FIDE Qualification Commission: Coronavirus Announcement

The Qualification Commission has received a large amount of correspondence about the consequences with regard to FIDE-rated chess tournaments during the last week.

The Qualification Commission’s approach will be to be as helpful as possible to national federations in assisting them to submit tournaments for rating with minimum difficulty, and National Rating Officers are welcome to contact us with any specific queries.

It is not the responsibility of FIDE to cancel FIDE-rated tournaments in any given Federation. Each Federation may take their own decisions in accordance with their own constitution and statutes regarding FIDE-rated chess within their Federation.

Registration of Tournaments

It is expected that a number of tournaments that were registered will now be cancelled. In this case, Rating Officers should submit a deletion request for the tournament. There are no fees levied for this. If a tournament is postponed until another date, then Rating Officers are instructed to change their dates. These changes will be approved by the Qualification Commission. This includes any “long” events, such as a National League run over a season-long basis.

Cancelled Tournaments while they are in Progress

A number of tournaments have been cancelled by the local or national government while they were in progress; including the recent World Senior Team Championships in Prague. For the avoidance of doubt, rating files with fewer than the registered number of rounds will be permitted for FIDE rating.

National Leagues

A number of season-long national leagues have either had weekends postponed until later in 2020, or the rest of the season cancelled entirely. Title norms that have been achieved over the shorter seasons will be considered provided that at least 9 rounds have been played by the player. In addition, the terms of 1.41c of the Title Regulations will apply to National Leagues that have been postponed or cancelled after 8 of the scheduled rounds.

Long Events

Some events which last up to 90 days are rated in one rating file, rather than a separate rating file for each month. The end of these tournaments may now be postponed for several weeks. In this case, National Rating Officers are instructed to modify the tournament to a “long” tournament and submit a rating file of the games of the tournament played so far. The rest of the tournament can be registered as a continuation of the long tournament once its conclusion is rearranged.

If you have any further questions, please contact QC.

Alex Holowczak
alexholowczak@gmail.com
Qualification Commission Secretary
14th March, 2020