Management Matters
Overseas Membership
ising our team and the match will get underway soon.
New Membership Policy
AIWCF is pleased to announce a new membership plan. Membership is FREE for 1 year. After one year, new members can decide if they are enjoying correspondence chess, and other AIWCF activities and renew his/her membership with the usual membership fees:
| Duration | Fee |
|---|---|
| 2 years | Rs 735/- |
| Lifetime | Rs 1850/- |
Free members cannot participate in AIWCF Championships and cannot represent India in Friendly International Matches. However, they can join an unlimited number of tournaments, both engine allowed and engine forbidden. If they wish to play in an ICCF Friendly International Match, we would ask them to upgrade their membership. Free members are welcome to join the AIWCF WhatsApp Group.
Membership to overseas players remains entirely free, however they have an option to pay the Lifetime Membership fees which amounts to 23 Euro.
New Tie Break Rules in AIWCF Championships
The competition in AIWCF Championships 1519 and 1520 were unprecedented. In 1519, Om Prakash was the winner but there was a 7-way tie for the next spot which could not be resolved with the existing tie break rules. The prize money for 2nd-3rd places was shared equally among Gautam De, R.K.Chauhan, P.G.Mandviwala, A.Dutta Gupta, Anil Anand, A.Sengupta and Krunal Patel. In 1520, Pervez Mandivala was the winner, R.K.Chauhan was second, but the two-way tie for the 3rd place between Om Prakash and Rakesh Agrawal was once again unresolved on application of the existing tie-break rules and the prize money was shared. For future championships, Tie Break Rules are slightly modified. In the new rules, the first 4 rules are the same as before, but two new rules are added: Ties shall be resolved by applying the rules one-by-one in the order below. Once a tie is broken, the remaining rules will not apply.
| No | Rule | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Direct encounter | Results of tied players amongst each other |
| 2 | More wins | Total score neglecting draws |
| 3 | SB Score | Score of each defeated opponent plus half score of each drawn opponent |
| 4 | Koya system | Sum of results against players who scored 50% or more |
| 5 | More non-default wins | Wins where the opponent did not lose on time-limit or silence1 |
| 6 | More non-default Black wins | Wins with Black pieces where the opponent did not lose on time-limit or silence1 |
We consider the new rules (5 and 6) important in the perspective of correspondence chess. A player may have struggled and won against an opponent in the early phase of the tournament, however that same opponent later loses interest and defaults all his pending games. With tie-break rules 5 and 6 we give credit to players who struggled and won rather than scored by default. But there is a caveat:
1If a player was in a clearly winning position when the opponent defaulted (as judged by the committee) then such games will not be considered as defaulted.
If the tie is still unresolved after applying all the 6 rules 5-6 the tied players will be declared joint winners and prize money will be distributed evenly.
AIWCF Championship 1521 Started
AIWCF Championship 1521 is now underway. The official start date was 09-01-2024 but players were allowed to make their moves even before that. At the time of writing, 3 games have been completed. We wish best of luck to all the participants!
Engine Forbidden Thematic Tournament
Following the desire of our members, we decided to introduce Engine Forbidden Thematic Tournaments on AIWCF Server. Accordingly, the first theme, Andersson’s Opening 1.a3 was announced and 1 tournament, M154 got underway with the official start date of 1st March 2024. The participants are A.Chatterjee, K.Prabhanandan, Amit Kumar Sharma and Peter Brodie. Those interested in joining the next Engine Forbidden Thematic with the same theme, should register from www.aiwcf.org/server (after login select New Tournament → Join Engine Forbidden and select Join in the Thematic row). We also welcome suggestions for the next Theme.
Friendly International Match
Two Friendly International Matches were started after our report in the previous AIWCF Bulletin:
| Match | Start Date |
|---|---|
| India - USA Friendly Match 2023 | 30-10-2023 |
| Friendly Match México-India 2023 | 20-11-2023 |
New Members
We extend a hearty welcome to the following new members (including overseas members):
| SrNo | Full Name | Short Name | From | To | Flag |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 638 | Aragon Plasencia, Jesus | Jesus Aragon Plasencia | 19-02-2023 | Life | GEQ |
| 639 | Boukadoum, Mohamed | Mohamed Boukadoum | 22-04-2023 | Life | ALG |
| 640 | Nagare, Akhilesh | Nagare A | 10-05-2023 | Life | IND |
| 641 | Butu, Sebastian | Sebastian Butu | 06-08-2023 | Life | ROM |
| 642 | Murali, Karthikeyan | Karthikeyan Murali | 20-09-2023 | Life | IND |
Country key: GEQ= Equatorial Guinea, ALG=Algeria, ROM=Romania
| Ambar Chatterjee President | Sailesh Chandra Secretary-cum-Treasurer |