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Letter to Federation Ratings Officers

To: Federation Ratings Officers

The FIDE Qualification Commission would like to thank you for all the work you have done in helping us operate the FIDE Rating System. We recognise that for most of you, this is an unpaid position and we appreciate that you have given up your own time to serve in this role.
The FIDE Qualification Commission regards the FIDE Rating System as one of the most important services that FIDE provides to the worldwide chess playing community. As part of this service FIDE QC believes it is very important that the integrity of the system be maintained, and to do that, we will sometimes call upon your help. We recently have had issues with the submission of events that do not necessarily meet the required standard expected of tournaments that are FIDE rated. In some cases results have been misreported to assist certain players, while in other cases, the tournament itself has been organised with the intention of manipulating the ratings of players. While we do not expect you to detect all cases yourself, Article 9.1 of the Ratings Regulations (“9.1 …Once satisfied that the tournament was conducted in accordance with all relevant FIDE Regulations, the Rating Officer shall be responsible for uploading the TRF file to the FIDE Rating Server.” ) does give you the authority to reject events you may regard as suspicious.

When FIDE QC detects such events from your federation, we will call on you to help us gather information concerning these events. In most cases it will be a simple request for a game file from the Chief Arbiter/Organiser and further details of the tournament organisation, but for more serious cases, we may require other information.
The other request we have is in the area of data accuracy. When new players are added to the FIDE Rating System, it is important to add a correct birthdate, and gender. Feel free to return incomplete tournament submissions to organisers if they are missing this important data, rather than submit them with default values. Fixing incorrect data is often harder than getting it right the first time!

Once again, FIDE QC thanks you for all your hard work, and will provide any assistance you need to carry out your duties.

Regards
Sabrina de San Vicente
Chairperson
FIDE Qualification Commission