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Ambar Chatterjee

International Matters

So Many Achievements

Many of our members achieved ICCF norms and titles.
IM T.Pavan Kumar got a GM norm. Second GM norm likely soon, but not enough games for the title.
Pankaj Dubey became ICCF Correspondence Chess Expert
Prabhanandan Krishnamurthy got an ICCF Correspondence Chess Master norm
Lalit Kapoor became ICCF International Master
Sumeet Bhattacharjee became ICCF Correspondence Chess Master
Arnab Sengupta became ICCF International Master and also got a SIM norm
Rakesh Agrawal got a norm for ICCF Senior International Master
Gautam De became ICCF International Master
Mohan Turaga became ICCF International Master
Alok Saxena got a norm for ICCF International Master
Saurabh Das got a norm for ICCF Correspondence Chess Master

ICCF Congress 2025

The 2025 ICCF Congress was held online on 4th October 2025. The Congress proceedings may be viewed on YouTube.

Important decisions

  1. Players are not allowed to have ICCF accounts in 2 or more names, whether run manually or automatically. There is an amnesty period prior to 21 November 2025 in which self-reporting to Rules Director IM Dennis Doren will result in no disciplinary consequences. After that, a suspension can be expected.
  2. The complete entry under the title "Granting retroactive leave" in ICCF Rules 3.16.4 was deleted. Retroactive leave was already not allowed.
  3. The games of players (where at least one move was made by the player in the event) who die while playing will now be handled in one of two ways: (1) if the player already had at least 1 ETL loss prior to the time the death is recorded, the remainder of the games will also be allowed to go to ETL; but (2) if the player never had an ETL loss in that event, the remaining games will be adjudicated. This should minimize the pursuit of DMD (“dead man’s defense” – see ICCF Rules 3.15.2.2).
  4. A new form of recognition was established, the ICCF Presidential Citation. This is to honor individuals who have made outstanding contributions to correspondence chess.
  5. There were numerous decisions related to financial matters. Overall, the federations’ national delegates responded to the financial needs of the ICCF by approving numerous, though not all proposed financial changes. Approved ideas included allowing the ICCF to add one major open each year to its offerings. Not approved was an increase in start fees in ICCF tournaments.
  6. Approved were the ideas of setting up “sponsoring” and “donation” buttons within the website to enable players to support the ICCF in those ways.

Decisions pertinent to tournament organizers

  1. MOST IMPORTANT change: All federation-sponsored open and invitational events must be reviewed and approved by the World Tournament Director (or his designee), including their list of players (with their applicable ratings), the assigned TD, and the designated TO, before being put online. This will constitute a second review, beyond the original approval of the event itself. For details, see Congress proposal 2025-057.
  2. National federations will be allowed to run up to 4 open tournaments per year at a pace of 1 per quarter.
  3. The Tournament Management Committee (TMC) will now be allowed to direct Level 3 events [events that previously required an individual International Arbiter (IA)]. In contrast, certain Level 1 and Level 2 events will require Level 1/Level 2 tournament directors. (See Congress proposal 2025-052 for further details.)
  4. All rated national team events must follow the same rules as rated international team events.
  5. If an event is to be rated, it must allow players to use computers. An unrated event can be run without this rule.

Decisions pertinent to tournament directors

  1. Directing ICCF thematic tournaments now counts as credit towards earning the International Arbiter (IA) title.
  2. Rule 3.16.2. pertaining to the resetting of clocks upon a player substitution/replacement was clarified as only applying to postal and not to server-based games. In server games, clocks should not be reset due to a player substitution/replacement.

Decisions pertinent to national delegates

  1. During elections where there is only one candidate for a position, delegates can now vote “No” instead of the previous options of “Yes” or abstain.
  2. The collective set of delegates supported most but not all the financial proposals designed to address current ICCF financial issues. To see specifics in this regard, please see the 22 October 2025 entry on the homepage entitled “2025 Congress Voting Results”.

Finances

There seem to be severe finacial issues being faced by ICCF. The cost of the server and its maintainence far exceeds the earnings in the past several years. Financial proposals like Elimination of Prize Money, Elimination of Medals for CCE and CCM, Cancelling the Closing Banquet at Congresses, Increase in Tournament Fees etc. are unlikely to manage the server costs of 12,000 Euro/yr for server hardware, 15,000 Euro/yr for software maintenence, 25,000 Euro/yr for software development and 10,000 Euro for new software projects. Sergio Martins and others expressed their surprise about such high costs in the online Congress (see the full video onYouTube). We believe that ICCF server costs of 62,000 Euro/yr can easily be reduced to 6,000 Euro/yr by adopting some simple measures. We sent our opinion to ICCF but did not recieve any reply.

ICCF Congress 2026

The ICCF Congress will be held in Neuhardenberg, Germany from 12-13 October 2026. It will likely be a 2-day Congress but if needed it could be extended to 3 days. Submission of proposals to the Congress started on 01-03-2026 and will be open upto 31-08-2026. AIWCF Members who wish to suggest a proposal to ICCF may contact Ambar Chatterjee (DrAmbar@gmail.com).

2nd World Team Cup 1R Ukraine - India

There are 20 Boards with a total of 40 games. At the time of writing 39 games have ended in a draw and Om Prakash is still playing with Black pieces against Oleh Horodyskyi. Here is the cross table:

2nd World Team Cup 1R Brazil - India

Against Brazil, all 40 games are drawn:

ICCF Olympiad 23 Preliminaries - Section 2

India (led by T.Pavan Kumar) is in 7th place with 24 points and cannot qualify for the finals (The best two teams from each Section will qualify). Here is the team cross table:

T.Pavan Kumar is playing in MT-Bohak Prel. S 14, Janko Bohak Memorial - Prediction Criterion System Section 14 and has 1 win, 4 draws and 3 ongoing games. The Prediction Criterion System is a new innovation in ICCF tournaments. In these tournaments, players must suggest (hidden) conditional move on every turn between the moves 11 to 40. If the conditional move is accepted, the player recieves prediction points. Prediction points are used to break ties. Detailed rules can be seen here.

Pankaj Dubey is playing in WS/CCM/A/55 and is currently in 4th position with 6 draws and 1 win. A score of 7.5 is required for a CCM norm.

In Africa Asia Zonal Championship S-Final Group B, Arnab Sengupta is in top place with 6.5 points and Prabhanandan Krishnamurthy is in 6th place with 5.5 points.

In World Championship Preliminary, WCCC49PR 7 Lalit Kapoor is in 3rd position having completed all his games with a score of 7.5 from 14 games and achieving his final IM norm.

In ICCF World Cup 24 Pre 9 Sumeet Bhattacharjee finished with 4.5/8. Except for one Italian player who lost all his games, everyone drew with each other and finished joint first in a 8-way tie.

In the First England International Triple Block Open in Group 26, Sumeet Bhattacharjee gets 3rd place finishing with 7 points from 12 games, thereby completing another norm and getting the CCM title.

In WS/SIM/B/75, Arnab Sengupta secured 1st place with 6.5 points/12 thereby getting his IM title as well as one SIM norm. Now the SIM title cannot be far behind!

In Caribbean Tropical Sun 2025 B Rakesh Agrawal scored 7/12, secured 1st place and got both SIM and IM norms.

One of his games, a win against CCM Miloslav Bačiak, is given below

20/21st Africa Asia Zonal Championship Final

Gautam De is currently in 4th place with 6.5 points and one ongoing game. But this already gives him an IM norm and even a draw in the last game will give him an SIM norm.

Mohan Turaga is in 3rd place with 6.5 points and one ongoing game. This gave him the IM title and a he needs only a draw in the last game to get an SIM norm.

Alok Saxena is in 5th place, also with 6.5 points and one ongoing game, thereby getting an IM norm and likely SIM norm.

Aniruddha Dutta Gupta is in 7th place. He also has the same score and one pending game, giving him an IM norm and is lined up for an SIM norm.

In 22/23/24th Africa Asia Zonal Championship S-Final Saurabh Das is currently in 3rd place but has already secured a CCM norm.

One of his games, a draw against Pierre Exibard is given below