AJEDREZ DEMOCRÁTICO
71 FIDE Congress
Istanbul, Turkey
World Players’ Council, 5.11.2000, 11.00 - 13.00
Present: GM Valery Salov, WPC President (Russia),
Florencio Campomanes, FIDE Honorary President (Philippines),
Georgius Makropoulos, FIDE Deputy President (Greece),
GM Bolat Assanov (Kazakhstan),
Eugeny Eletsky (Russia),
GM Elizabeth Polihroniade (Romania),
GM Margareta Muresan (Romania),
Jonathan Berry (Canada),
Jim Eade (USA),
William Kelleher (USA), etc.
Agenda:
1) Discussions on the new proposals for FIDE Time Control (A.Shirov, N.Alexandria, I.Leong) and World Championship Format (S.Reuben, D.Anderton).
2) Miscellaneous.
The attendants were acquainted with the essence of the proposals on Time Control made by GMs Shirov and Alexandria. It was mentioned that Alexei Shirov had introduced some minor amendments to his initial proposal (50 minutes + 15 seconds per move for the whole game instead of 40 minutes + 30 seconds per move). Having taken into consideration the importance of the proposed changes, the chairman of the meeting and the present members of the Council decided to ask FIDE to carry out a poll among the participants of the Istanbul Olympiad to get the maximum feedback from them before the final decision-taking. Mr. Jonathan Berry offered his help to FIDE in preparing the questionary forms for the poll.
Mr. Makropoulos informed the members of the Council and the observers about the forthcoming reform of the World Championship Format and briefed them on the proposal elaborated by Mr. Reuben and Mr. Anderton (England). He stressed the necessity to adapt the present formula to the demands of the potential sponsors. Preliminary negotiations held by FIDE Commerce and FIDE representatives with Octagon had revealed a need for introducing further modernizing changes to the World Championship Format in order to attract major multinational companies to chess sponsorship. The format should comply with the following demands:
- it should include a series of qualification tournaments (Grand Prix), formed by the players qualified from the Continental Championships and Zonal tournaments,
- the final event of 8-16 players qualified from the Grand Prix tournaments with the status of the World Championship should be held at the end of each year,
- the knock-out format should be preferably used to guarantee a highly combative spirit in all the events,
- no tournament should last more than 2-3 weeks.
The chairman of the meeting GM Valery Salov stated that though the members of the Council and the majority of the polled grandmasters fully realized necessity to comply with the demands of the sponsors in present commercial environment and even supported the general lines of the proposed reforms, they considered inappropriate and unacceptable certain aspects of the Reuben-Anderton proposal. He outlined no less than 7 objections to it, the most important being the use of the private closed invitational events as means of qualification for the Final of the World Championship. Were such a reform accepted it would inevitably lead to a situation where violation of the basic sportive principles and manipulation of the competition become common practices in FIDE events.
Mr. Makropoulos invited the members of the World Player’s Council to work out an alternative proposal under the guidelines outlined above. GM Valery Salov readily accepted the invitation.
Mr. Eletsky attracted attention of the meeting to some irregularities in the qualifying procedure of the current World Championship cycle. GM Fedorov was denied a place in Delhi WCC by the WCC Committee (Mr.Iclicky) to the benefit of GM Tkachiev despite being ahead of him on an average ELO list. It was decided to raise an investigation into the matter and introduce necessary changes in the regulations to clarify the qualification parameters and avoid similar irregularities in the future. A relevant document was directed to the attention of the EB members (annex 56).
The WPC president GM Valery Salov expressed his deep concern over unsatisfactory situation with freedom of expression in the chess press. Many a journalist don’t recognize the right of the chessplayers to dissent in views on the crucial issues of our contemporary chess reality and refuse to publish them. The steps should be taken to guarantee this vital right to the chessplayers.
GM Valery Salov,
WPC President,
Istanbul, Turkey