Cannes, 24-25 March 2001
Presidential Board rose from its meeting Sunday, and agreed on a number of issues, which in the words of the FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, would "enable Chess move in the right direction with harmony in the chess world". At the meeting, which saw the Presidents of the Royal Dutch, French and German Chess Federations and the International Director of the British Chess Federation in attendance, the Board confirmed the compromise proposal of the FIDE President with regard to the new time control. The Board resolved to make the use of the new time control of 40 moves in 75 minutes, 15 minutes for the remainder of the game, with an increment of 30 seconds per move from move 1, mandatory for the World Championship events, including the Zonals and Continental Championships and optional or recommendatory for other FIDE and international rating and title tournaments until the next FIDE Congress. Speaking along the same lines, the Board clarified that for those tournaments using analogue clocks, the time control of 4 hours for the duration of the whole game shall be recommendatory for title tournaments.
The Board noted with satisfaction, FIDE's on-going program on commercialisation and after noting the brief from FIDE Commerce and Messrs. Octagon Marketing Ltd, gave a full mandate to both companies to embark on their program for the Grand Prix and World Internet Championships as well as the reduction of the rating floor to 1000 elo points with a final report to the next Board meeting.
It directed the FIDE Secretariat to announce the bidding procedure for the World Championships for 2001 and 2002.
Regarding the use of the Continental Championships for qualification to the World Championships, the Board approved the request to allow Continents to determine their selection procedure. The Board accepted the proposal for those Continents, which want to use the Zonals for qualification to the World Championships to limit the number of qualifiers from the Zones to the approved figure prior to the Tehran Board meeting, while the extra places will be available for the Continental Championships. All Zonal qualifiers shall be eligible for participation in the Continental event with the same number of players eligible to play by country in each Zonal, having their full board expenses covered by the host country. The extra players by country as determined by each Continent, shall be responsible for their expenses. FIDE Commerce shall still make available, the previously agreed sums for each Continental Championship as extra prize money as stated in the World Championship Regulations.
The Board confirmed that this year's World Junior Championship will be held in Athens, from 14 to 28 August 2001, while Brazil's bids to organise the 2001 Children's Chess Olympiad in Batatais, from 18 to 26 September and World Amateur Championships in Bento Gonzales, from 8 to 16 December were approved.
Lausanne, 27 March 2001
Editor's comment: Nothing very surprising here. The battle over the "new FIDE time control" should continue to rage, as it seems quite possible that Ilyumzhinov will push to make the control mandatory for title norm events at the next FIDE Congress.
The issuing of ratings as low as 1000, which had been previously approved, makes it sound as though FIDE is planning to go into competition with national federations. Players rated below 2000 rarely compete in international events, so it is difficult to conceive of what the point might be of FIDE undertaking the enormous task of such a massive expansion of its rating pool, other than a desire to collect rating fees and perhaps membership fees from players everywhere.
