This is a PSA to tournament players and I hope it will get a little discussion. The recent FIDE board meeting approved a change to rule 6.7 which eliminates the standard 1 hour grace period an absent player has before he is forfeited. "... the default time would be zero unless otherwise specified in the regulations of the tournament." http://www.fide.com/component/conten...t-quarter-2009 This rule was recently used at the Dresden olympiad, but now is the default rule for all FIDE rated tournaments. Here are some of the pros and cons I've seen tossed about:

Pro

• Tardiness is disrespectful to your opponent
• Sponsors want to see a professional competition if they are putting up their own money
• This will help chess be viewed more as a sport than a game

Con

• This can only hurt attendance at most events where the majority of players are not professional
• We shouldn't have a rule that decreases the number of hard fought games
• Chess simply isn't lucrative and most tournament players do have a number of other responsibilities

I personally thought the old system of punishment (loss of time) was completely adequate, but I think this system will likely work fine since most amateur tournament directors will simply include the old rule in the regulations for the tournament - essentially changing nothing.

For anyone who hasn't played in a tournament, let me explain. Round times are specified and if you are not at the board when the round starts, then your clock gets started if you are white or your opponent starts his own clock, makes his first move, and then starts your clock if your opponent is white. So however late you are, that is the amount of clock time you have lost. If 1 hour runs off your clock, then you are forfeited for that round. Some directors will also drop you from the tournament at this point, but I assume this is a discretionary punishment.

I have no idea if I love or hate FIDE's actions the past few years. They obviously seem determined to make chess a spectator "sport" (*cough* oh just drop it!) but at the same time are taking away alot of its classical traditions, and doing a number of things that are going to result in a lower average level of play.

So what is the motivation for doing this? Is there a lot of flaky pros making the game look bad by strolling in when they please on a regular basis?

I also thought the standard 1 hour was sufficient, but I never TDed tournaments that would have had more than a handful of 2200+ players IIRC. I don't recall ever dropping players if they forfeited either.

Like you say though, a TD can still use the old rule, this just gives them discretion.

I'm wondering what individual sports do. For example, if you show up late for your tee time at a PGA event or for the start of a WTA event, what happens? Not that FIDE should necessarily do the same, I'm just curious.

I've been told by a person who is interested in all sorts of FIDE stuff that all these new regulations, including this latest one, and doping control, are in order to make chess applicable for Olympic Games. Apparently the Olympic Committee has stated, that being late for a game is not allowed in any Olympic sports, so chess had to apply this rule too. I find this whole thing a complete nonsense, including doping control. If Olympic Games doesn't want us to be there, very well. Chess Olympiads are the second biggest (participant wise) sporting event in the world (well if you don't count Marathon Runs and some other things), so I see no need for FIDE officials to, sorry for the expression, lick Olympic Committees a** just to get accepted.

For the PGA tour... some events you are disqualified if you are one second late, some events you have a 5 minute grace period (where you take a 2-stroke penalty), its up to the tournament director and decided before the tourney. Though in golf you really have no choice, since once a player misses his group there is no fair place to him to play anymore.

If chess ever hit the mainstream olympics, it would be the best thing ever for chess players world wide. The amount of money/sponsorships coming into the game would multiply exponentially.

I think the next step needed in chess is to get rid of big prize class section tournaments. These aren't much more than a reward for sandbagging. Much more effective would be modest prizes for exceptional performance (relative to expectation) in open events. It just seems stupid and far from professional that at alot of the big tournaments, some unknown U1400/U1600/U1800 player gets to take down nearly as much as a world class GM who manages to take down the open.

Yes, it's ridiculous to reward "relatively big" cash prizes to class players.
OTOH, it's simply "marketing" to get enough entries to pay for costs and
bigger prizes near the top.

FIDE's decision about being forfeited for being late for a round is a bit
extreme. If that is the rule that FIDE wants to ultimately have, they should
probably have a "grace period" less than an hour.

Concerning the Olympic Games, are chess players "athletes"? ( I don't think
so. ) Still, many consider chess a "sport" and personally, I'd like to see
chess at the Olympic Games. In better economic times, large-cap IT
companies and financial institutions would be likely sponsors.

I'm not really sure. Anti-doping regulations are clearly a misguided effort to include chess in the olympics. Perhaps this is part of the same plan. There are grandmasters who apparently use a late appearance at the board as a psychological weapon. Anatoly Karpov is probably the most renowned for this. Others are just habitually late. To be honest, I think for championships and other high level events, a default time of zero is perfectly fine - just not for amateur events.

Karpov showed up late? By how much? I can't imagine deliberately giving my opponent significant time odds for some ephemeral "psychological advantage".

This is something I see posted a lot and I'm not so sure about it. By far the biggest problem is that chess is a horrible spectator sport. Even with good commentators, you need a fairly significant amount of previously acquired knowledge to appreciate what goes on. Watching the physical act of someone moving a small piece of wood is not compelling at all. Then the games last for hours. Finally, for knowledgeable fans, there is little benefit to watching the game live vs replaying the game post-mortem. The suspense is higher, but with good annotations you appreciate the beauty of the game just as much, learn just as much and spend 1/4 of the time.

These sentiments make very little sense to me. Class players pay for the events and in most large tournaments play in their own sections. Why shouldn't they get prizes ~proportionate to their contribution the prize pool. Actually it's already disproportionately in favor of the top section since titled players almost always receive free or reduced entry fees. If there were a significant 3rd party source of revenue, then I'd completely agree that the top section should get the bulk of that money, but this isn't often the case.

Under the current conditions (small corporate sponsorship) the huge majority of the money top players make from chess is dependent on the popularity of chess. Whatever they make in tournaments + fees for teaching, writing books or creating videos are all highly dependent on popularity. Sadly, a decrease in the prize fund for lower sections could increase individual tournament winners' take in the short term, but would undoubtedly (over time) yield lower revenues for these players by hurting weaker player participation.

The problems with this are obvious, though. Sandbagging as Dire mentioned is a problem at the highest $ tournaments. Even more of a problem is cheating. The high dollar tournament TDs are finding ways to combat these problems so I hope they don't balloon.

As for chess on TV, I think they should try some retro Web TV type stuff and present positions on the screen in the form of puzzles, with a voice-over or something. Also, they shouldn't try to cover individual games. It should be like golf where they jump back and forth from hole to hole. Golf would be boring to watch too if you had to watch one guy walk from shot to shot.

They should cut to a game, give some color commentary about the players, show the current position on the screen, and ask the viewers to come up with their moves, perhaps giving some sort of hint. Then they should cut to a different game. When one of the players in the original game makes a move, they should cut back to the position before the move, ask the audience for their move again, show the move that was actually made, and explain the reasoning behind it.

I think it's safe to say that there's not a huge spectator audience for swimming in the USA, but somehow Michael Phelps became a household name. You don't even need any knowledge of chess to appreciate the competitive aspect. You can give a 15 second overview of a game, "They played quietly in the opening. A small mistake weakened black's kingside. White was quick to take advantage of it and ended up breaking down the remaining defenders of black's king, obtaining a winning advantage which he converted into the full point on move 44 giving the Americans a 4-2 lead." If somebody wants more then they can look over the game themselves, or if it was one of the few televised then watch it live.

The point isn't to get millions of people excited to analyze the new novelty 34. Bc6!? in the Yugoslav variation of the dragon, but just to get chess "out there." Put the dream in some kid who enjoys playing it that that could be him out there representing his country one day. Or remind the guy who used to play when he was a kid of the game. I mean what do you have to look forward to today in chess? The game just doesn't exist in the main stream at all.

When the game gets into the mainstream, you will find more people interested in it. With more people interested you find sponsors which leads to even more people and so fourth.

At least in the US I wouldn't count on NBC covering chess at the olympics enough for it to get noticed by the public. Especially if it ends up being dominated by eastern Europeans.

I guess that's the difference in our perspectives. I think, practically speaking, your first sentence above is backward. The American teams just got bronze in the men's and women's olympiads. Nobody cared. Even if chess gets in the olympics, what difference will it make? Some midnight report on Kamsky getting 5th? Really the only places that it would truly get celebrated are the places that already value chess (former soviet states, China, India).

The only time I see your statement working in America is if we get a US born phenom a la Bobby Fischer. His world championship success created a surge in interest in chess. Frank Shorter winning the gold in the 1972 olympic marathon did the same thing for running. Simply getting chess into the olympics isn't going to make any difference, at least in North America.

Some good ideas here. The funny thing is, unlike many other sports, the early rounds would be more watchable just because there would be more games to pick moves from. When you're down to just your "Gold medal" game, there's nothing else to show. That's when you'd definitely need to pull out a lot the tricks mentioned above. Also, maybe you could review the finalists' previous games in between moves.

Blitz or bughouse would make much better TV IMO. Maybe have a side tournament they could use clips from to fill in the slow spots?

There are many problems with this.

I expect it would kill attendance.The largest open tournament in the U.S. is the U.S. Open. It got 379 entries in 2008. Compare that to the World Open which got 1,262 players.

Most players don't want to enter these big tournaments and then play opponents whose rating is vastly different from theirs (either higher or lower).


Another problem also develops. The U.S. Open winner, GM Alexander Shabalov, played eight opponents with an average rating of 2280. Only one opponent was within 250 ratings points of Shabalov. I'm actually suprised he never played any sub-2000 players.

GM Alexander Shabalov's opponents:
Rd.1: 1/2 bye (presumably to get easier match-ups in later rounds)
Rd.2: 2289
Rd.3: 2017
Rd.4: 2130
Rd.5: 2411
Rd.6: 2176
Rd.7: 2501
Rd.8: 2391
Rd.9: 2327


Compare that to the World Open winner Parimajan Negi (shared with three others). His opponents' had an average rating of 2524. The second worst player he faced was rated 2442. That's stronger than the second best player Shabalov faced in the U.S. Open.

Rd.1: 2166
Rd.2: 2446
Rd.3: 2689
Rd.4: 2448
Rd.5: 2442
Rd.6: 2679
Rd.7: 2612
Rd.8: 2656
Rd.9: 2577


If you want to help chess, don't argue against what has worked well in the open market. Goichberg built CCA from a small New York state company into a nation-wide company using the structure we see today. Discarding it would be foolish.

Despite the similar name and themes, the olympiads have no more relevance or familiarity to the public at large than Wijk aan Zee / Corus. But I do agree that a charismatic world champion would really help, even if he's not America though! Kasparov was well recognized and great for chess, even state side.

Dude cmon give Shabalov some credit, unbelievable to think someone of his caliber would ever consider taking a 1/2 point bye in round 1 of the US Open for strategical reasons. It's extremely rude to suggest that about anyone, especially someone like Alex who plays with less fear than anyone!

Also I strongly suspect that not only was he late for round 1, but also came late for round 2, because otherwise there's no way he would have played a 2280 player. He would have played some 1700 most likely, and I'm guessing the arbiters wanted him to play so figured it'd be fair to have some strong filler (whoever this 2280 is) to play him, instead of making him take a 2nd half point bye.

But really man, throwing around suggestions like that is unbelievably insulting.

I'm not sure that an internationally played open tournament attracting 1300 people from a game with millions of players worldwide, should be classified as an example of something that is working well in the open market.

My comment regarding big money class sections is mostly ideological for now. I cannot think of an effective means of fix the problem, but from the perspective of the sport health - it's just terrible that complete amateurs compete for similar prize funds to those that play the game professionally. I suppose the answer is sponsors.