The Quiz: Continental team championship
Posted by Webmaster at Thursday, 1st May 2008, 17:49 CEST
It high time to find some free time to match the chess history quiz for your idle amusement. This time you are going to cope with 12 questions testing your knowledge of history of continental team chess championships (6 for Euro tch, 3 for Asia, 2 for the Americas and 1 for Africa). The questions are usually quite hard, but beware! - all of the answers are somewhere inside the database. Have you performed badly - it is more than certain you did not study OlimpBase archives as dilligent as you should!
You are kindly asked to provide with your nickname (or real name if you wish) to make it possible to add your result to the top score list. Your email will be kept strictly confidential, so don't worry, no third party will get it. Since we assume our quizzes should not be subject of hacking or cheating there is neither CAPTCHA filter nor IP check tool installed. Please submit only once. If you like it and want more quizzes please leave your proposal as a comment below.
Enjoy!
Click here to solve quizzes from the past
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Overview of incoming team chess events
Posted by Webmaster at Wednesday, 30th April 2008, 10:26 CEST
There is a number of international team tournaments scheduled for forthcoming months:
---The 27th
Mitropa Cup will be held from 24 May to 4 June, 2008 in Olbia, Italy at the Archaeologic Museum. The organizer of this event is Italian Chess Federation. The tournament will be organized with two separate sections, for men and women.
The participants will be the chess federations of Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Slovakia, Slovenia and Switzerland. The organiser is the European Chess Union. Each team will be composed of four men plus one reserve (for men`s section), two women plus one reserve (for women`s section) and one team captain. Time control will be 90 minutes for 40 moves, followed by 30 minutes to finish the game, with 30 seconds increment after each move starting from move 1. Each team is provided full board accommodation in one triple room and three double rooms in Hotel **** stars. Additional single rooms and accommodation for accompanying persons can be organised.
The Web site of the tournament. Read FIDE note
here.
Downloads:
Regulations (pdf),
Registration Form (xls) ---The annual
European Youth Team Championship will take place in Szeged, Hungary, 13th-22nd June. The championship is open for players born after January 1st, 1990. All European National Federations affiliated to FIDE/ECU are kindly invited to participate in the championship. Each European National Federation affiliated to FIDE/ECU has the right to be represented by one or more boy's team of four players and one reserve and by one or more girl's team of two players and one reserve player.
The Hungarian Chess Federation intends to provide boys and girls during their vacation for a competition in order to promote their chess development, and - at the same time - for organized holidays in a pleasant youth summer resort at river Tisza. The General Assembly of European Chess Federation (ECU) was in favour of having such a European Youth Team Championships U-18. This tournament is declared as official European event.
The tournament will be seven round swiss. Time control: 90 30. Final standings will be decided by game points.
The Web site of the tournament. Read FIDE note
here.
Downloads:
Invitation (pdf),
Registration Form (xls) ---The 4th
World School Chess Teams Championship will be held in Pardubice, the Czech Republic from 9th to 17th July 2008. The organizers of this championship are: FIDE, The International School Chess Union, The Chess Federation of the Czech Republic, AVE-KONTAKT Pardubice agency. The Children Clubs Championship will be organized within the frame of the World School Championship. The tournaments for school chess teams will be in categories U10, U12, U14, U16.
Each national federation may enter an unlimited number of school teams and clubs. Team composition for School Team Tournament is four pupils from the same school and in the same age`s group; any combination of boys and girls is possible. The tournament will be organized in four age categories - U10, U12, U14 and U16.
The event will be seven round Swiss. The time rate should be 90 minutes for the first 40 moves followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game with an addition of 30 seconds per move starting from move 1.
FIDE shall award the title of FIDE Candidate Master to each player of the winning team, subject to the individual achieving 50% from games played.Read FIDE note
here.
Downloads:
General regulations (pdf)---The 38th
Chess Olympiad will take place in Dresden, Germany, the Congress Centre from 12th till 25th November. The organisers are the City of Dresden and the German Chess Federation (DSB). The World Chess Olympiad is open to all Federations affiliated to FIDE as members, each of which can nominate one team for the open and the women’s section, respectively. For the first time in the history women's teams will play at four boards. The number of players in both men's and women's teams was set to five (four players and one reserve). The event was shortened to 11 rounds. Time control is 40 moves in 90 minutes and 30 minutes more to finish the game. There is an increment of 30 seconds added on for every move from move 1.
As for April 15th, as much as 75 nations pre-registered, including newcomer team of Maledives. There are 150 men's and 120 women's team expected with over 1,500 players on the board. The event will be assisted by ca. 150 arbiters and 400 journalists.
The Web site of the tournament.
Downloads:
Pre-tournament bulletin (pdf)
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Historical Elo tables 1971-2000 now available
Posted by Webmaster at Monday, 24th March 2008, 23:55 CET
That missing Elo ratings from the past are tough challenge for any chess historian is no surprise to anybody. The official
FIDE site only provides ratings from 2000 onwards and
benoni.de site allowes to check ratings back to 1990. Unfortunately due to fact it operates on FIDE IDs it does not handle player federation transfers well. It does not provide historical info on deceased players either.
This should no longer be the issue since with the support of many people of good will OlimpBase men finally compiled complete Elo rating list 1971-2000. Based on official, registered data solely, so no rubbish. Ratings prior to 1975 were taken from
Chessmile site (not available anymore) while the rest were provided by indispensable
Mark Weeks as appeared in past Informant volumes. See
Mark's blog for more details.
Things are not so simple though. Over decades nobody took care of preserving rating history. To compile the reliable and standarized list is still a challenge. The provided list does not deal with the problem of unproper spelling of some of players' names or even some rating calculation errors which were common in pre-computer era. It is because the rating lists originate from different sources. Some lists used only acronyms of first names, and some did not. Spelling is sometimes inconsistant over years too (very frequent as far as Arab or ex-Soviet players are concerned). It isn't so bad e.g. with
Krasenkov, M following
Krasenkov, Mikhail, but what about
Tseshkovsky and
Cheshkovsky? Not to mention that some more complicated names seem to appear in more than two variations (check e.g.
Arne Vinje-Gulbrandsen).
For practical purposes our table should be fine, but for sake of purity, and probably future incorporation on to FIDE official database, we should do our best to make the database top quality. So far only names starting with letter "A" have been standarized. The rest of alphabet still waits for its turn.
We are looking for wit volunteers who would contribute a few days on providing the most complete and standarized Elo table database to World's chess community. Please contact us for details.Most of corrections needed to be input are fairly simple, like merging
Vilela, J L and
Vilela, Jose Luis into one record. More difficult ones may be discussed separately one by one.
Download Elo tables 1971-2000 file (8,9 MB, includes auxillary file useful for volunteers only)
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A true story: Nigerian master fights for 1998 Olympiad Medal
Posted by Webmaster at Tuesday, 18th March 2008, 21:25 CET
IM Odion Aikhoje is embroiled in a row with the Nigerian Chess Federation over the rights to his
gold medal he won in the 1998 Chess Olympiad in Elista, Russia. The issue has dragged on for nearly a decade, but the situation has recently become acute after Kunle Elegbede has ramped up the pressure by deferring to government officials. The details of this saga are recounted in a very detailed essay at the Nigerian Chess blog run by Elegbede. What it boils down to is an official holding the medal from the Sports Ministry as a leverage for reimbursement money he was owed. The Ministry was to formally present the medal to Aikhoje, but it was intercepted by the one, Theophilus Caifus. The question remains as to why Aikhoje is being pushed in the middle of a battle between Caifus and the Sports Ministry.
Read full story at The Chess Drum, the Pan-African chess site maintained by Daaim Shabazz.
Nigeria chess players forum - another good reference site
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Meet Klara - Teresa's younger sister!
Posted by Webmaster at Tuesday, 26th February 2008, 23:23 CET
It was a long, sleepless, stirring night! On Ferbuary 26th, at 6:46AM, near the daybreak time, with the first sunbeams shyly penetrating the air my wife delivered our second daughter Klara Bartelska. She is so little and so helpless just mewling to get a portion of mother's milk once in a while. Klara weights 8lb 30oz and is 1'10'' long. Both she and her mother are tired but feel well.
It's hard put in words how happy and proud are Klara's parents. I am still amazed by the very marvel of life manifested in the presence of this little girl. Do not forget that our elder daughter Teresa already turned two in December. Let's hope both girls will grow up righteous women and hopefully play chess and love the game the same as we do.
Keep your fingers crossed!
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