federation teams (e.g. a team representing Luxembourg-Belgium) or zonal teams will allow unattached players to maximise participation
- Other operating rules to be as per the Euro Team Cup (except eligible federations)
- Medals and certificates to be presented to the final winning team
Proposal 019: There is a new tournament format available. The details follow: This tournament combines elements of a Knock Out system and a Swiss system and adapts them to the needs of a round robin tournament as used in correspondence chess. The tournament starts as a normal round robin with groups of 11 players, each group being of approximately the same average rating. If the total number of registrations is not a multiple of 11, then groups should be formed with a minimal deviation from 11 (i.e. 217 registered players would be 4 groups of 13 and 15 groups of 11) After this and all further rounds a ranking list will be created according to the following criteria: 1. The highest percent points 2. The highest percent wins 3. The highest percent wins with black 4. The lowest rating All players with more than 50% points will qualify for the second round (this is the KO part of the tournament). The first 11 (or the nearest odd integer to 11) players on the list form group 1 for the second round, the next 11 (or the nearest odd integer to 11) group 2 and so forth (this is the Swiss part of the tournament). For the third round, the accumulated points achieved in the previous rounds will be used to calculate a player’s place in the list (but the >50% in the current round is still a requirement for promotion). The tournament will be restricted to maximal 4 rounds. The winner of the tournament will be the player with the highest accumulated score (percent) over all 4 rounds.
Proposal 024: And there is a new type of tournament, to be called a Regional Tournament: A new class of international tournament (in addition to Invitational and Open tournaments) will be established called "Regional Tournaments".
Regional tournaments will be administered by groups of between two and six member federations, the structure, entry fee, prizes, etc. will be internal matters for the participating federations to agree upon but must be declared on the application to the WTD. There will be no limit to the number of regional tournaments which can be organised.
Regional tournaments must have the following properties:
- Regional tournaments are the responsibility of between two and six participating member federations
- Applications for regional tournaments must be submitted to the ICCF WTD at least one month before it is due to start. It must not be advertised until ICCF approval has been formally confirmed. All participating member federations must be signatory to the application
- Regional tournaments must use standard ICCF rules
- Only players from the participating federations and isolated players may participate
- The ICCF Finance Director will invoice the first applicant at the rate listed in the Financial Regulations
- If the first applicant falls into arrears with ICCF, the other applicants will be become liable for any debt outstanding from the tournament
- Regional tournaments may be rated and may carry title norms, provided they meet the neccessary criteria and this is approved as part of the WTD application
- Regional tournaments will not qualify for ICCF medals or certificates
- As ICCF sanctioned international tournaments, the games will count towards the IA title for the tournament director
Proposal 005: In ICCF Rule 2.11, there is a requirement that players in server events maintain a hard copy record of each current game. That requirement has been discontinued (because the server reliably maintains such records).
Proposal 006: In ICCF Rule 2.11, there is a requirement for players to keep tournament directors informed of any change in permanent address. That requirement has been discontinued (because the ICCF no longer requires such information except for postal events).
Proposal 009: The triple block time control system has become an official (optional) alternative to the traditional time control system (typically implemented as 10 moves in 50 days, usually with doubling after 20 consecutive days without a move) for all events. This official status essentially means that the rules governing the triple block system will become official rules, only to be altered through Congress approval. The triple block system has been available for tournament organizers to use for the past 3+ years, so nothing changes in that regard. Tournament organizers will continue to have the option of using either system when registering their events on the server.
Proposal 012: A very rare glitch within the 10-move draw rule was corrected. For nearly all circumstances, nothing changed. The details, thought too cumbersome to be summarized here, can be found in the proposal.
Proposal 016: A Stripe payment processor will be added to the ICCF server. This will allow a second method for payment besides Paypal, and was implemented to address the needs of players living where Paypal cannot be accessed. Proposal 023: If the ICCF server becomes unavailable for a period of more than 8 consecutive hours, the resetting of players' clocks will be restricted only to those players who lost on time ("went ETL") during the time the server was not available, and only for the amount of time the server was not available.
Pertaining to titles and norms:
Proposal 008: The requirement for at least 5 GM opponents while earning required GM norms to earn the GM title [per ICCF Rule 1.5.1.(2)] was eliminated. This change is not retroactive, instead only applying to anyone earning a GM norm in the future.
Proposal 017: "Half qualifications" for the WCCC [per ICCF Rule 1.2.1.(7)] were given a 3-year expiration date, where there had been no specified expiration date previously.
Proposal 025: A player registered for an ICCF Norm tournament will now be placed according to the player's rating at the time the event is put online no matter the player's rating at the time of registration. There had been some restriction on this procedure previous to this proposal. Proposal 033 was defeated. Title norm results from chess 960 events will not be considered as earning typical ICCF title norms.
Pertaining to tournament organization and organizers (TOs) (not already listed above):
Proposal 010: An event that is restricted to players from one specific federation or club shall be considered an internal event and therefore cannot qualify as a title tournament no matter how many flags are represented by those potential participants. This clarified some confusion about what constituted a title tournament within existing rules in ICCF Rules Appendix 2.
Proposal 018: This proposal simplified the determination of "provisional" or assumed ratings for players without an ICCF rating. Previously, there was a tiered system determining the assumed rating, with a large range of possibilities, The new rule will be the following:
- If at least 75% of players of an event are rated, then the average rating of the rated players shall be applied to the players with an unpublished rating
- If less than 75% of players of an event are rated, the assumed rating shall be 1800 without any exception
Proposal 029: FIDE GMs will be allowed to play for free in ICCF GM Norm tournaments. This clarified something considered ambiguous in the ICCF Rules previously.
Proposal 034: There will be a limitation on the number of open international tournaments (where players pay a fee) run by any member federation. That limit will be 2 per calendar year.
Relevant to team captains and tournament directors:
Proposal 031: When a team captain (TC) wishes to initiate a player substitution/replacement (prior to the player being withdrawn in any way), the team captain will be allowed by the server to implement that substitution/replacement without needing the tournament director to do anything. Additionally, if the TC makes an error in implementing a substitution/replacement, the TC can ask the World Tournament Director to undo the error so the TC can make the proper substitution/replacement.
T.PAVAN KUMAR BECOMES INTERNATIONAL MASTER
T. Pavan Kumar has achieved the coveted title of International Master of ICCF. The winning game from the event BRA/CXEB-50/C, 50 Years CXEB - Group C is given below:
OM PRAKASH BECOMES INTERNATIONAL MASTER
Om Prakash Mohanty has achieved the coveted title of IM of ICCF. One of his winning games is given below:
KANNAPAN LEADS
Kannappan, Priyadharshan is playing on 2nd board of ICCF Olympiad and is presently leading the table with 4 points out of 8 and has already acquired CCE and CCM norms. One of his games from this event is given below:
GAUTAM DE BECOMES CORRESPONDENCE CHESS MASTER
Gautam De has achieved the title of CCM in the event AA/C19/SF/B, 19th Africa Asia Zonal Championship S-Final B He scored 4.5 out of 8 and is placed 4th. His winning game from this event is given below:
AJITH JOSE BECOME CORRESPONDENCE CHESS EXPERT
Ajith Jose has acquired the title of CCE of ICCF in the event WS/CCE/A/11, WS/CCE/A/11 He has also achieved CCM norm. One of his winning games is given below:
ALOK SAXENA ACQUIRES CCM NORM
Dr. Alok Saxena has acquired CCM norm in the event Interzonal TT10 Board 8, 10th Inter-Zonal Team Championship Board 8 and has scored 11.5 out of 18 and is placed 2nd. One of his winning games from this even is given below:
GANESH HEGDE AND ANIRUDDHA DUTTA GUPTA BECOME CCE
Mr. Ganesh Hedge and Mr. Aniruddha Duttagupta have acquired the Correspondence Chess Expert title of ICCF.
INDIA-USA AND INDIA-GERMANY
India lost the friendly international match against USA by 25-41 margin. On top boards only P. Sethuraman and Gautam De could win one of their two games with other game drawn.
In the Friendly Match Germany - India 2020, India is trailing by 12-16.
A friendly international with Indonesia has started from 17th August 2020.
ICCF RATINGS JULY 2020
| ICCF ID | Title | Name | Games | Rating | 280319 | Agrawal, Rakesh | 154 | 1677 | 280187 | CCM | Akkaraju, Sailesh Chandra | 334 | 2314 | 280172 | CCE | Anand, Anil Kumar | 258 | 2191 | 280782 | LIM | Bisht, Mamta | 97 | 2136 | 280086 | Chandran, T. | 133 | 1857 | 280068 | Chatterjee, Ambar | 264 | 2227 | 280087 | CCE | Chauhan, Rakesh Kumar | 375 | 2347 | 280664 | CCM | Das, Arghyadip | 89 | 2358 | 280577 | Das, Satyajit | 111 | 2172 | 280273 | CCE | Das, Saurabh | 82 | 2148 | 280130 | CCM | Datta, Devangshu | 126 | 2332 | 280088 | CCM | De, Gautam | 242 | 2342 | 280176 | GM | Dhanish, P. B. | 144 | 2595 | 280209 | Dutt, Bulusu Someswara | 151 | 1529 | 280465 | Dutta, Amit | 42 | 2394 | 280089 | Ganapathi, Cdr R. | 53 | 2174 | 280179 | CCE | Gupta, Aniruddha Dutta | 213 | 2198 | 280276 | Gupta, Vibhor | 144 | 1794 | 280953 | CCE | Hegde, Ganesh | 93 | 2307 | 280895 | Hegde, Ranjeet | 52 | 2413 | 280169 | Jayaraman, Mohan | 186 | 2308 | 281107 | CCE | Jose, Ajith | 33 | 2190 | 280113 | CCE | Kapoor, Lalit | 111 | 2390 | 280593 | Krishna, Pandava | 38 | 1617 | 280143 | Krishnamurthy, Prabhanandan | 150 | 2211 | 280330 | SIM | Krishnan, Sasikiran | 148 | 2552 | 280138 | CCM | Kumar, Pavan Tumuluri | 249 | 2402 | 280208 | Malvankar, Vikrant | 50 | 1732 | 280104 | CCE | Mandviwala, Pervez Godrez | 301 | 2258 | 280219 | Mohanakrishnan, B. | 162 | 2096 | 280205 | Nagaraj, A. | 92 | 1843 | 280171 | Nair, Umesh | 93 | 2057 | 280197 | Naniwadekar, Mihir | 59 | 1965 | 280243 | IM | Prakash, Om | 330 | 2425 | 281215 | Raj, Amrit | 36 | 1341 | 280726 | CCE | Ramesh, R. B. | 118 | 2255 | 281147 | Roy, Rabirashmi | 77 | 2161 | 280118 | IM | Santhosh, Matthew Paul | 194 | 2257 | 280168 | CCE | Saxena, Alok | 412 | 2221 | 280484 | Sethuraman, S. P. | 49 | 2319 | 280966 | Sharma, Amit (* 1976) | 51 | 1940 | 280225 | Somani, Shalaka | 41 | 2352 | 280107 | Somani, Sunil K. | 204 | 2233 | 280701 | Thakur, Ankur Singh | 101 | 2154 | 280174 | Trivedi, Kalapi B. | 187 | 2182 | 280224 | CCM | Turaga, Mohan | 200 | 2366 | 280095 | Valsan, K. | 90 | 2129 |
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