Feedback on C02 Zonals

At the start of the previous post, Feedback on C10 Zonals (February 2025), I wrote,

During the six months of inactivity mentioned in [a] recent post, I received a number of relevant comments about my pages, some of them requiring non-trivial updates to those pages.

A few months after the comment on the 'C10 Zonals', I received an email from Przemek Jahr [PJ; of szachypolskie.pl] titled, 'C02 Qualifiers, 3* EUR Marianske Lazne 1951-08'. That title echoes a page titled, (C02) 1951-1954 Zonal Cycle (m-w.com) plus its corresponding 'Qualifiers' page. The email informed,

According to the report of Andrzej Pytlakowski, a participant of the zonal tournament, published in "Szachy" 9/1951, a play-off for 5th place was not planned and Jan Foltys took this place due to the better Sonneborn-Berger system.

The same email included an attachment showing the cover page of the referenced Polish chess magazine.

The paragraph outlined in red translates to:-

The most fierce battle was probably for fifth place. After 12 rounds, the contenders for this place were, apart from Benko, who had 7 points at the time. Lokvenc, Sajtar and I, all with 6 points each, also claimed. It seemed that Foltys with 5 1/2 points had no chance. However, events took an unexpected turn.

Foltys, who started even worse than Barcza, pulled himself up with a magnificent finish. Foltys gained 4 1/2 points from the last 5 games, winning against Benko among others. The game, as it turned out, decided who would qualify fifth for the interzonal tournament. Benko, playing white, gained an advantage, which he methodically increased. However, he ran into a very serious time deficit, which became the cause of his defeat.

Shortly before the time control, instead of carrying out a winning maneuver, Benko suffered material losses, as a result of which he lost the game. In general, time deficits were the greatest enemy of the talented Hungarian, who was the youngest participant in the tournament.

Foltys and Benko obtained an equal number of 10 points each and shared 5th-6th place. The Sonneborn-Berger evaluation system, which turned out to be beneficial for Foltys, decided who would play in the interzonal tournament.

The rest of the page is undoubtedly equally useful and I might tackle its translation some day.

Feedback on C10 Zonals

During the six months of inactivity mentioned in my recent post, Now I'm Here (January 2025), I received a number of relevant comments about my pages, some of them requiring non-trivial updates to those pages. The first such comment was the continuation of an older email exchange, titled 'Arandjelovac 1976'. It started,

I have investigated the cycle 1975-1978 and I can comment some facts.

The updates, to two related pages, are marked with the initials of the correspondent 'VA' [Vladica Andrejic] on those pages:-

• Zonals 1975-1978 (C10; m-w.com)
• Zonal Qualifiers 1975-1978 (ditto)

VA concluded his comment saying,

I hope that this helps. I cover Interzonals (and some zonals) with some info written in Serbian here:

• http://www.perpetualcheck.com/show/show.php?lan=en&data=T1976005&job=i
• http://www.perpetualcheck.com/show/show.php?lan=en&data=T1976006&job=i

Your favorite online language translator will reveal the secrets of those two pages, which are similar. Thanks, VA!

C31 Zonals++ More Names

The previous post, C31 Zonals++ More Data (February 2024), was about data missing from the page (C31) Zonal Qualifiers 2022-2023 (m-w.com). At the end of the post I noted,

It looks like I'll need another post on this subject to incorporate the Wikipedia data into the other data. I'll come back to this another time.

The resulting update added nearly 100 names. For more notes related to the qualifying players, see Talk: Chess World Cup 2023 (wikipedia.org). Kudos to the Wikipedians who did a nice job documenting the World Cup on the main article.

C31 Zonals++ More Data

In the previous post, C31 Zonal Qualification Paths (February 2024), I wrote,

There are many names missing on the new page. I'll come back later and try to fill in the blanks.

That 'new page' is (C31) Zonal Qualifiers 2022-2023 (m-w.com). I created a database and loaded two sources for data into it:-

• Players who were listed in FIDE's document 'FIDE World Cup 2023: Preliminary lists of eligible players announced' (125 players); see C31 Regulations for World Cup Qualifiers (November 2023), for a link to the document.
• Players who participated at 'FIDE World Cup 2023' (Baku; 206 players).

I determined that of the 125 players in the 'Preliminary lists of eligible players', 11 did not play at Baku. Of the 206 players who played at Baku, 89 were not in the preliminary list. That made 100 names to investigate, which is too many. I turned to the Wikipedia page, Chess World Cup 2023, for help.

The Wikipedia page lists all 206 players who participated in Baku, along with their qualification paths. When I compared FIDE's list of players to Wikipedia's list, I had 35 mismatches. Most of these were due to the usual difficulties with comparing names -- letters specific to a language, Asian names, Spanish names -- along with one real difference in spelling: Aleksandar Indic / Indjic of Serbia. After correcting those mismatches, the lists matched almost perfectly.

From the Wikipedia data, I derived a few counts, summarized in the following chart. The left column shows federations that had more than three players at Baku, out of a total of 86 different federations with at least one player.

The right column shows the counts of players who qualified via a zonal. The middle column shows the counts of players who qualified via a route other than a zonal. Most of the non-zonal codes are easily understood; 'WC' means the 2021 World Cup at Sochi.

It looks like I'll need another post on this subject to incorporate the Wikipedia data into the other data. I'll come back to this another time.

C31 Zonal Qualification Paths

Continuing with zonals++ for the current cycle, after...

• 2023-12-27:- C31 Zonal Clippings, and
• 2024-01-03:- C31 More Zonal Clippings

...there remains...

Still to do: Create a 'C31 Qualifiers' page and add it the appropriate pages.

...The new page is (C31) Zonal Qualifiers 2022-2023 (m-w.com). FIDE's official announcement for the qualifying players appears to have been made prematurely, so there are many names missing on the new page. I'll come back later and try to fill in the blanks.

1998 Zonals 2.x References

In the previous post, 1998 Zonals 2.x (January 2024), I discussed several updates related to the 1998-99 zonal cycle (C18) and that concerned the American continent. For this post, I added the corresponding references to two of those zonal events:-

2.0 San Felipe 1998-10 (A)
2.1 Denver 1998-10 (B)

Both events now have additional info on the page covering the events for that cycle: (C18) Zonals 1998-1999 (m-w.com). Here are a couple of notes for the two events:-

(A) This was a new event that I had previously overlooked while developing the index page for The World Chess Championship Zonals.
(B) I added a link to the post for '1998 Zonals 2.x'. The focus of the post concerned the playoffs for the preliminary ('group') stage of the event, a U.S. championship.

There might be even more to the story. I had overlooked the '2.0 San Felipe' event partly because the winner of that event, Alexander Ivanov, was listed by FIDE as qualifying through one of the 'Nominees by Continental President'. In a feature article for the April 1999 issue of Chess Life, GM Ivanov wrote,

I was happy to hear the news from the last FIDE Congress in Elista (Kalmykia), held during the last Chess Olympiad, that a tournament called the Pan American Championship, to be held in San Felipe, Venezuela from October 25 through November 5, 1998, would be a qualifying event for the coming FIDE World Championship in Las Vegas.

According to my page (C18) Zonal Qualifiers 1998-1999 (m-w.com), there were four nominees in the same category as Ivanov:-

Nominees by Continental President
15. Africa: H. HAMDOUCHI (MAR)
16. America: A. IVANOV (USA)
17. Asia: AL-MODIAHKI (QAT)
18. Europe: L. ARONIAN (ARM)

Did any of the other three nominees qualify via a competition? My preliminary investigation said, 'No', but I am not yet convinced. TBD.

1998 Zonals 2.x

A post from earlier this month, World Championships from 50 and 25 Years Ago (January 2024), uncovered a couple of details about the 1998-1999 zonals. The relevant info is in the following clipping which was taken from that post.

All of that together prompted me to comment,

The qualification of GMs Gulko, Ivanov, and Kudrin, is not consistent between the two sources. GM Ivanov's qualification is confirmed in TWIC 209, but the details about the other two GMs need further investigation.

TWIC 209 reported,

12) Panam Championship in Venezuela • GM Alexander Ivanov took the single qualifying place for Las Vegas scoring 6.5/9 ahead of Alexandre Lesiege on 6.

As far as I can tell, this was the first Continental Championship to serve as a qualifier for a World Championship. The same issue of TWIC, 'The Week In Chess 209 - 9th November 1998 by Mark Crowther', also carried news about that year's U.S. Championship.

3) US Championships 1998 • In group A Nick DeFirmian and Dmitry Gurevich progressed to the knockout stage and Seirawan, Dzindzichashvili, and Kudrin played off for third place seeing Kudrin qualified for Las Vegas eliminating Seirawan, possibly one of the US's best prospects. • There was a four way tie in group B and Gulko, Benjamin, Fedorowicz and Shaked played off seeing first Benjamin qualify after a round robin involving the players, then Shaked beating Gulko to take the other place.

TWIC had no crosstables for the playoffs. The February 1998 issue of Chess Life also gave no details. In GM Nick de Firmian wins the 1998 US Championship! (archive.org -> uschess.org), USchess.org reported,

Standings: Group A after 7 (Top 2 Advance to Semi-Finals); de Firmian and Gurevich Advance; Kudrin takes 3rd in play-offs • de Firmian and Gurevich qualify for the two Semi-Final spots from this group and do not need to go through the play-offs. Kudrin wins the play-offs to take third in the section and qualify for the WCT ['World Championship Tournament'].

Standings: Group B after 7 (Top 2 Advance to Semi-Finals) Benjamin and Shaked advance to SemiFinals; Gulko takes 3rd. • There was a play-off on Sunday between Gulko, Benjamin, Fedorowicz and Shaked to determine both the two who would advance to the Semi-Finals on Monday and the 3rd place who would also qualify for the 1999 FIDE World Championship Tournament event. Benjamin and Shaked advanced to the SemiFinals; Gulko took 3rd.

Since the U.S., aka Zone 2.1, produced six qualifiers with only five qualifying spots, I'm guessing that there was some sort of arrangement among American chess officials to have both Gulko and Kudrin qualify using a spot reserved for the Las Vegas organizers ('Nominee by the Administrator').

I'll add all of this to the page (C18) Zonals 1998-1999 (m-w.com), under '2.0 San Felipe (VEN) 1998-10' [new] and '2.1 Denver 1998-10'. I'll also add any further info if I discover it.

World Championships from 50 and 25 Years Ago

Last week on my main blog, I encountered a few World Championship topics that needed more time than I had. In the post January 1974 & 1999 'On the Cover' (January 2024), I commented,

That mention of Fischer and Marcos deserves further exploration, but I'm worried it might lead me down a rabbit hole from which I won't return in time to finish this current post. Maybe later...

That comment referred to January 1974, while a second comment in the same post referred to January 1999:-

The cover introduction continued with news about two World Championships. [...] Once again, that news 'deserves further exploration'.

The post quoted 'Chess Life & Review (50 Years Ago)':-

The great Philippines International Tournament, the most important chess event ever held in Asia and the Pacific area, ended November 6. The significance of the event was highlighted by the ceremonial presence of World Champion Bobby Fischer and Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos.

Re Fischer/Marcos, good thing I didn't go any further for that post. I've already dealt with the meeting in posts on both of my blogs:-

• 2012-09-19: The Philippine Connection • (WCCB) '1973 Manila: Fischer visits tournament; meets Marcos, Campomanes'
• 2014-07-03: Treated Like a World Champion • (CFAA) 'I [found] a 1973 Fischer photo that doesn't yet seem to have been made available on the web'

Here is that Fischer photo again.

Re the 1999 'news about two World Championships', the first concerned the FIDE Knockout Matches; Las Vegas, VII-VIII, 1999 (m-w.com). The post quoted 'Chess Life (25 Years Ago)':-

De Firmian, Benjamin, and the other semi-finalists, Dmitry Gurevich and Tal Shaked, qualified to participate in the FIDE World Championship, along with Boris Gulko and Sergey Kudrin, both of whom qualified by previous performance or rating; and Alexander Ivanov, who qualified by winning the 1998 Pan American Championship, which was held in Venezuela in October. Gata Kamsky has also been invited (by rating).

My page Zonal Qualifiers 1998-1999 (C18) (m-w.com) has info on all eight players:-

Zone 2.1
55. J. BENJAMIN (USA)
56. N. de FIRMAN (USA)
57. D. GUREVICH (USA)
58. T. SHAKED (USA)
59. B. GULKO (USA)

Nominee by the Administrator
14. S. KUDRIN (USA)

Nominees by Continental President
16. America: A. IVANOV (USA)

Qualified by ELO (average January-July 1998)
85. G. KAMSKY (USA) (2720)

The qualification of GMs Gulko, Ivanov, and Kudrin, is not consistent between the two sources. GM Ivanov's qualification is confirmed in TWIC 209, but the details about the other two GMs need further investigation.

Re the 1999 news about the second World Championship, the January 1999 CL said,

Alisa Galliamova-Ivanchuk forfeited her match with Jun Xie. China was awarded the bid for the match; Alisa wanted to play at least half of the match in Russia, so she didn't show up at all. Jun Xie, the former women's world champion, will now challenge the current champion, Susan Polgar.

The reference is to an unprecedented sequence of matches for the 1995-99 cycle outlined on the World Chess Championship for Women (m-w.com). The Candidates final match is listed there as 'Xie Jun - Galliamova (forfeit)'; the subsequent World Championship match is listed first as 'Xie Jun - Z.Polgar (forfeit)'; and then as 'Xie Jun - Galliamova'. I've already posted twice about these matches:-

• 2017-02-08: 1995-1999 Women's Cycle
• 2017-02-15: The Last Standard Women's Cycle

There is nothing more to add here.

C31 More Zonal Clippings

In the previous post, C31 Zonal Clippings (December 2023), I created the incomplete page Zonals 2022-2023 (C31) with about half of its required clippings. I also noted,

I'll add the other half of the events for the next post on this blog.

I did this and then added a link for the 'C31 Zonals' to two index pages: World Chess Championship and World Chess Championship Zonals. The 'Still to do' at the end of the previous post remains 'Still to do'.

C31 Zonal Clippings

Following last week's post, C31 Zonals Indexed (December 2023), I created a new page titled, World Chess Championship : (C31) Zonals 2022-2023 (m-w.com). The code 'C31' follows my convention for numbering the World Championship cycles.

I then added clippings for about half of the C31 events already listed on the index page, The World Chess Championship Zonals (also m-w.com). I'll add the other half of the events for the next post on this blog.

For the equivalent post in the previous cycle, see C30 Zonal Clippings (January 2022). Documenting that cycle also required two posts.

Still to do: Create a 'C31 Qualifiers' page and add it the appropriate pages.

C31 Zonals Indexed

A few weeks ago, in C31 Zonals (November 2023), I identified zonals++ for the current cycle, and wrote,

The table above is enough to proceed with populating the 22 events on the [zonals] index page.

The address of that index page is The World Chess Championship Zonals. For the equivalent post on the previous cycle, C30 Zonals Indexed (January 2022), I developed some statistics about the zonals for the cycle compared to previous cycles. For this post, I'll have to settle for displaying the section of the index page relevant to C31.

The last six columns are internal controls used to maintain the consistency of the database.

C31 Zonals

Continuing with qualifying events for the 2023 World Cup, Baku (August 2023), after identifying the events in C31 Regulations for World Cup Qualifiers (November 2023), I ended saying,

Next step: Add the 22 events on the right to the index page, World Chess Championship Zonals.

That index page needs a date and a venue for each event. Of the 22 events identified on the 'C31 Regulations' post, I found 21 reported in Mark Crowther's 'The Week in Chess' (TWIC). They are listed in the table below, which follows the format established for the previous cycle in the post C30 Zonals (January 2022). The missing C31 event is discussed in a note to the table.

1.0: TWIC 1400 (2021)
1.0: TWIC 1431 (2022)
1.0: TWIC 1480 (2023)
1.10: TWIC 1456

2.0: TWIC 1436 (2022)
2.0: TWIC 1490 (2023)
2.1: TWIC 1459
2.2: TWIC 1433
2.3: TWIC 1429
2.4: TWIC 1460
2.5: TWIC 1479

3.0: TWIC 1461 (2022)
3.0: TWIC 1492 (2023)
3.1: TWIC 1491
3.2: TWIC 1488
3.3: TWIC 1488
3.4: TWIC 1491
3.5: TWIC 1484
3.6: TWIC 1473
3.7: TWIC 1470

4.0: [A] (2022)
4.0: TWIC 1489 (2023)

[A]
There are other issues here. The event was identified in the previous post as 'Continental Chp [Africa 2022] (3)'. The number in parentheses is the number of players qualifying from the event. FIDE said three players qualified, but their list of players had four names. Was there a playoff? No, it turns out that the list of players was wrong. Another FIDE page 2022 African Chess Championship: Bassem Amin and Shahenda Wafa claim titles (worldchampionshipcycle.fide.com; September 2022), says that

3. GM Hesham Abdelrahman

was the third qualifier. The list of all players said that

3. Hesham
4. Abdelrahman (EGY)

were the third and fourth qualifiers. The error is easily understood and corrected. The table above is enough to proceed with populating the 22 events on the index page World Chess Championship Zonals.

C31 Regulations for World Cup Qualifiers

In Small Projects Checkpoint (September 2023), I wrote,

One topic demands attention -- documenting the qualification paths for the most recent World Cup, 2023 World Cup, Baku (August 2023). It's a time consuming procedure that involves pulling together various sources of information. Here's what I produced for the previous cycle (C30 in my system of numbering the World Championship cycles):-
* 2021-10-27: C30 Regulations for World Cup Qualifiers
* [...]

Those links in italics are repeated here for easier reference. Since this isn't the first time I've performed the exercise, I've added links to 'Regulations' posts for previous cycles:-

• 2023-08-30: 2023 World Cup, Baku (Azerbaijan)
• 2021-10-27: C30 Regulations for World Cup Qualifiers
  
  
• 2019-09-18: C29 Regulations for World Cup Qualifiers
• 2017-09-13: C28 Regulations for World Cup Qualifiers

For C31, the current cycle, FIDE published a preliminary list of qualifiers:-

• 2023-05-29: FIDE World Cup 2023: Preliminary lists of eligible players announced (fide.com)

That document leads to a PDF, Qualified players for the World Cup 2023 (fide.com). I downloaded the PDF, extracted the various lists, reformatted them for use in a database, and produced the following composite image. It shows the various qualification paths for the 2023 World Cup.

The chart on the left counts players who qualified by various routes other than a World Cup qualification tournament. The numbers in parentheses, e.g. 'FIDE President's nominee (4)', are copied directly from FIDE's document. The number in the 'Ct' column are my own counts. The chart on the right counts players who qualified via a tournament played in the current World Championship cycle.

Next step: Add the 22 events on the right to the index page, World Chess Championship Zonals.

Rules for the 1973 Interzonals

After posting Qualifiers for the 1973 Interzonals (October 2023) a few weeks ago, I found another source of info even more detailed than the source for that post. The January 1973 issue of Chess Life (p.33-34) had an article titled 'FIDE Congress : The Men's World Championship' by Fred Cramer, Vice President of FIDE. It covered all aspects of the cycle, including the following section headers:-

• The Cycle Ending at [1972] Reykjavik
• The New Cycle, First Stage : The 1972 Zonals
• The 1973 Interzonals - The Euwe Plan
• The 1973 Interzonals
• The 1974 Candidate's Matches
• The 1975 World Championship Match
• A Championship Match Out of Cycle?

I extracted the two sections covering the 1973 Interzonals and created the following composite image.

(Can be expanded)

I then added the image to my page (C09) Zonals 1972-1975 (m-w.com). The Cramer article presents new details about several aspects of the Interzonals and sometimes contradicts sources that I have previously used. Since Cramer was as close to the original discussions as anyone, his word takes precedence.

Qualifiers for the 1973 Interzonals

Continuing with Small Projects 'On the Cover' (October 2023), the next small project is a follow-up to September 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover' (September 2023). In those posts I noted,

The bulletin said, [...] Here are the final scores from Petropolis. [...] Bronstein replaced Leonid Stein, who died suddenly a few weeks before the tournament. • 'Bronstein replaced Stein', doesn't square with related info on my other pages. More research needed

By 'related info' I was referring to two pages. The first page was (C09) Zonals 1972-1975 (m-w.com). There I quoted a correspondent, EK:-

I am missing one player. I have Polugaevsky, Smyslov, Keres, Stein, Gligoric, Hort, Portisch and ???. That missing player was then in late-1972/early-1973 replaced by Panno. After Stein passed away in July 1973, he was replaced by 2nd reserve Bronstein. Who was that missing player that was nominated by committee but declined to participate?

The second page was (C09) Zonal Qualifiers 1972-1975 (m-w.com). There I quoted another correspondent, GMG:-

The FIDE committee selected the players who did not win a zonal spot. Leonid Stein was selected, but passed away a few weeks before, and was replaced by Oscar Panno. Bronstein, the second reservist, made a special appeal to FIDE president Euwe and was allowed to play. • Reshevsky was chosen as third reserve by the FIDE selection committee. He seems to have been been given a place to balance the numbers at Petropolis when FIDE president Euwe gave second reservist Bronstein special dispensation to play.

It turns out that neither of those correspondents got the story right. The full story starts with the following info, taken from an appendix titled 'How They Qualified' (p.282) in World Championship Interzonals : Leningrad and Petropolis 1973 by Wade, Blackstock, and Kotov.

The first point to note is 'two, as nearly equal as possible, 16-players tournaments'. In fact, both events had 18 players; see:-

• 1973 Leningrad Interzonal (m-w.com)
• 1973 Petropolis Interzonal (ditto)

Wade, Blackstock, and Kotov (WBK) say that the 32 Interzonal participants (16 * 2) qualified as follows:-

*   6 candidates from the previous cycle
*   8 selected by a FIDE commission
* 17 zonal qualifiers
*   1 World Junior Champion

WBK also say that four other participants qualified by rules added afterward:-

*   3 additional zonal qualifiers
*   1 additional World Junior Champion

What about those eight participants who were 'selected by a FIDE commission'? Like EK (above), WBK listed only seven names. (This isn't the only omission on the WBK page, but the details are not important for this discussion.) Six names are the same on both lists, but EK mentions Gligoric as the 7th, while WBK mentions Tal. The six names on both lists plus Gligoric and Tal all played in the two Interzonals.

In addition to the eight selected participants, WBK listed more players as reserves: Panno, Bronstein, Reshevsky, Ivkov, and Mecking. Other sources say a total of 14 players was nominated by FIDE (apparently 8 + 6), but this doesn't change the narrative.

Both Panno and Reshevsky qualified from zonals -- as did Ivkov and Mecking -- leaving only Bronstein as a reserve player not qualified otherwise. How did my two correspondents, who were generally accurate in their other remarks on similar topics, make their mistakes?

According to WBK, the 13/14 players selected by the FIDE commission were known 'before 31 December 1971'. The zonals were all played in 1972. It appears that most of the players on the FIDE reserve list, wanting to boost their chance of qualifying for the Interzonals, decided to participate in the appropriate Zonal. Unless a researcher was aware that some players were on two different lists of (potential) qualifiers, he had only half the story.

It's worth noting that Panno qualified from a zone that was expanded from two to three qualifiers at the 1972 FIDE Congress, Skopje. Quinteros and Panno finished tied for 2nd/3rd at the zone 8 tournament, held at Sao Paulo in May 1972. If the number of qualifiers from the zone had stayed fixed at two, Panno would have played a match against Quinteros for the second qualifying place. I couldn't find any trace of a match between the two players in 1972.

Getting back to September 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover', the simple statement 'Bronstein replaced Stein' was the truth, if not the whole truth. I hope the preceding discussion is closer to the whole truth.

Small Projects 'On the Cover'

Last week's post, Small Projects Checkpoint (September 2023), was all about establishing a plan for the next few months on this blog. For example,

One topic demands attention -- documenting the qualification paths for the most recent World Cup, '2023 World Cup, Baku' (August 2023).

On my main blog, 'Chess for All Ages', the past year has seen a dozen posts on various aspects of the World Championship. It's useful to summarize these posts in order to group them chronologically using this blog's system of labels. Posts marked '(*)' need further attention to develop some interesting aspect which was only mentioned in the original post.

• 2022-11-18: 'A Clock Without Hands' • '"We're nearing the end of this blog's 'Fischer Friday' series". I'll end the series with a post on "1975 Fischer forfeits to Karpov" (m-w.com)'; also summarizes previous posts in Fischer series
• 2022-12-23: Wayback to Chess.net • 'What did former World Champion Karpov say exactly?'
• 2022-12-30: World Championship Columnists • 'In the mid-1990s, both Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov -- bitter rivals at the time -- wrote separate columns for the USCF's Chess Life'
• 2023-01-03: January 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover' • 'Interviews of Fischer, Spassky, and Gudmundur Thorarinsson, president of the Icelandic Chess Federation'
• 2023-01-05: Chess at Trump Tower • 'Intel World Chess Championship Quarterfinal Matches'
• 2023-02-02: February 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover' • CL: 'Anand cuts through FIDE knock-out to challenge Karpov'
• 2023-03-09: March 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover' • 'Karpov defended his FIDE World Championship title'; 'Kasparov will finally defend his PCA World Championship title'; 'Ilyumzhinov has announced plans to make the knockout world championship an annual affair. Las Vegas is high on the list of possible sites for 1998.' (*)
• 2023-04-18: April 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover' • 'Byrne's progress in that World Championship cycle' [needs better intro in post]; ' news of Kasparov's non-FIDE World Championship title; see also the letter from Karpov' (*)
• 2023-07-20: July 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover' • 'FIDE World Champion Anatoly Karpov addressed more than 200 players'
• 2023-08-15: August 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover' • IZ 1973 Leningrad; Shirov/Kasparov news (*)
• 2023-09-12: September 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover' • IZ 1973 Petropolis, Brazil; '"Bronstein replaced Stein", doesn't square with related info on my other pages. More research needed' (*)
• 2023-10-03: October 1973 & 1998 'On the Cover' • Vukcevich; Kasparov - Shirov (WCC); *1998* FIDE World Championship, Las Vegas (*)

I trust that the title and description of each post is sufficient to place it chronologically.

Small Projects Checkpoint

After last week's post, Forthcoming Events (September 2023), it's time to shift gears. In the past I regularly prepared a summary of open points that required attention. The most recent posts were for 2020 and 2021:-

• 2020-02-26: Small Projects for 2020
• 2021-02-24: Small Projects for 2021

I'm not yet prepared to do a similar overview, but at least one topic demands attention -- documenting the qualification paths for the most recent World Cup, 2023 World Cup, Baku (August 2023). It's a time consuming procedure that involves pulling together various sources of information. Here's what I produced for the previous cycle (C30 in my system of numbering the World Championship cycles):-

• 2021-10-27: C30 Regulations for World Cup Qualifiers
• 2022-01-12: C30 Zonals
• 2022-01-19: C30 Zonals Indexed
• 2022-01-26: C30 Zonal Clippings
• 2022-02-09: C30 More Zonal Clippings
• 2022-02-16: C30 Zonal Qualification Paths
• 2022-03-30: C30 Zonal Hybrid Events

While I was looking at those posts, I added the phrase 'World Cup' to my index pages. The entries for World Cup events previously listed only venues and years. That worked when there was only a single qualifying event for the Candidates event, but in recent years there have been as many as three qualifiers: the World Cup, the Grand Swiss, and the Grand Prix.

For the current cycle (C31), the Grand Prix has been scrapped and replaced by 'High-Level International Tournaments (HIT)'. See FIDE: 'No' to GPX and GCT; 'Yes' to HIT (January 2023), for the previous post on the subject.

Zone 1.6 (Russia) Becomes Zone 3.8

Here's continuing a story from my main blog that was mentioned in First Yahoos of 2023 (January 2023):-

2023-01-30: Russian Chess Federation moves to Asia (chessbase.com) • 'The Russian Chess Federation has advised the European Chess Union that they have applied for membership of the Asian Chess Federation, and that they intend to withdraw from the ECU as soon as they have been admitted.'

The Europeans reacted immediately:-

• 2023-01-30: Statement of the European Chess Union (europechess.org) • 'The European Chess Union (ECU) hereby expresses its position on the possible transfer of the Russian Chess Federation (RCF) to the Asian Chess Federation (ACF). '

FIDE took a few weeks to respond formally:-

• 2023-02-22: FIDE resolution on the Russian Federation joining the ACF (fide.com) • 'The FIDE Council reviewed yesterday, February 21, the report prepared by the Constitutional Commission on the request made by the Chess Federation of Russia (CFR) to join the Asian Chess Federation (ACF).'

The ECU reaction was again immediate:-

• 2023-02-22: Statement of the European Chess Union – 22.02.2023 (europechess.org) • 'Following the FIDE Council’s decision concerning the proposed transfer of the Russian Chess Federation (RCF) to the Asian Chess Federation (ACF), the European Chess Union (ECU) hereby declares [...]'

The vote of the Asian Federation was overwhelmingly in favor of the transfer, with six abstentions:-

• 2023-02-28: Asia votes 29:1 to admit Russian Chess Federation (chess24.com; Colin McGourty)

The Chess24 report discussed the qualification for places in a forthcoming stage of the World Championship.

It’s already been confirmed by the European Chess Union that players who were already enrolled in the European Championship that starts in Vrnjacka Banja, Serbia in three days’ time will still be able to play -- and potentially take one of the 23 spots available in the upcoming World Cup. [...]

It appears there’s nothing to stop players competing in Serbia and then, later in the year, competing in the Asian Continental Championships in Kazakhstan, for which no dates have yet been set, according to FIDE’s calendar. The question of World Cup places is an interesting one, with the regulations of the 2023 World Cup, to be held in August in Baku, Azerbaijan, allocating spaces based on the number of players in the World Top 60 in January 2022.

Counting individual players, the Russian federation is FIDE's largest; see FIDE Rating List - January 2023 (January 2023), also on my main blog, for some numbers. The full impact of the transfer remains to be seen.

C30 Zonal Hybrid Events

My most recent post on the series of events that kicked off the current cycle, C30 Zonal Rating Reports (March 2022), didn't go very smoothly. As I wrote then,

I encountered a problem -- most of the events had no rating reports. I don't know if they are missing because the events weren't rated -or- because they are documented elsewhere -or- because I made a mistake. I didn't have time to investigate more thoroughly.

A few days later I learned that FIDE had changed its presentation of ratings -- Mark Crowther on Twitter: "@FIDE_chess The old version of the page is back..." -- and had problems with it. That encouraged me to look at the rating reports again, but the zonal++ events were still missing.

Not having another good idea for this week's post on this blog, I decided to document one of the many hybrid events that made up the bulk of the zonal stage of the current cycle. I've already looked at the technology, once on this blog in FIDE Hybrid Competitions (March 2021), and once on my main blog in The Tornelo Online Platform (June 2021).

Last year the European Chess Union (ECU) issued a series of reports on its own World Cup qualifier. The reports explained, in text and in photos, how the tournament was conducted:-

• 2021-05-23: European Hybrid Qualification Tournament Starts (europechess.org, as are the other reports in this list)
• 2021-05-26: R1 report - European Hybrid Qualification Tournament
• 2021-05-28: R2 report – European Hybrid Qualification Tournament
• 2021-05-30: 36 players qualified for FIDE World Chess Cup
• 2021-05-31: Vladislav Artemiev wins European Hybrid Swiss Tiebreaks

That first report, 'Tournament Starts', included a couple of important references:-

• Official Regulations – European Hybrid Qualification event (europechess.org)
• FIDE Requirements for Hybrid World Cup 2021 Qualifiers (handbook.fide.com)

The 'FIDE Requirements' included a brief section:-

7. Rating calculations (Decision pending)

Since that section has been there for a year or so, we can conclude that the hybrid events were not rated. And that explains why there were no FIDE rating reports for the qualification events.

C30 Zonal Rating Reports

After C30 Zonal Qualification Paths (February 2022), the next step would be a post like C29 Zonal Rating Reports (March 2020), to identify the different events on Fide.com (more specifically ratings.fide.com). When I started to do this, using C30 Zonals 2020-2021 (m-w.com) as a guide, I encountered a problem -- most of the events had no rating reports.

As I write this post, I don't know if they are missing because the events weren't rated -or- because they are documented elsewhere -or- because I made a mistake. I didn't have time to investigate more thoroughly. In the meantime, I located the same events on Chess-results.com:-

• 1.0 2021-05-29: European Hybrid Qualification
• 1.10 2021-04-25: European Small Nations Hybrid
• 2.0 2021-05-29: American World Cup Qualification Stage - FIDE World Cup 2021 Knock Out - Registrations (links to three stages)
• 2.1 Chess-results.com?
• 2.2 2021-06-03: Online Canadian Qualifier
• 3.0 2021-05-29: Asian Individual Hybrid Chess
• 3.0i 2021-05-30: AICF World Cup Qualifier
• 3.1 2021-06-07: Zone 3.1 Chess Championships 2021
• 3.2 2021-06-09: SAIF Powertec Asian Zonal 3.2 Chess Championship 2021
• 3.3 2021-05-09: Zone 3.3 Zonal Chess Championships 2021
• 3.4 2021-05-15: Zone 3.4 Zonal Open Championship 2021
• 3.5 2021-05-31: Zone 3.5 Zonal Open Championship 2021
• 3.6 Chess-results.com?
• 3.7 2019-12-19: National Senior Chess Championship - 2019
• 4.0 2021-05-27: 2021 African Individual Chess Championships - Open Section

I'll look at this once more before I update the page Zonals : Links and Other References; Last updated 2020-03-11 (m-w.com; 'Reports from ratings.fide.com'). Note that two events are also missing on Chess-results.com. Something is wrong here.