Another Azmai Controversy?

One of the events on my page (C17) Zonals 1995-1997 is '1.2b Struga (Macedonia) 1995-03', with a clipping attributed to 'Europe Echecs, 1995-09, p.50'. A note under the entry says,

EK: Europe Echecs wonders why Azmaiparashvili played in this zone. He was representing Bosnia & Hercegovina at that time, which can be seen from the rating lists of that time. So he was in the right zone after all.

My reaction when I first copied the comment to that page was 'Oh, OK', and I've since re-read it many times without giving it a second thought. On the latest reading it occurred to me that in 1995, Bosnia was in the middle of a civil war. This is confirmed by Wikipedia's page Bosnian War that says,

The Bosnian War was an international armed conflict that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995. The war is commonly seen as having started on 6 April 1992, following a number of violent incidents earlier in the year. The war ended on 14 December 1995.

Did GM Azmaiparashvili really change his nationality to a country involved in a civil war? It happens that there is another page on the web Zonal 1.2b, Struga 1995 (olimpbase.org), with a full crosstable of the event. That OlimpBase page lists three participants under the Bosnian flag:-

• GM Azmaiparashvili, Zurab
• GM Kurajica, Bojan
• GM Dizdarevic, Emir

The three GMs finished 1st, 3rd, and 5-7th, respectively. To verify the EK explanation, I turned to my rating database and queried the three Bosnian participants for four consecutive years. The following image shows what I found.

I have one rating list per year, dated 1 January each year. My public page, FIDE historical ratings, points to one more file that is not in my database, 1995-07.ZIP, for ratings dated 1 July 1995. It also lists GM Azmaiparashvili's nationality as GEO (Georgia). On its own Elo lists, Europe Echecs (EE) had

Jan 1995 • 'Azmaiparachvili GEO 2610' at 44-46th in the world
Jul 1995 • 'Azmaiparachvili BOS 2620', 39-44th in the world.

In other words, EE confirms EK. For 1996, EE had the Georgian GM back in GEO at mid-year.

Feb 1996 • 'Azmaiparachvili BOS 2660' 15-17th in the world
Jul 1996 • 'Azmaiparachvili GEO 2670' 12-15th in the world

Azmaiparashvili's career has been dogged by controversies, including one in 1995. His Wikipedia page, Zurab Azmaiparashvili, says (with references),

Azmaiparashvili was alleged to have rigged the results of the Strumica [Macedonia] tournament of 1995 [month?] to boost his rating.

That particular World Championship cycle was itself controversial. Instead of The Last, Lost Interzonal (February 2012 on this blog), the chess world saw 1997 FIDE Knockout Matches. GM Azmaiparashvili was seeded into the second round and eliminated in the fourth round by GM Krasenkow.

***

For further investigation:-

• How was Azmaiparashvili's transfer GEO -> BIH -> GEO handled administratively within FIDE?
• Why don't the historical rating lists reflect the transfer?
• How much more than 'Zonal 1.2b, Struga 1995 (olimpbase.org)' is available on Olimpbase?

I doubt the first two questions can be answered so many years after the fact, but the third should be easy.

Of Names and Pirates

A comment to my recent post, 2011 World Cup Players, alerted me to a couple of errors on my Index of players for all World Championship events (after the zonal stage). One error I already knew about (the dates are the years of a WCC event),

Alexander Nenashev (1997) and Alexander Graf (2001, 2004) are the same person.

but hadn't yet made the correction. The info is confirmed on Wikipedia, Alexander Graf:-

born Alexander Nenashev, 25 August 1962 in Tashkent, Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic, USSR, is an Uzbekistani-German chess grandmaster. In 2000 he moved to Germany and took his father's name.

The other error was new to me.

Mohamed Esam Ahmed Nagib (FIDE WCh 1999) and Essam El Gindy (2004, 2007, 2009) are the same person.

This was confirmed on a page from the Polish version of Wikipedia, Essam El Gindy, translated by Google:

Essam El Gindy (born 14 July 1966 in Cairo) - Egyptian chess player, grandmaster since 2008, the end of 2000 known as Esam Mohamed Ahmed Nagib.

In both cases, it would be interesting to confirm that the FIDE ID handled the change correctly (see Structure of the FIDE ID for background). While I was working on these changes I was reminded that another sharp-eyed visitor had spotted an error on my index of World Chess Championship : Zonals page. For cycle 16, zone 4.2, I had noted that I was missing info on how the player Adly of Egypt had qualified for the next step in the cycle, the 1993 Biel Interzonal Tournament. This did not jive with Glenn Giffen's page, Zonals in the Americas and Africa, which listed Esam Aly Ahmed of Egypt as one of the qualifiers from Africa.

My first problem was that the 1993 Biel page had no mention of Adly, Esam Aly Ahmed, or any other player from Egypt. I located a printed crosstable from 1993 and discovered that Essam Ali A. of Egypt was qualified to participate, but forfeited the first round and was dropped from the tournament. My corresponding PGN file for 1993 Biel (last touched in August 1997, the month before I first released the WCC site!) confirmed this. I corrected both the 1993 Biel page and the index of zonals.

That first problem alerted me to a second problem, where the Arabic name had four valid transliterations -- Esam/Essam Aly/Ali -- all found using Google, although 'Esam Aly' is by far the most common variant. A browse through the various pages did not resolve the original question, how he qualified into the 1993 Interzonal. I did, however, discover that he was no longer with us. From The Sunday chess column (telegraph.co.uk) for 16 November 2003 by Nigel Short:-

After returning home to Egypt from last month’s African Games in Abuja, Nigeria, Esam Aly Ahmed, a 38-year-old International Master ranked sixth in his country, dropped dead from cerebral malaria. The 60-year-old head of delegation did likewise the following day. The disease, which requires urgent treatment, had not been detected in time.

These various researches left me little time to tackle any other item on my long TODO list, so I spent the available time delving further into the Complete History of the World Championship. An unfortunate side effect of these researches is to unearth elsewhere on the web many unattributed copies of the original material.

For example, a search on "there have been many matches between the leading players" returns not only the original page History of World Championship matches (forums.ubi.com, 11 July 2008), but also a bootlegged page World Chess Championship 1886 Pre-Fide (pakchess.org, 4 September 2009). I'm sure the forums.ubi.com page is the original, because I've also been copied by the pakchess.org site. For example, the page The History of Chess | PAKCHESS has links to copies of many articles from my own page on Chess History. Authorized? Of course not. Attributed? You must be kidding!

Database for Chess History

Since I'm still blocked from creating new crosstables, as I discussed in 2009-2010 Women's Grand Prix, Jermuk (Not!), it was time to take positive action. The Women’s Grand Prix in Ulaanbaatar will soon be finishing and I'll need to do an update when it does. After doing the necessary homework, I ordered a copy of Microsoft Access 2010, which should arrive in a few days.

While waiting, I decided to catalog my existing databases to see which would be priorities for conversion. I found around 200 databases scattered all over the personal directory of my hard drive, some pertaining to a single event, like a FIDE World Cup, some much larger. The largest databases cover the following areas.

• Bibliography
  
• Chess960
  
• Notable events
  
• Notable persons
  
• Ratings
  
• Soviet school
  
• Statistics for my WCC site
  
• Zonals

After I install the new database software, it will be a good time to convert the entire set of databases into a single integrated database for chess history. MS Access offers some functionality for maintaining the data on the Web, but I doubt I'll have the resources to do that. On to the redesign...

Index of FIDE Rating Lists

Some early FIDE rating lists published by Informant (incomplete)

 

Informant		Rating List
15	1973H1	The Rating System in National Applications by Arpad Elo (w/ references)
16	1973H2	FIDE International Rating List A/B/C
17	?
18	1974H2	FIDE International Rating List Men/Women
19	1975H1
20	1975H2	FIDE International Rating List Men/Women	1976-01-01
21	1976H1
22	1976H2	FIDE International Rating List Men	1977-01-01
23	1977H1	FIDE International Rating List Women	1977-01-01
24	1977H2	FIDE International Rating List Men/Women	1978-01-01
25	1978H1	Revised Rating List for 1978
26	1978H2	FIDE International Rating List Men/Women	1979-01-01; sorted by descending rating
27	1979H1	FIDE Supplementary Rating List Men/Women	1979-07-01
28	1979H2	FIDE International Rating List Men/Women	1980-01-01
29	1980H1	FIDE Supplementary Rating List Men/Women	1980-07-01
30	1980H2	FIDE International Rating List Men/Women	1981-01-01
31	1981H1	FIDE International Rating List Men/Women	1981-07-01
32	1981H2	FIDE International Rating List Men/Women	1982-01-01
33	1982H1	FIDE International Rating List Men/Women	1982-07-01
34	1982H2	FIDE International Rating List Men/Women	1983-01-01
35	?
36	?
37	1984H1	International Rating List Men/Women	1984-07-01
38	1984H2	International Rating List Men/Women	1985-01-01
39	1985H1	International Rating List Men/Women	1985-07-01
40	1985H2	International Rating List Men/Women	1986-01-01

Resources for Historical Ratings

Thanks to OlimpBase, here are two more resources related to ratings.

• Historical Elo tables 1971-2000 now available • 'Download Elo tables 1971-2000 file'.
  
  
• All Time Rankings • Lists FIDE top-10s for 1970-1997, and provides issue dates for early lists.

The rgc post (groups.google.com) points to Benoni.de which in turn points to more resources.

FIDE Historical Ratings, July 1990-2000

Several people have asked if I have any midyear rating files. I received the July files for the years 1990-2000 at the same time I received the January files, but never processed them. The July files covering those 11 years are now available in the same directory...

FIDE historical ratings
http://www.mark-weeks.com/chess/ratings/

...as the other files.

FIDE Historical Ratings 1971-79

Continuing with FIDE Historical Ratings 1971-74, I added links for the four new files to the index page of all rating files. (See that previous post for links to other pages mentioned here). Then I did some simple tests on the files.

The first test was to see why there is a different count of players between the 1971 file and another copy on Old in Chess (OiC). I determined that all of the players on OiC are on my new file (WCC), but the WCC file lists three additional players. There are many other differences, especially in the spelling of names. Two of over 160 examples are WCC: 'Tseshkovsky, Vitaly V', OiC: 'Cheshkovsky, Vitaly', and WCC: 'Vinje-Gulbrandsen, Arne', OiC: 'Gulbrandsen, Arne'.

There are also small differences in the number of titled players. WCC lists 83 GMs and 178 IMs; OiC lists 82 GMs and 172 IMs. The ratings for the 589 players found on both files match perfectly, and that is what really matters. It is clear the files have a common source, but have been massaged by different hands. The numbers of players on the four new files are as follows:

1971:   592
1972:   794
1973: 1119
1974: 1096

Except for 1974, when many women disappeared from the list, this compares favorably with growth for the rest of the first decade of FIDE ratings:

1975: 1528
1976: 1650
1977: 1910
1978: 2020
1979: 2426
1980: 2883

Some numbers for subsequent years are 1990: 7786, and 2000: 33383. This compares with 87562 names on the January 2008 FIDE rating list, including 1109 GMs and 2808 IMs.

FIDE Historical Ratings 1971-74

I added four new rating files -- 1971.zip, 1972.zip, 1973.zip, and 1974.zip -- to my directory on FIDE historical ratings. The zipped TXT files were extracted from HTML files sent by Wojciech Bartelski of OlimpBase. The HTML files contained navigation links like...

Elo FIDE 71
http://web.archive.org/web/20060508151817/http://www.chessmile.com/1971N01.php

...(1972N02.php etc.) indicating their origin. The archive pages are no longer available on Chessmile.com, but there is a different version of the first two years on the site's Histoire : Titres et Elo FIDE.

When were the ratings published? The Chessmile page says, '1er classement : publié en juillet 1971; 2e classement : publié en juillet 1972', i.e. published July 1971 and 1972. According to my notes, the other files on my own page (>1975) were issued January of the year used in the file name, so there is a short period transition somewhere.

Another version of the 1971 list on 'Old in Chess' under LISTAS ELO > LISTA 1971, gives the validity dates as '01.07.1971 to 30.06.1972'. The same page says 'Jugadores [Players] 589', but the Chessmile list has 592 names.

The 1974 file is missing almost all women.

When I've had a chance to reconcile the discrepancies, I'll add links to my index page for historical ratings. The page now offers FIDE ratings from 1971 to 1999, with more recent files available from FIDE.com. Thanks, Wojtek!