Do we have an elephant in the room?

[Roger Patterson]

.....If my memory is working properly, over the years at least one Canadian has been awarded the IM title by meeting FIDE's performance threshold for a zonal championship. Some people might be of the opinion that, in general, the Canadian zonal championship is not a particularly strong tournament compared to some other zonal championships around the world. So now shall we accuse any Canadian who obtained their IM title through our zonal of finding an easy path to their title? Shall we make that accusation in a public forum and then pull up their tournament records to see if their performance meets OUR expectations?.....

A pretty good counter example and you are right that meeting the requirements is meeting the requirements.

[Francis Rodriguez]

FIDE Canada Zonal:
https://goo.gl/BSUhZz


Francis Rodrigues, LLB - Regional Director
Strategy Games & The Chess'n Math Association
tel: 416-488-5506; 416-486-3395; 647-232-6014 (cell)
701 Mt. Pleasant Road, Toronto, ON, M4S 2N4
fax: 416-486-4637; website: www.chess-math.org

[Victor Plotkin]

A pretty good counter example and you are right that meeting the requirements is meeting the requirements.

Roger and Peter,

I fully understand your point. However, I can give you an opposite example.

FIDE candidate tournament. 1 or 2 players qualified by rating. Player A (FIDE 2790) needs 10 rating points by the end of the month to surpass player B. Both players A and B are famous in a chess community.

Player A can play in a regular tournament and try to gain 10 points.... not so easy. Instead, he can play a RR with 13 1600 players. According to FIDE rules, player gets at least 0.8 rating points for any win if rating gap is greater than 400. Player A doesn't want to take any risk and play against 2400 players. He needs to score 12/13 just to maintain his rating and 13/13 to gain 10 points, which is very difficult even for 2800 player.

However, against 1600 player the mission is much easier. For sure, he will score 13/13 and will gain 10 rating points. He will get the desirable spot in the candidates.

What chess community will say about this effort? From one side, player A did not violate any FIDE rules. But for any normal person it should be absolutely clear that it's completely unfair. How about player B who will miss the important tournament?

[Victor Plotkin]

I heard a lot about these RR tournaments. I can not prove anything, but have enough reasons to call these tournaments "a very suspicious title/rating factory". I use the relatively soft wording "very suspicious", which is probably doesn't fully reflect my feeling about these events.

I believe that a player who regularly and exclusively plays in these tournaments can gain at least 150 points, likely even more. That means, every 2350 FIDE can be a GM and every 2250 can become a IM. Canada can get a lot of title players for the relatively short period of time. Do we want it? I hope, not.

During last 6 months, I discussed this issue with some very strong Canadian players and with a CFC executive - our opinions are almost identical.

[Roger Patterson]

Roger and Peter,

I fully understand your point. However,....

Actually, I don't think you do. Neither Peter or I are defending FIDE rules regarding titles. FIDE randomly gifts out instant titles, occasionally to very weak players, and even for 'regular' norms, the rules around flags and number of rounds are biased towards conditions found in Europe. Or the manipulation you describe in your post.

However, that may be, however wrong the FIDE rules are, it is not appropriate to personally criticize a player who meets the FIDE rules to qualify for a title.

[Rene Preotu]

It is my opinion that Rene should NOT be using a public forum to slag Mr. Yang in this way.

Let's just agree to disagree.

[Rene Preotu]

... it is not appropriate to personally criticize a player who meets the FIDE rules to qualify for a title.

I just presented the facts (with links from the FIDE website) so other people can judge themselves if my statement is correct. Let them decide if this is appropriate or not.

[Peter McKillop]

I just presented the facts (with links from the FIDE website) so other people can judge themselves if my statement is correct. Let them decide if this is appropriate or not.

I am part of "other people" and it's my opinion that what you've done here is not appropriate. You "just presented the facts," did you? You're entirely blameless for any negative fallout from your actions? Do you view yourself as being a righteous servant of Caissa, entitled to bring to everyone's attention that Mr. Yang's accomplishment failed to meet your standards? When your day comes, as it does for all of us, to fall short of someone's standards, I hope that person will show you a little mercy and not seek to belittle you in public.

[David Ottosen]

The ultimate blame lies with FIDE, who have every incentive to make it easier and easier to get titles to increase application fees. That said, if you're a player and you take one of those less traditional paths, don't be upset if people look at your "title" differently, and don't be upset if other players who have earned the title in those traditional ways look at you as part of the problem in the devaluation of their hard earned title.

[Rene Preotu]

I am part of "other people" and it's my opinion that what you've done here is not appropriate. You "just presented the facts," did you? You're entirely blameless for any negative fallout from your actions? Do you view yourself as being a righteous servant of Caissa, entitled to bring to everyone's attention that Mr. Yang's accomplishment failed to meet your standards? When your day comes, as it does for all of us, to fall short of someone's standards, I hope that person will show you a little mercy and not seek to belittle you in public.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/defi...0to%20disagree

[Peter McKillop]

https://www.urbandictionary.com/defi...0to%20disagree

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Shax

[Andrei Botez]

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Shax

http://<a href="https://www.urbandic.../span></u></a>[/QUOTE]

Let the battle of the Urban Dictionary quotes begin!!!

[Ian Findlay]

The ultimate blame lies with FIDE, who have every incentive to make it easier and easier to get titles to increase application fees. That said, if you're a player and you take one of those less traditional paths, don't be upset if people look at your "title" differently, and don't be upset if other players who have earned the title in those traditional ways look at you as part of the problem in the devaluation of their hard earned title.

Good points David.

I do not blame Mr. Yang if the loophole is present. Back in my day, there used to be swiss tournaments where the TD, would go out of the way to do pairings for norms. Or the famous 1 tournament GM norm by Ron Henley in a 26 man round robin in Indonesia to get his title? These loopholes have been closed by FIDE. Worse, there were cases of people buying their norms through bribery. I think this is rare or does not happen anymore.

But also kudos to Rene for pointing this out. If there is enough public outcry, I am sure FIDE will try to close this loophole also.

[Alex Ferreira]

But also kudos to Rene for pointing this out. If there is enough public outcry, I am sure FIDE will try to close this loophole also.

Hi,


Nothing wrong with pointing out flaws in systems.
My first thought when reading the post with the list of links was...
Is it being pointed out that an easy path was chosen, which makes achieving the title less sensational? Or was there more serious misconduct?

As for plugging this loophole, considering there was no serious misconduct. Good luck! The past bribes and norm-fixing-pairings and such as things of the past, as they should be. Pairings can be independently verified now by anyone on whether they are legitimate or not anyway. Bribes / dives / agreements should be completely banned, but it's somewhat comparable to two people pre-arranging a draw in any normal circumstance. Good luck proving it.
The present "this tournament, this region, these pools of players with X Y Z characteristics, may make it an easier path to norm" situation will never disappear.
Unless FIDE starts implementing some sort of age restriction or activity restriction on players to count for norms. For example... opponents can only be counted for norm purposes if they're under the age of 50 and have played at least 5 tournaments in the past year. I don't think this will ever happen. Someone asked me yesterday if a self-respecting GM should still be playing in these tournaments if he's playing at a 2300 level, or why are there 2300 rated GMs? Let us assume that all GMs were 2500 and all IMs were 2400 at some point. Now they are older, or have kids, or chess went from profession to hobby, or all of the above. Why should a once-professional player stop playing altogether? What defines professional? How much activity and against whom is it required?
It certainly saddens me to some degree to see players as decades pass, drop 200-300-400 or more points. But with very few exceptions, that will always be the trend. I am now around ~2000 rated, and even though it may hurt my ego to go to 1700, if I am playing chess at age 70 and can still enjoy the game at a 1600-1700 level, great! I have a certain level of admiration for those who keep up, even if they can no longer play at the same level they once did. Why should it be different for GMs? Not everyone is Fischer or Kasparov. If they still enjoy playing, let them play!
So again... I don't think we should be looking at eradicating certain conditions, or banning certain players for being eligible to be in norm tournaments, etc... it will be absolutely catastrophic.
Round Robins can be "conditioned" for good or bad. Meaning... we can observe specific activity or age requirements in a small even playing field... the same would be impossible in a 9 Round Swiss. I'd hate to have a norm taken away from me because I was unfortunate enough to be paired against a 2500 retired GM.

In the same vein of "easy path" titles, we Canada Zone were the biggest benefactors for a long time. IM and FM titles were often awarded for a good result at a Canadian Zonal, without actually meeting the normal requirements to attain this title. The population at large often is heard saying "yah but he's a local IM / FM" -- in other words... "a weak or not a real IM / FM". Yet we defended our zonal privilege to inject titled players into our country, for as long as we could until FIDE shut off the tap. The population can also be quite fair in recognizing that the recipients of these titles, sometimes end up proving they are worth the title anyway. But many also do not. People who want to know and care about this nonsense... do know. Enough people know who are the "strong" IMs and the "zonal" IMs.

So going back to Rene's original post... if you know of some serious misconduct from specific organizers and players, please report it to our delegates or the larger FIDE body. It would be a service you'd be doing.
... but ...
If this post is meant to belittle one of our players' achievements, shame on you. There are more adequate ways of presenting flawed systems. We have had players succeed and fail at these "norm factory" tournaments. All that data should be collected and analyzed for what it is. Without picking and choosing individuals who happened to have succeeded.


Alex Ferreira

[Peter McKillop]

...

So going back to Rene's original post... if you know of some serious misconduct from specific organizers and players, please report it to our delegates or the larger FIDE body. It would be a service you'd be doing.
... but ...
If this post is meant to belittle one of our players' achievements, shame on you. There are more adequate ways of presenting flawed systems. We have had players succeed and fail at these "norm factory" tournaments. All that data should be collected and analyzed for what it is. Without picking and choosing individuals who happened to have succeeded.

Alex Ferreira

Thank you, Alex.