Bond's Eye after eight

[Hal Bond]

My round 8 games are finished. One match today, thankyou!

Regarding time forfeits, they are supposed to be automatic - no claim required. I only know of the one "baby" exception. Jonathan - I love your tale of Calvia- stripping a photographer of his badge. I had a quasi deja vu incident today. A spectator took a picture of my match 2 hours after the start of the round and I saw a flash of light. As I started toward him I caught another flash which could not have been his camera. Before I embarassed myself I realized what I had seen - the ceiling lights were reflecting differently off the lens of the clock. Strange that the angles would change. Maybe all that practice being tall is starting to work.

Spectators, tater specs:

Germany loves chess. They have over 100,000 Federation members, 3,000 clubs and about 6 million "hobby players" according to their President. The hall has been packed everyday. My colleague Tapio Tikkanen from Sweden via Finland shared some of his research today.

€9.50 lets you into the playing hall for the day. No access to the games, just balcony seats or somewhere behind the cordon. €35 lets you into the playing area for the day, where you can get as close as the Arbiters will let you. €135 per day lets you into the VIP lounge where the Arbiters cannot go. They have cool snacks apparently - I haven't seen it. The latter 2 permits are sold out. I think this explains why the Arbiters will not be paid until after the 10th round - they are still raising the money! Too bad for the guv we won't be spending much of it in Germany.

Germany loves their spuds too. Lately I start here at the hall before 10am and can't get back for my free lunch at the Ibis. Yesterday I grabbed delightful bratwurst and a plate of awesome potato salad from the canteen in the Congress Centre. Today I tried again. The food was late arriving so I prepped my match first and scurried back for a bite. The potato salad was yellow instead of white today - different recipe altogether. It was good but not like yesterday. There's always tomorrow.

Tenacious Ingatious:

Last nite and today I had more time to spend with our Chief Arbiter Ingatious Leong. We met in 1986 in Dubai. I remember it, and noticng his super active chessacreer with FIDE ever since. But my main focus there was helping an aging John Prentice fight off this high energy rascal named Garry Kasparov,whose upstart Grand Master Association was determined to change the face of FIDE, even if it meant that the World Chess Festival and its Candidate Matches in Saint John became collateral damage.

Ignatious remembers the very meeting of the Central Committee and the issue at question - namely should GMs be rated at the Olympics in light of the team nature of the event. Actually that question is even more piquant now that the tournament is using match points for pairing and standings.

Anyway Ingatious had already been an IA for 7 years by that point. He recalled fondly his fascination with the swiss pairing system at age 12. Since '86 he has amassed an amazing CV - Zonal President for 4 years, Singapore Fed President off and on (currently on), Chief Arbiter at numerous major FIDE events including Calvia and the recent Mind Games tournament in Beijing and organiser of the Viet Nam WYCC. He also runs the FIDE office in Singapore, whose focus is on Commission restructuring within FIDE. He is an impressive pioneer in chess, which often draws criticism. He is among the strongest proponents of the zero grace period at the start of a round - it is a sport positioning issue in his eyes. He also uses yellow and red cards soccer style in some Asian events.

One last point. Last night when I ran into Topalov I asked him about coming to Canada (opens are out of the question). Montreal is an emerging possibility and I stressed the ambition of the organizers there. In fact Andre Langlois is here now and I have just missed him before his 9:30 appointment. I suggested to Vesselin a promo tour of some kind to help our profile. He stated straight up that our biggest problem is the lack of an elite player. Of course it's not as simple as that but it is part of the challenge.

Closing time...

[Jonathan Berry]

Re: Bond's Eye after eight

Arbiters are never paid until late in the event. Strange, because it is supposed to be "pocket money", in other words money to tide you over during your working days.

In 1984 it was the same BS, but in those days arbiters from Communist countries didn't have hard currency and therefore had no usable money. They couldn't borrow from themselves. The Greeks kept saying mañana. My colleague Stewart Reuben is a short man, but he has hidden talents. After hearing this bafflegab one time too often, he drew himself up to his full height (which couldn't be more than 5'2") and, in a voice that shook the rather large building we were in, told the functionary that if the money wasn't available for his arbiters by the next day, there would be trouble (it was not necessary for him to speak any Greek). The money arrived the next day.

Although spuds originated in Bolivia ... Hungarian, Polish, Russian ... all use the German word for potato. Kartofel.

Bon appetit.

[Gordon Taylor]

Re: Bond's Eye after eight

The German's are famous for their potato salad. There's some Rainer Fassbinder film I remember which has one scene in (say) a Berlin kitchen a few weeks after WWII. The men folk have found their way home and the women have found some potatos and prepared a huge bowl of potato salad. One guy carries the bowl against his chest and keeps spooning into it, maybe the first good meal he's had in months. That image has always stuck in my memory.

[Larry Bevand]

Re: Bond's Eye after eight

Arbiters are never paid until late in the event. Strange, because it is supposed to be "pocket money", in other words money to tide you over during your working days.

In 1984 it was the same BS, but in those days arbiters from Communist countries didn't have hard currency and therefore had no usable money. They couldn't borrow from themselves. The Greeks kept saying mañana. My colleague Stewart Reuben is a short man, but he has hidden talents. After hearing this bafflegab one time too often, he drew himself up to his full height (which couldn't be more than 5'2") and, in a voice that shook the rather large building we were in, told the functionary that if the money wasn't available for his arbiters by the next day, there would be trouble (it was not necessary for him to speak any Greek). The money arrived the next day.

Hi Jonathan,

In 1984...I was just happy to be a senior arbiter at an Olympiad...so I didn't even notice :). The hotel...the food, the friends I made and the event, were simply great!

Dubai in 1986 was even better!

Now when I did the World Active in Mazatlan in 1989 (thanks to you!)...luckily I took care of financial matters well before the end :).

Larry

[Hal Bond]

Re: Bond's Eye after eight

My potato salad of choice was back on the menu today. When I arrived in Bonn it was national potato week of something and one of the varieties was almost dowel shaped. I think this potato salad is made from them because most of the pieces are about the size and shape of a quarter. Some little ham and pickle cubes and plenty of mayo for the arterties. Comfort food after some heavy lifting last night.

I waited until a after 3am to chat with Geroges Makropoulous about the Sophia match. Along the way Frederic Freidel (ChessBase) introduced me to a games manufacturer from Norway who had just arrived with Henrik Carlsen -father of that kid from Norway everybody talks about. They will all be at the Norway reception tonite which starts in another hour. My wife agreed to call me this morning at 7:30. It was great to hear her voice but it came at a price.

Arbiter Angst:

FIDE meetings lingered until 2pm and I missed the start of the latest arbiters meeting, where it was announced that tonite is pay nite. There is a substantial queue so here I am. Yesterday it was discovered that the clock adds an extra 30 seconds to each clock when the secondary control is initiated. Therefore we had to reduce the secondary time control to 29:30 instead of 30:00. One of the Arbiters who considers himself among the best in the world, missed the point of this correction and went ballistic after the meeting for the benefit of a few of us. He felt that no one would complain about getting an extra 30 seconds so why do it? I had missed the discussion so went on to speak to Gregor. It was the right thing to do. Anyone care to correct the big Arbiter?

I had two matches side by each on the river view side of the hall. Canada played Venezeula I think and we lost 2.5_1.5. Man I was tired after the first hour! I made every clerical error possible on the move tracking sheets, even after I tossed on and started over. It seemed like a good time to discard my jacket as well. Larry, Jonathan, did you ever find the jacket to be a nuisance? By the time a game is over there are at least 4 glasses of water or juice or coffee at each board , so reaching in to stop the clock and place the Kings in the centre of the board, as you sign and separate these A4 sized scoresheets without knocking one of the glasses over and electrocuting everyone in sight, well, seemed a little beyond me today. It was also much more comfortable working in shirtsleeves - you have heard me whine about the heat already.

Faulty default?

The tournament features this zero time default which some people believe stongly in, and others quite the contrary. There is talk about making this a FIDE standard so the Captians were polled today using a paper ballot - choose zero or 15 minutes. In our section the zeros won by a margin of about 2-1.

I am hoping for an early night but these gatherings have a way of energizing energizing a person and if most previous nights are any indication I doubt I'll hit the matress much before 2am.

Time to fetch my money.