Dear Friends,
No doubt you remember the open letter published by several of the players who participated in the Women’s World Championship organised in Antakya, December 2010.
We did not comment on it until now. We have been waiting for FIDE’s response – the comment of the FIDE Presidential Board last week. First of all, I want to thank the many players who participated in the event and who contacted me to say that they totally disagree with the content of the letter. Also, I want to express my sincere gratitude to Mr. Makropoulos for his excellent answer.
I want to share with you FIDE minutes for this issue. In Antalya the FIDE Presidential Board made the following observation:
Open letter issue
FIDE’s position has been clearly expressed by the letter of Deputy President G.Makropoulos. The Presidential Board is totally standing behind Turkish Chess Federation in this respect.
I will start my comments by mentioning what we have done in the last four years, investing in women’s chess. We started the Atatürk Memorial in 2008, and it became the FIDE Women’s Grand Prix in 2009. We have organized the ACP Women’s World Cup, women’s round robin tournaments, the Women’s World Championship and more. This year we will organize the World Women’s Team Championship, and next year the European Women’s Individual Championship. If the European Chess Union makes the logical decision, we are still ready to organize it this year, with the highest prize fund ever. Also in 2011 and 2012, we will organize two legs of the new FIDE Women’s Grand Prix.
Why?
Because, the Turkish Chess Federation has made a strategic decision to invest in women’s chess. This is the first thing I want to underline before I go into detail about the open letter.
The second issue is that my federation is a very active federation and experienced in international chess organization. We are like a factory, organizing every year a lot of European or world events and many other international events. I am so happy to reach this point of chess development, since I have played a big role in this over the last six years. Honestly, I should mention that it is very normal to make mistakes when you produce something. We remember our mistakes, and we try to reduce them every time we organize a new event. But, concerning this event in Antakya, the allegations made by the 18 players who signed the Open Letter are more than exaggerated.
Why?
I was present full time during the Women’s World Championship. I followed everything and tried to ensure that all our guests’ needs were met by the organization. Also, as normal, I followed the international media for news of the event. I could not follow the Chinese media, for reasons of language, but apart from that, I can say that I got all the news, especially from Russian web sites. Why I am telling you this now? Because I will give you some examples that you may not have seen.
Let us now go through the open letter item by item:
Price of hotel:
Players say that the price of the hotel is very expensive!
I really can not understand this issue. We bid for the organization of an event, we make our price offer and prize fund offer. We are granted (or not) the right to organize the event following FIDE’s competitive bidding procedure. Then a player comes and makes complaints. This is rubbing salt into the wound – we lost a lot of money on this event. It is not lost as an investment for the future, but it shows red figures in our accounts. We paid exactly 110€ for each single room (full board) in Antakya. And 2.000€ per day to rent the hall we have used during the event. We made 20€ profit each day for each single occupancy room used by the players!
Let us calculate approximately how many nights we sold:
5×80 + 4×40 + 4×22 + 4×12 + 4×8 + 5×6 = 762. Let us say 800 maximum. That makes 16.000€ for us in gross profit on room sales.
Now we paid 42.000€ for rent of the hall. The profit on the rooms does not cover the cost of the hall.
And there were at least 19 organization staff, including appeals, arbiters, TSF staff, journalists, etc. I do not mention the cost of their accommodation.
Indeed no need to go into so much detail; as Mr. Makropoulos mentioned in his official answer, we could have deducted FIDE taxes of 90.000USD from the 450.000USD prize fund, but we did not!
I am proud to say that we spent at least 100.000€ from our account for this world championship. I do not know if there is any other federation in the world that would make such an investment in women’s chess.
Raising this subject in an open letter seems to me to be simply bad manners!
When we come to the point about room prices quoted on the Internet, it is still more ridiculous. They do not have any idea about the hotel business. We all complain sometimes about the different prices paid for flight tickets in the same plane. Hotels operate in a similar way, with a percentage (often 10%) of rooms offered cheaply on the Internet. When you purchase a room on the Internet, you usually get only a bed, with breakfast sometimes, if you are lucky. But when you organize a chess event in a hotel, you book everything. It means you have to cover not just the rooms, but halls, restaurant, lights, overheads, extra staff, and you create a lot of overhead for the hotel. Do not forget that during an event, players play then arbiters, journalists, and others work through the night.
When you purchase a room on the Internet, you do so for 3-4-5 days, or maybe a week. The hotel still has rooms to sell in different classes (at higher rates). But when you organize something, you block book the hotel. Then they charge you more than the Internet offer price. And our price here is not bed and breakfast, it includes lunch and dinner.
Also, do not forget that city hotels all over the world sell their halls for other activities; for meetings, weddings etc.
This is what we faced there in reality. What the players claim is unfair!
Transportation Cost from Airport:
The players say that we charged them more than the cost of a taxi from airport. In the most simplistic sense, this is true, but … When you fly anywhere in the world, you may get a taxi; there is usually a line of them waiting outside the airport arrival terminal. You go to the taxi queue, wait your turn, open the door, get in and off you go. But we met all players at the airport, our staff helped them and they did not have to wait in line or cope with language difficulties. More than half the players, including some who signed the letter, returned back at three or four o’clock in the morning, again with some of our people helping them (a taxi would cost 50% more). For us it is clear; we did not profit from this, but we covered our expenses for the staff allocated to this service. I do not mind if an organizer chooses to make a profit on this, but we did not.
Taxis would have been much more inconvenient for the players, and more expensive for some of them. Anyway, they were free to choose to take a taxi if they wanted to, so why did they not do so?
Registration Fee (or deposit): For us on one side we know that players are certain and they will come but when we book a room for a player or participant we commit to a no-show cost. Therefore, we get a deposit of 100€ so that if the person does not come, the no-show fee is at least partly covered. We just do not understand why this is an issue. There is no charge for any player here – they all turned up, so the deposits were offset against their accommodation cost!
The Prize Fund:
They say that the prize fund remained unchanged from 2001. In 2001 the prize fund was 450.000 USD – 90.000 USD = 360.000 USD net for the players. Our “unchanged” prize fund of 450.000 USD – 0 USD = 450.000 USD distributed to the players. Personally, I see that as a 25% increase, the players receiving in their pockets 90.000 USD more than the 360.000 USD they got before.
Hotel Conditions:
Dirty and noisy road? The road in front of the hotel is a normal asphalt road. Here is photo gallery from hotel (this opens in Internet Explorer but may not do so in other browsers): http://www.anemonhotels.com/en-us/AnemonAntakya/Pages/PhotoGale.aspx
Also I add here view from Google Earth. As you see, there is a park, the asphalt road and it is not far from the city.
Some of the things published on the Internet about the venue, especially on Twitter by a famous player who signed this open letter, were simply rubbish. She stated that the venue is 40 minutes away from the hotel, and that the hotel is very far from the city centre.
Only the first game of the first round was played in the Archaeological Museum in Antakya. The second game, and tie-breaks of the first round were played in the hotel; I guess not 45 minutes but probably 45 seconds away from her room. The real distance, captured from Google Earth, is exactly 3.0 km.
I am sure she could walk this distance in much less than 45 minutes.
Many players chose to walk into the city centre. Alternatively, you could get a taxi (cost 2-3€) and be in the centre in five minutes (of course, longer if you go during the rush-hour). So why did some players say that the hotel was in the middle of nowhere? Ridiculous!
Also, they fail to understand the importance of playing in a venue such as the museum, just once in their life, for the sake of women’s chess. Sure the conditions there were not perfect, but all should know that we try to advertise women’s chess, to promote it and to get more sponsors. It was fantastic that many TV channels in Turkey showed pictures from there. Is that not good for chess promotion? The sponsors and municipality spend many thousands of Euros to promote their city.
Almost all sporting events are a vehicle for tourism. We should understand that we, as chess people, can not have everything we would wish for. By using the museum, the Turkish Promotion Committee (connected to the Prime Minister) allocated 100.000€ to the municipality. It really pains me that I need to explain such things about the difficulties of collecting such a large prize fund and budget to promote women’s chess.
Other things:
You may ask me, why did they do all this? I have asked myself the same question many times. My possible answers are below.
Finding a reason for your own failure, when a great nation behind you awaits a good result. (Please check the signers; none of them qualified for the quarter finals)
Unfair!
I am sure none of them are against the TSF (I want to believe this). I also believe that it was not a deliberate attempt to make it more difficult for future organizers to raise the necessary funding, but I fear that will be the result.
You may say that maybe they want to improve the conditions of their profession. If so, then …
Why did they not contact me? I was there throughout.
Why did they launch this open letter out of the blue?
Why did the chairperson of the FIDE Women’s Commission send this letter to the Presidential Board, even though her commission members did not agree with her?
Why are all the finalists, the semi-finalists and the quarter-finalists absent from the signatories?
Conclusion:
As TSF, we are not a one-off organizer for an event. In 2011 alone, we will organize the World Women’s Team Championship, the World Amateur, the World Under 16 Youth Olympiad, the European School Chess Championships, and still, perhaps, the European Individual Women’s Championship.
Sure, we make mistakes, but first we would be very happy to receive criticism during the event, so that there is a chance to improve or correct any failings. Such attacks as this Open Letter, will achieve only one thing. The Antakya municipality is investing in chess like many local authorities in Turkey.
This is not fair to them, and to us, after such a huge sum of money has been spent on this excellent organization. Considering the ongoing effects of the global financial crisis, it will be very difficult to find more money for prize funds in future. We say in Turkish, don’t cut the branch of the tree you are sitting on!
The only good part of this painful incident is that it was only those players who had an unsuccessful, or even downright bad result who were involved.
Kudos to the Turkish for pointing out the fabrication by Ms. Kosteniuk. She should publicly apologize to Mr. Ali Nihat, the Turkish Chess Federation, and FIDE.
Kosteniuk is probably pissed because she was knocked out by a player who quit chess and now Hou Yifan is the new chess queen and she gets all the attention.
Kosteniuk published the letter on her site because she wanted a cheap way to promote her blog and herself. It’s a dumb thing to do.
Actually that picture makes the location look horrible. Busy road, nothing remotely of interest, not even shops, and if that patch of car-track-covered dusty grass is a ‘park’ then something has been lost in translation from the Turkish. And is it normal to fleece the players by overcharging for rooms? Where I come from, we arrange special deals with hotels at tournaments so the players get cheaper rates than normal. They don’t have to pay 20 euros a night EXTRA! My sympathy is now firmly with the players who complained.
What was the point of the open letter instead of letting the organizer know directly the problem?
Dear Ali Nihat Yazici and Georgios Makropoulos,
I suggest you guys stop raving for god sake about the enormous favor you are doing to the world chess by organizing world chess championships. As if the world would have stopped playing and organizing chess for the next 100000 years if you guys hadn’t managed to get the funding, sponsors etc etc.. All you guys needed to do was to request for cooperation from the players for overcharging (a fact) during the opening ceremony and convinced them about it by stating these challenges for staging such huge events. All chess players would have appreciated it.
But the major fact it, nobody would have easily believed even if you guys had tried. Why? Because of the high standards of stupidity, arrogance and distrust set by FIDE and now TCF. By aggressively being defensive about the “overcharging” both of you guys have cast doubts in minds of many. Anyways even if Turkish federation didn’t make money during these events ( a big loss for them which they would continue to incur for eternity for the sake of “women chess”) a simple message to everyone about the difficulty and cooperation would have pacified the players. Ohh I forgot the federations care for funding more than players….moreover chess players are mechanical inanimate stuff like computers..right Yazici ???
I guess the open letter of the ladies really got onto your nerves, took about 2 months time to write the reply and still I smell the burnings of the backside from both you fellas. And finally when you utter, ” “The only good part of this painful incident is that it was only those players who had an unsuccessful, or even downright bad result who were involved.” i can see how meticulously you did the profiling of the players who signed the letter. I guess may be these players lost more money while playing and paying those over priced hotel prices ..a remote possibility and the successful players could compensate with their high earnings .may be I am not sure….
I suggest both you guys stop tearing posters of the 18 players in your free time but rather take out time for non-insulting letter writing courses and learning rook moves of chess!
All the best.
Thanks & regards,
Wellwisher
Kosteniuk should be banned from all events organized by the Turkish Chess Federation until she apologize to Ali in an open letter.
Rather Turkish Federation should be banned from organizing any events in the future for its “bazaar” mindset.