Do we have an elephant in the room?

[John Brown]

I think the easiest way to solve the Elephant in the room problem is to run a tournament with The Cat In The Hat, the black cat, the dark horse ,the dog in the dog house ,the monkey on a string ,
Tiger in your tank, Donkey with no tail, Horse of a Different Color,A Black Panther and the cow that jumps over the moon.

Or Organize a Canadian GM only tournament and See if all our GMs are GMs or just puppets in a show.

[Vlad Drkulec]

I would like to congratulate Kaiqi Yang on his recent attainment of the grandmaster title. I believe I made a comment previously in another thread possibly on the CFC board or on chesstalk about the fact that he had attained the title norms and just had to bring up his rating to get the title. Chesstalk discredits itself when it allows threads which contain personal attacks on decent people to persist. I was not aware of this milestone being reached until Hal Bond informed me when I picked him up on the way to the Canadian Sports Tourism Alliance conference in Ottawa last Monday the 18th of March. I just returned home about an hour and a half ago.

[Kaiqi Yang]

Nikolay, if you do know any suspicious tournaments, or if you are personally questioning about the FIDE’s norm system, you should officially report to FIDE, not players who attended.

To be honest, I prefer playing chess with you rather than behind the computer typing. I see you also on the list of Zonal this April, see you on the chess board.

[Nikolay Noritsyn]

Kaiqi, all kinds of topics were brought up in this thread, I was answering to Ian. I don't think its out of place. I do know a lot more of how things are done in Tula Russia, then in Novi Sad Serbia.

Rene already explained the meaning of the 'elephant'. He was wondering why there were so few 'congratulations' messages and thought maybe everyone knows something he doesn't, so he did his investigation on fide.com. Like this thread shows, it seems he was wrong.. nobody knows anything.

I am not sure why you are upset. If there is no wrongdoing, and you think that scoring 7.5/9 against lower rated opposition is not easier then 6/9 in most other tournaments, that is perfectly reasonable. I personally haven't tried either so have no opinion. Rene seems to think its an "easy path". So what?

[Kaiqi Yang]

Absolutely disagree with the way Rene was treated in this thread. Ugly posts like
"The naked display of malice and envy toward you by Rene Preotu in this thread utterly disgraceful. I have no idea where we find such creatures." get applauded. Envy of what, when? Creatures?

Its a thin line between freedom of speech/opinion, and libel. I don't see that Rene has ever crossed it.

Ian Findlay "Worse, there were cases of people buying their norms through bribery. I think this is rare or does not happen anymore."

People do buy titles, norms and rating points. Google Russian businessman Afromeev, who boasted he could give his driver or his cat a high fide rating. Alexandru Crisan is an older case. Tournaments in Alushta Ukraine. Shkuro with his 2800+ blitz rating. These are proven years long cases, cases where one norm/game is in question we never hear about.. I am sure that buying and prearranging games is a lot more popular then computer cheating. These first/third saturday events are also considered suspect. I never really played abroad, but what I heard is the same as what Victor Plotkin describes.

Nikolay, your story is posted in the wrong place, I am not involved in your story. You can start a new thread if you want further discussion, no here in additional to someone's apparently attacking towards me. If you feel so sorry for Mr. Preuto, could you please at least explain for him, what is exactly the meaning of "do we have an elephant in the room"?

For those who believe it is an "easy path", I suggest you to try it out, not just "heard about it".

[Vlad Rekhson]

Congratulations to GM Yang! In two of those tournaments, the PGNs are available with the tournament file. Perhaps if someone has any questions, those games can be reviewed. I believe that the first norm does not have a PGN attached to it as that was before FIDE made it mandatory to submit PGN of games in all norm events.

[Nikolay Noritsyn]

Nikolay, how do you feel about how K. Yang was treated? The link is an interesting fyi.

https://en.chessbase.com/post/mr-first-saturday-laszlo-nagy-in-budapest

I have likely seen this article on chessbase, years ago, was even invited to play there as a 13-14 year old.
The list of players who played in Afromeev's tournaments (and against Afromeev), whose events are absolutely bogus (some only happened on paper) is not as impressive, but many well known grandmasters took part. I remember seeing some Sambuev-Afromeev game while preparing.

If Rene wrote about me "It looks like he found an easy path to become a GM. ...", or if someone ever accused me of cheating/doing something illegal, unethical - I would stand my ground if I thought the statement is false, or apologize/agree with Rene if I thought he was right about some things. So as I see it. Kaiqi wasn't accused of anything (so I don't see how he was mistreated), and Rene is welcome to have his opinion.

[Peter McKillop]

Absolutely disagree with the way Rene was treated in this thread. ...

Nikolay, how do you feel about how K. Yang was treated? The link is an interesting fyi.

https://en.chessbase.com/post/mr-first-saturday-laszlo-nagy-in-budapest

[Nikolay Noritsyn]

Absolutely disagree with the way Rene was treated in this thread. Ugly posts like
"The naked display of malice and envy toward you by Rene Preotu in this thread utterly disgraceful. I have no idea where we find such creatures." get applauded. Envy of what, when? Creatures?

Its a thin line between freedom of speech/opinion, and libel. I don't see that Rene has ever crossed it.

Ian Findlay "Worse, there were cases of people buying their norms through bribery. I think this is rare or does not happen anymore."

People do buy titles, norms and rating points. Google Russian businessman Afromeev, who boasted he could give his driver or his cat a high fide rating. Alexandru Crisan is an older case. Tournaments in Alushta Ukraine. Shkuro with his 2800+ blitz rating. These are proven years long cases, cases where one norm/game is in question we never hear about.. I am sure that buying and prearranging games is a lot more popular then computer cheating. These first/third saturday events are also considered suspect. I never really played abroad, but what I heard is the same as what Victor Plotkin describes.

[Peter McKillop]

But is there a room in the elephant?

If there is then maybe we could lock up RP there and throw away the key.

[Matthew Nicholson]

But is there a room in the elephant?

[Peter McKillop]

Actually, one of the things I like most about chess is there's no requirement to be politically correct in this manner. It's very possible to acknowledge that he fully complied with the rules and has earned a title under those rules without any issues, but at the same time think those rules no longer reflect the spirit in which they were originally created.

Actually, is there any more irritatingly overused phrase these days than 'politically correct'? I'm not talking about being politically correct. I'm talking about simple, ordinary, everyday human decency and courtesy. I'm talking about NOT dragging someone into the middle of the room and attempting to publicly humiliate them simply because you disagree with a process to which many thousands have been subjected over the years. RP could quite easily have made his arguments about reforming FIDE title requirements without mentioning, or even alluding, to Mr. Yang, or any specific individual for that matter. But oh no!! It had to be: 'Look at me, look at me everybody - there's an elephant in the room and I, the great and marvellous RP, caught him all by myself!'

And, actually, RP went further than what you've said, David. I believe Alex F. picked up on this also. RP implied that ***maybe*** there was just ***the tiniest whiff*** of something underhanded (nudge-nudge, wink-wink) in how Mr. Yang got his title. That's bullshit and it's bullshit to treat somebody like that in public without rock-solid proof.

[Matthew Nicholson]

Congratulations on your title GM Kaiqi Yang.

The naked display of malice and envy toward you by Rene Preotu in this thread utterly disgraceful. I have no idea where we find such creatures.

+1

Congrats!

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

And I am not sure how feasible this would be but, it'd be interesting to see the (20 or 50) latest approved IM / GM titles across the world, and what paths were taken by the recipients. To my mind, this would be a much healthier discussion.

Title applications are freely available at https://ratings.fide.com/title_applications.phtml
To process (how?) requires a lot of time.

[Alex Ferreira]

I still don't get from your expressed opinions what an elephant is in the room in your eyes? Is it players playing in the title tournaments tweaked to obtain titles or tournaments itself? What about this one specifically created for GM and IM norms in Kitchener ( http://www.chessfest.ca/kitmasters.html )? There was a recent one in Montreal ( http://chess-results.com/tnr397491.a...&art=4&flag=30 ) with IM norms too.

... Actually, one of the things I like most about chess is there's no requirement to be politically correct in this manner. It's very possible to acknowledge that he fully complied with the rules and has earned a title under those rules without any issues, but at the same time think those rules no longer reflect the spirit in which they were originally created.

Hi,

Discussing these tournaments is, in my opinion, worth doing. But without involving our latest GM. If there is a problem with "norm factory" systems and tournaments, attempts (failed or successful) in Canada, or how to go about these in the future, there is nothing wrong with discussing these. But again, discussing them for what they are.
It would be worthwhile looking at data from these so-called "norm factories" in their completion. It'd also be worth looking at the last 10-20 norms (IM or GM) achieved in Canada. And I am not sure how feasible this would be but, it'd be interesting to see the (20 or 50) latest approved IM / GM titles across the world, and what paths were taken by the recipients. To my mind, this would be a much healthier discussion.

Alex Ferreira