English Chess Forum

I wasn’t sure where to put this thread, but I went for ECF Matters as it parallels the “Karpov Candidate for FIDE President” thread. Carl, please feel free to move the thread to General Chat if you think that’s more appropriate.

The tickets for the European Chess Union elections are taking shape. Robert von Weizsäcker has announced his ticket and it includes Nigel Short as the candidate for Deputy President. See http://reports.chessdom.com/news-2010/r ... ker-ticket.

Deputy President is the position currently held by Gerry Walsh (under President Boris Kutin).

Silvio Danailov has also announced his ticket. See http://reports.chessdom.com/news-2010/s ... lov-ticket.

There’s no news yet regarding the tickets of Boris Kutin or Ali Nihat Yazici.

Unlike for the FIDE Elections, there is no requirement for a candidate to be nominated by his or her own Federation. Nor is there any restriction on the number of candidates from any Federation, so the presence of Short on the Weizsäcker ticket does not preclude Walsh or any other English person being a candidate on the ticket of Kutin or Yazici. However, the Board ultimately elected cannot contain more than one person from any Federation.

The elections take place at the ECU General Assembly at the Olympiad. A ticket comprising a President, Deputy President, Vice President, General Secretary and Treasurer is elected en bloc (and hence the members of a ticket must come from different Federations). If no ticket obtains an absolute majority, there is a run-off between the top two.

Three other Board members are elected separately and members of defeated Presidential tickets may be candidates (subject to the different Federations rule).

So far as I know the ECF Board has not decided whom the ECF will be supporting, (Can anyone comment?) It seems to me logical for the ECF to back Weizsäcker, not only because Short is on his ticket but also because Weizsäcker is the only Presidential candidate supporting Karpov. However, I’m sorry that that entails opposing Kutin, who has been a very good President in my view.

I’m pleased to see from Weizsäcker’s announcement that he envisages a continuing role for Horst Metzing, who is an excellent administrator.

According to the ChessBase report at
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=6404

Our goal is to lighten the burden upon the whole chess-playing community – preventing, e.g., their exploitation by tour operators.

Whilst this summons up the vision of innocent chess players being ruthlessly exploited by Thomas Cook or TUI Travel, I suppose he's getting at abolition of a dubious East European practice - You insist that all the participants in an event stay at one of a list of "official" hotels, but you then charge rather more for the accommodation than would be paid by someone booking the same hotel as a normal guest. This contrasts with the approach we expect in the UK where if there's an "event" hotel such as offered by the 4NCL or e2e4, the price you pay is at a discount to the open market price.

Roger,
What you describe as 'dubious East European practice' is actually fairly common worldwide practice. In England, the EPSCA events are run on the same financial format. I don't personally think this is a problem in principle, it is just the costs of many events have got out of hand. Whilst it is relatively easy to identify this problem, finding a solution is much more difficult.
It also seems a little naive of the Weizsacker ticket to raise this issue given that there are powerful vested interests at work here. One would imagine that this would make it very hard for them to get support from certain Federations.

I remember something like this happening at Gibraltar a few years ago, where the entry fee was £100 higher if your accommodation was in Spain, I think they dropped this thereafter as it was unworkable

Matthew Turner wrote:Whilst it is relatively easy to identify this problem, finding a solution is much more difficult.

If x is the total cost of the event and y is the open market cost of the accommodation then the entry fee should be (x-y).

Congresses and the 4NCL wouldn't be able to get away with overcharging for accommodation in the UK - market forces !

Roger,
I am afraid that it is not quite as easy as that. How do you deal with events likes the European Youth Championships where a Federation's first player in each age group receives a 'free' place?

Matthew Turner wrote:Roger,
I am afraid that it is not quite as easy as that. How do you deal with events likes the European Youth Championships where a Federation's first player in each age group receives a 'free' place?

If you don't have a source of funds which can pay for the "free" entries which isn't by loading the "extra" entries, then either you cannot bid or you get the rules changed to abolish free entry. As these youth events are now basically "opens" with unrestricted entry, why is "free" entry necessary?

"I suppose he's getting at abolition of a dubious East European practice - You insist that all the participants in an event stay at one of a list of "official" hotels, but you then charge rather more for the accommodation than would be paid by someone booking the same hotel as a normal guest."

I seem to remember a certain West European Federation trying this with a European Team Championship a few years ago, whereupon the event was hurriedly located elsewhere...

Roger de Coverly wrote:If you don't have a source of funds which can pay for the "free" entries which isn't by loading the "extra" entries, then either you cannot bid or you get the rules changed to abolish free entry. As these youth events are now basically "opens" with unrestricted entry, why is "free" entry necessary?

I thought the issue wasn't covering the cost of free entries from the profit from paid entries, but that the organisers are charging paid entries prices that result in the organisers make substantial overall profits from the event, at a level which some people consider excessive for the work they've done.

The other issue has been the quality of the services the organisers have provided - high prices for poor quality hotels that have not been conveniently located near to the playing venue. Didn't the poor organisation of one event result in the French organiser being banned from organising future events for several years?

Kevin Thurlow wrote:
I seem to remember a certain West European Federation trying this with a European Team Championship a few years ago, whereupon the event was hurriedly located elsewhere...

It's covered in TWIC 206

http://www.chess.co.uk/twic/twic206.html

When the federations became acquainted with the expected cost for their players, they feared it would be too expensive. This had nothing to do with the cost of travelling to Torquay which is likely to be cheaper than Armenia or Elista. The main difficulty was the charge they would have to meet for running the event. This combined with the cost of the hotels and the evening meal was too much for them, possibly by about £30 a person per night.

I'm not sure we ever knew whether the BCF was going into the hotel booking business for Torquay. Usually it would leave it to the local tourist office. British resorts are expensive though compared with some in Eastern Europe.

Roger de Coverly wrote: British resorts are expensive though compared with some in Eastern Europe.

Although with current exchange rates the costs are now favourable if compared to eurozone countries.

"I'm not sure we ever knew whether the BCF was going into the hotel booking business for Torquay. Usually it would leave it to the local tourist office. British resorts are expensive though compared with some in Eastern Europe."

I think BCF just said at the time that the other countries had suddenly randomly dropped out. An informant from another federation said that there was a meeting where prices were discussed, and people said, "We could get hotels cheaper than that", but were told it was a package and they couldn't do that. Allegedly, the main organiser of the tournament was going to be paid £11000 to run it. Obviously, organisers should be paid for their work, but this seemed a lot of money to some people...

We seem to be veering off-topic, so good luck to Nigel and his team!

David Sedgwick wrote:I wasn’t sure where to put this thread, but I went for ECF Matters as it parallels the “Karpov Candidate for FIDE President” thread. Carl, please feel free to move the thread to General Chat if you think that’s more appropriate.

The tickets for the European Chess Union elections are taking shape. Robert von Weizsäcker has announced his ticket and it includes Nigel Short as the candidate for Deputy President. See http://reports.chessdom.com/news-2010/r ... ker-ticket.

Deputy President is the position currently held by Gerry Walsh (under President Boris Kutin).

Silvio Danailov has also announced his ticket. See http://reports.chessdom.com/news-2010/s ... lov-ticket.

There’s no news yet regarding the tickets of Boris Kutin or Ali Nihat Yazici.

Unlike for the FIDE Elections, there is no requirement for a candidate to be nominated by his or her own Federation. Nor is there any restriction on the number of candidates from any Federation, so the presence of Short on the Weizsäcker ticket does not preclude Walsh or any other English person being a candidate on the ticket of Kutin or Yazici. However, the Board ultimately elected cannot contain more than one person from any Federation.

The elections take place at the ECU General Assembly at the Olympiad. A ticket comprising a President, Deputy President, Vice President, General Secretary and Treasurer is elected en bloc (and hence the members of a ticket must come from different Federations). If no ticket obtains an absolute majority, there is a run-off between the top two.

Three other Board members are elected separately and members of defeated Presidential tickets may be candidates (subject to the different Federations rule).

So far as I know the ECF Board has not decided whom the ECF will be supporting, (Can anyone comment?) It seems to me logical for the ECF to back Weizsäcker, not only because Short is on his ticket but also because Weizsäcker is the only Presidential candidate supporting Karpov. However, I’m sorry that that entails opposing Kutin, who has been a very good President in my view.

I’m pleased to see from Weizsäcker’s announcement that he envisages a continuing role for Horst Metzing, who is an excellent administrator.

CJ has posted on another thread that the ECF have now nominated Short.

Nominations close today (Sunday 27th June), so we should learn shortly whether or not Walsh is standing for re-election on Kutin's ticket and, if he is, whether or not the ECF are nominating him also. A Federation may nominate more than one candidate for the same position, but can only vote for one ticket in each ballot in the actual election.