Beginning Monday March 5, 2007 @ 6:30pm Central Time, the North American Chess Association and the Touch Move Chess Center proudly present the 4th North American FIDE Invitational.
A field of 10 players will mentally spar over 9 rounds with 7 players competing for their IM norms:
IM Jesse Kraai
IM David Vigorito
IM Angelo Young
FM Mehmed Pasalic (holds 1 IM norm)
FM Florin Felecan (holds 1 IM norm)
FM Albert Chow
Dr. Tansel Turgut
Arjun Vishnuvardan
Gauri Shankar
Robert Loncarevic
If the resources (people) are available to transmit games, they will be relayed on the Internet Chess Club.
This is the 4th event the North American Chess Association has put on. The first event in April 2005 saw IM Ben Finegold earn his 2nd GM norm and FM Jan van de Mortel earn his 3rd IM norm. The second event in January 2006 saw IM Pascal Charbonneau earn his 3rd GM norm. The third event, a monstrous 3 section GM norm event never done before on the North American continent, saw FM Mehmed Pasalic earn his 1st IM norm and IM Giorgi Margvelashvili earn his 1st GM norm.
For information on the 4th North American FIDE Invitational you can go to http://www.nachess.org/fide/feb2007.html (yeah yeah I know it’s March but I haven’t gotten around to change the file name or put all of the previous tournaments’ information back up – but the games are available though from the previous tournaments).
Good Chess to All!
Sevan A. Muradian
The question is whether there are any prizes, I guess. If there are then one mind imagine the IMs are trying to win those. I’ve played in a few of these events on both sides of the table and the titled players usually try pretty hard in my experience. Admittedly my experience doesn’t extend to Myanmar or Budapest.
But who says these tournaments have no sporting interest? Ask the players – I bet the guys who get a chance to play an IM in a decent slow-play game don’t agree with you.
Percy
Are you going to publish all the games online? I mean *ALL* the games.
I think I’d also like to look at the games of the other tournaments that resulted in norms.
“I think I’d also like to look at the games of the other tournaments that resulted in norms.”
Feel free to – they are all posted.
Players’ games to look at include:
IM Ben Finegold
IM Jan van de Mortel (FM before)
GM Pascal Charbonneau (IM before)
FM Mehmed Pasalic
IM Giorgi Margvelashvili
All of them gained a norm at my events.
I cannot speak for most of the participants in this event but I am very close friends with IM David Vigorito and we have discussed this tournament in great depth.
IM Vigorito has been preparing for this tournament for the last few weeks and he definitely does not want to lose rating points on his quest for the GM title, which means he would need to get to 2500 at some stage.
There may not be money on the line but I know David’s pride, and it will be hurt if he does not put on a decent showing in Chicago!
There appears to be more going on here than meets the eye — NOT IN TERMS OF SEVAN’S TOURNAMENT, but rather, in terms of many of the above comments critical of it.
Readers who stumble upon this thread and wonder what’s going on, might want to ponder the possibility that the people who complained here about Sevan and his NACA events, are not as stupid (or as anti-chess) as they sound.
Instead, it may be that those complainers simply have an entirely different, concealed agenda — an agenda that has nothing at all to do with Sevan or FIDE.
Let me take a wild guess that Sevan is NOT the real target of all these seemingly brain-cell-free attacks. Rather, the attacks showing up here may be better understood as a creative new tactic adopted by Susan Polgar’s own enemies — a tactic that involves flooding her site with trollish posts about events that she has seen fit to promote here.
In the past week or so, there have been a fair number of complaints on other chess blogs, by people who say that Susan censored their attempts to post here. In fact, Susan does have an avowed policy of banning Sam Sloan or anyone perceived as a “supporter” of his, from posting on her blog.
So, I’m guessing that these silly comments about the NACA events, may be coming from people who would prefer to post negative things about Susan herself, but are prevented from doing so here because any such comments would be quickly removed. So they seized upon Sevan and his (entirely praiseworthy) tournaments as sort of a surrogate target; a proverbial scapegoat.
Dear Jon,
You are probably correct. Some of the posts that I deleted stated how wonderful a certain candidate is, and he did not commit any crime, and that the court was just going after him, and he was just a victim of circumstance, etc.
Then they went on to bash other candidates. It is the same pattern of lies and deceits that you see on the USCF forum.
None of them wanted to discuss the facts. They do not want to discuss the history of success. They do not want to discuss what has each candidate has done in chess in the last 3-5 years. This has been the same pattern of lies and deceits that went on for decades.
The only difference now is the USCF is not the only place to get the news and facts. Some people screamed about freedom of speech. This is my personal blog and I want to protect its integrity. I am not going to allow people to come here and make things up for political reasons or to harm innocent people.
If they do not like it, too bad, go spam some other sites. If someone has something legit to say, let them register an account with their real names.
By the way, congratulations with the cheating issue. I hope to be able to help you a lot more with that if I am elected and in the position to do something about it.
Best wishes,
Susan Polgar
http://www.PolgarChess.com
Even if one wants to put together norm events on a shoestring, the titled players need to be compensated somehow. I too would prefer prizes to appearance fees, but the IM who’s taking a week off work may not be in a position to afford the financial risk.
When Sevan his first FIDE event (jointly with Glenn Panner), he was profoundly disappointed by the number of short draws. In his subsequent events, he’s done all he could (within budgetary parameters) to promote fighting play. Good for him.
It’s ultimately up to the players themselves to do honor to the game & to their own reputation.
Sevan says he carefully screens his players. Yet if you look at the only expert in his tournament you will see on his MSA a spikes in rating in a match against a player rated over 300 points high in which the lower player scored 3.5/6 ( http://www.uschess.org/msa/XtblMain.php?200601113551-12738381 ). this match resulted in Robert Loncarevic going over 2000 and since then he has steadily declined to under 2000. This type of spike is very suspicious and given he is the lowest rated player Sevan has in the tournament it begs a close scutiny of the event.
To the anon who asked why I delete some of the posts in this thread. Simple. I delete all threads that unfairly attack ANY chess sponsors and supporters.
I know Mr. Muradian. He is very passionate about chess. He is doing what he can with his own money to help some of our players.
I know countless talented American juniors who gave up chess because they never had a chance to play in a tournament for norms.
I will protect all chess enthusiasts, sponsors and supporters. This is not a forum for anyone to go after other people for whatever reasons. My blog is for the purpose of promoting chess positively.
That is my rule and it will stay.
Best wishes,
Susan Polgar
http://www.PolgarChess.com
None of the deleted posts in this thread were attacks on Muradian. Muradian was not even mentioned by name.
I agree with Susan that the lack of events in which there is the possibility of earning a FIDE title norm is a problem for talented players in this country who are motivated by the prospect of becoming International Masters or Grandmasters but who don’t receive invitations to tournaments where norms can be achieved.
The solution, however, is not to organize tournaments that are specifically designed to pass out norms. That is too open to charges of corruption — even if is the soft corruption of the precisely-calculated invitation list, the friendly draw between “equals”, the nice check for appearance money, and the lack of a monetary prize incentive to win.
Incidentally, the US is not so short of FIDE-titled players that we need to be organizing and supporting tournaments like this. For all the complaining about lack of support for chess in this country, the USA has 60 GM’s, 106 IM’s, and 465 titled players in all (including Women’s titles and FM’s). It is behind only Russia and Germany in the number of GM’s and IM’s. So there may be American players dropping out of chess because they can’t get norms, but there are also plenty of players earning norms. Or, at least, we have plenty of chess players who immigrated to the U.S. with their titles and norms.
“The so called expert playing in the event Robert is a strong player he plays a lot higher than his rating in closed tournaments.”
Jon,
That is exactly the reason to question his performance – His inability to perform at the same level against radomly selected players.
Regarding Loncarevic. He is obviously stronger then 2000. The only think i kind of concern of is that he is stronger becasue he is really that good or it’s becasue he bought his points from Alex Stamnov by playing him ‘chess matches’ and beeing at least 300 points below in rating winning them easely.Do you think we could look at those games btw? ( You can check the match on USCF member section).Or maybe we should ask Alex himself about this? What do you guys think?
The anon above who wrote the post that begins: “Regarding Loncarevic. He is obviously stronger then 2000…:”
The anon who posted that is, quite simply, a liar … a liar whose only purpose in posting here is to deceive any naive readers.
In that post he stated that Loncarevic gained points through suspicious ‘chess matches’ against a master named Alex Stamnov. The poster used quote marks to imply (without stating in words) that he believes those matches were fixed or never occurred.
I checked the MSAs back to 2002. Both Loncarevic and Stamnov have been very active. But there were no ‘matches’, with or without quotes; only the one single 6-game MATCH under the url that was posted by an earlier anon.
Moreover, neither Loncarevic’s nor Stamnov’s MSA record shows the slightest hint of sandbagging or any other kind of hanky-panky. Both players’ ratings have been highly stable for years, fluctuating within very narrow ranges. Loncarevich currently is in the lower portion of a rating range he’s held in for the last 5 years, from about 1940 to about 2060.
One of the trolling anons above pointed out (correctly) that Loncarevic’s rating broke above 2000 from his January 2006 match with Stamnov and dropped back to the 1900s soon after. However, that troll conveniently neglects to state what Loncarevic could possibly have gained by temporarily lifting his rating above 2000 this time, that he hadn’t already attained from being above 2000 almost the entire period from late 2002 through late 2004. As I’ve already said, there was no match with Stamnov (or with anyone) behind Loncarevic’s 2002 rating climb; just a few solid tournament performances. And they weren’t even “closed” tournaments as some of our anonomyous trolls maintain: his best performances during that 2002 climb came in that year’s Chicago Open, Illinois Open, and Midwest Class Championships!
Like I said, one or more of the anons posting smears about NACA players here, are liars.
As for Loncarevic, my guess is he an unnamed co-sponsor of the current NACA event and possibly of earlier events. He is by far the lowest rated player in this event, and also was by far the lowest rated entrant in another closed tournament in the Chicago area a year and a half ago, the 2005 Billy Colias Memorial.
There is nothing underhanded about a player in essence buying their way in to this type of event. (In contrast, for the emerging 2007 US Championship, the pending proposal to let one or more sponsors buy themselves a place on the wall chart by donating “a five-figure sum,” would be a terrible thing, in my view.)
Love the post about nice checks for appearance money. The US is very different from here if the nice check is more than two or three hundred dollars.
BillBrock, you’ve kinda lost me there. I’d have thought the most obvious reason for a TD to pair himself with an assistant in the last round and make a quick draw is so they can both get on with running the event. But you think this is all to gain a handful of rating points? Really? You’re going to have to explain the sinister significance a little more.
These events are ‘tailored’ mainly in the sense that the formal norm requirements are met, and the target is set at 6 points rather than 6.5 (this depends upon the rating average of the field; I think it needs to be 2325+ for the norm to drop to 6), not particularly for friendly draws.
How many of the US’s 60 GMs are 140 odd IMs are non-immigrants, I wonder (as in how many got their titles in the US; nothing to do with birth country or race).
Percy
The games from last night are posted at http://www.nachess.org/fide
Click on the 4th FIDE Invitational link on the left, then click on Games.
On another note – Anon – why don’t you have the courage to post your name?
Sevan, if you’re referring to the same lying anon that I’m referring to, then it’s quite obvious why he won’t post any identifying information about himself.
That lying anon recently posted about Loncarevic: “I do not care about how good he at chess (SIC), but the fact the he (SIC) buys points says a lot!”
If Susan is able to obtain any identifying info on individual posters (via IP, MAC addreses or some other technological means), I recommend she do so and turn the information about that poster over to Sevan so it can be forwarded to Mr. Loncarevic in case he’d like to exercise his legal rights against the poster for the blatantly libelous statement.
Note that the poster would have little chance of successfully defending such a suit even if he had some concrete reason to believe that Loncarevic had ever “bought points.” But it’s pretty certain he has no reason, since when challenged about it on this thread he refused to state any information to back his claim, but simply repeated the claim without evidence — a typical tactic used by hit-men pushing hidden agendas on Internet forums that allow anonymous postings.
There are at least two anon’s posting on this thread. It is hard to keep it sorted out because Susan and/or Paul keep deleting the posts.
As for me, I haven’t asked any questions or made any comments about any of the NACA players in this thread. But I have posted my objections to “norm events” with no prizes which are organized solely for the purpose of gaining norms for some of the players. I think it is a form of corruption.
I imagine Seven is well-intentioned, but this type of event should not be recognized by FIDE. If there are a lot of such events, I wouldn’t be surprised, but that doesn’t alter my opinion. People shouldn’t be put in a position where they have to ask people to trust them. When it comes to norms, tournament arrangements should be transparent.
This opinion is apparently so far beyond the pale that it could only come from Sam Sloan or some Sloan-lover. Therefore it cannot be allowed to stand on Susan Polgar’s blog, and has been deleted repeatedly from this blog. On this blog, we must be positive, professional, and not too critical of Susan and her friends.
There is another anon talking about the tournament history of one of the players in the NACA tournaments. That isn’t me.
For what it is worth, I also posted my reasons for posting anonymously. But that was deleted. My protest about its deletion was also deleted. I don’t know whether Jon Jacobs considers me the “lying” anon, or whether he thinks all of them are “lying”; but I’ll thank him for not attributing to me reasons for being anonymous when my attempts to explain it are deleted — not unless he likes shooting at fish in barrels.
I appreciate the reasons for not posting under one’s own name, and have done so myself. However, accountability is good when discussing issues that have an effect on the ratings of others.
One can create a gmail identity so that one has a stable anon persona, held accountable for all comments made under that handle.
When a *house* player/asst TD w/ floored rating offers a draw to a *house* player/TD who gains several hundred points as a result, that too raises ethical issues. 🙂 If they’re not truly competing in the event, they shouldn’t be playing sham games as house players. I would note that one of the players involved has been disciplined for similar misconduct.
I beat Robert Loncarevic four(?) times in a row (including two Muzio Gambits!), then lost my last two games to him. Were I to rejoin USCF, I too should be investigated.
heh heh:
“ratings of others”
should have been
“reputations of others”
Pardon my ELO-centrism.
One more thing before I meet a 1900 for lunch:
IMO there’s nothing unethical about organizing a tournament to maximize the opportunity for norms. This is playing with the rules given by FIDE and the national organizations.
The organizer should do everything possible to encourage fighting chess, so that all norms are honestly earned (or honestly not earned).
Anon – we will have to agree to disagree on some topics.
Since you’ve been polite in the request for transparency I’ll accomodate your request.
The IM’s are paid an appearance fee of $500 USD along with their airfares being compensated. When GM’s have played for me in the past I have compensated them $1000 and in some cases for their airfare as well.
Is the overall norm process flawed? It is. I disagree with the process for obtaining titles as they are currently set forth. But other than expressing my concerns and recommendations to the appropriate parties in both my national federation and FIDE, I have to work within the confines of the construct.
I will not penalize the players by saying ‘I don’t agree with it so I won’t run any of these events’, however I will do what I can to ensure no funny games are being played.
Are there many of these tournaments run? Sure there are. They are littered in Europe and there are a lot of problems there as well. I can easily point to some events where points where bought and sold and players playing at performance levels previously unachievable by them.
If you question the validity of my event I suggest you visit the site. You’ll see there is nothing fishy occurring. I think last nights game between Vigorito-Pasalic should have been quite evident of that. Pasalic is in a tough situtation now needing 7/8 for his norm. And the games yesterday with the exception of one, were all fighting chess.
Sevan, I appreciate your honesty, for what that appreciation is worth coming from an “anon”.
However, I’m perplexed about your position. You seem to agree that “norm events” are questionable in some way and that this approach to awarding FIDE titles is dubious, but you somehow feel compelled to organize norm events and to think that somehow you have no alternatives.
I say again, since my previous statements were deleted, I have no reason to think that you and the players in your NACA events are not completely honest. I am talking only about appearances. But even if your events are beyond reproach in how they are organized and you and all the players are completely honest, it does not seem to me that a norm can be legitimate if it is earned in an event that is contrived for the purpose of providing opportunities to earn norms.
Surely, “norm events” like yours that fall within the letter of the FIDE Handbook rules were not foreseen by FIDE when they wrote those rules and aren’t consistent with the spirit or the intent of those rules. Surely, we don’t want GM and IM titles to be awarded on the basis of designer tournaments.
Your tournaments touch every base in terms of the FIDE rules. They have just the right number of IM’s and titled players. They have the required three federations, though the players seem to be almost local Chicago people, despite representing PHI, MKD, and BLR. (I guess some of them are students, or haven’t separated themselves yet from their home federations.) They have just the right FIDE Elo rating averages. And so forth. There is enough cannon fodder at the bottom of the crosstable to let the normseekers have a good chance of coming out at +2 or +3, but with FIDE ratings high enough to satisfy the rules. Etc.
The fact that one can create a designer-tournament like this seems to me a reductio ad absurdum of the FIDE norm rules. How many FIDE titled players are getting their norms in tournaments like this?
Reading between the lines of your post, I sense that you don’t disagree that the FIDE title rules are broken. So why are you doing this? Why is it so important to manufacture title norms for American players? Why not organize real tournaments, and if they result in norms for the players, so be it?
Why not organize real tournaments, and if they result in norms for the players, so be it?
Anon – can you elaborate what you mean by real tournaments so we can continue with the discussion? I want to ensure we talk apples to apples.
I do though appreciate your professionalism and not making accustory remarks towards myself and those that participate in my events.
How many FIDE titled players are getting their norms in tournaments like this?
With my count there are around 3-4 of these events per month around Europe with two of the most famous being First Saturday and the Cassia tournaments.
I had written another long post but didn’t get around to posting it until after the debate had advanced a good ways, with Sevan and Bill Brock taking part.
The poster I will call Anon #2 makes a good point I hadn’t considered: I had labeled another (presumably different) anon as a “liar,” based largely on the fact that he had accused someone of buying or faking a rated match without stating any evidence, even after being challenged.
But since many posts here get deleted, it is quite possible that the first guy did post some evidence, but it got deleted before I saw it. So, I’ll state that as a caveat/qualifier to my earlier posts.
Now, as to Anon #2’s comments regarding his own point — that it’s somehow dishonest to organize norm tournaments without prize money and without disclosing appearance fees — his view sounds plausible at first; yet it is entirely misleading.
It’s misleading because the sort of reward structure and “transparency” he is looking simply aren’t the norm for chess events, either in the US or elsewhere in the world.
For one, appearance fee amounts paid to anyone typically are kept confidential — even (especially) for the top players like Kramnik, Anand, etc. This is no less true in the chess world than in the real world.
Sevan has just seen fit to reveal them here; but that is his choice, and his players’ choice. No one has a right to know or demand that information.
Mr. Anon #2, if you have ever worked under a contract assignment, did you or your employer make a habit of publicly posting your agreed-upon fee?
Well, if you’ve worked exclusively for governments and related agencies like school districts, then maybe you could answer “yes.” But if you’ve ever done contract work for a private-sector employer, you’ll have to answer “No”. Aha…just as I thought!
So you had zero grounds to imply there was something fishy about the NACA organizer and players holding back this information.
As for prizes, even if many norm tournaments around the world do offer them, the amounts in most cases probably are pretty trivial.
For instance, Hungary’s well-known First Saturday tournament series, for instance, states only the following under “prizes”:
“Written certificates about the participation in the tournament.”
(http://www.firstsaturday.hu/)
As most of you know, these are among the most popular tournaments for Americans seeking norms; IMs Alex Lenderman and Fabiano Caruana are two of the most recent up-and-coming title-holders to have made norms there. The First Saturday events also were a stepping stone to GM-hood for no less than Leko, Radjabov and Guseinov, each of whom earned one of their GM norms there.
So, in this aspect too, there is nothing underhanded or even unusual about the NACA event’s absence of prizes.
It sounds rather like our anonymous poster seeks to manufacture a scandal where there isn’t one, by taking innocent facts and portraying them in a distorting, sinister light.
Seven,
It is hard to say exactly what I mean by “real”. You know it when you see it, I guess.
One thing I can say is that, to me, a tournament doesn’t seem “real” if it looks like it is a bunch of players assembled to satisfy FIDE norm requirements.
I guess a tournament is “real” if there is some interest in the outcome, some stake associated with the outcome, some logic, coherency, and transparency to the invitation list.
An example of a “real” tournament would be some coherent “championship” title awarded by an organization with some legitimacy to award the title. If it is the “Chicago Invitational Championship”, for example, all the top players who play regularly in Chicago or who live in Chicago, or who have some connection with Chicago should be invited, or should be able to qualify through preliminary events. That would mean inviting all the Grandmasters who live in the Chicago area, even if that would make it harder for players to achieve norms.
The top section of open tournaments with large prize funds are almost by definition “real”. The money makes them real.
The logic behind many of highest level tournaments is “maximize the average Elo”, given the date, budget and the prize fund. That is different and more “real” than trying to make the average Elo as close to, but not below, the minimum Elo required to qualify for norms.
If you have an event that is basically real, nobody can object if there are a few players invited to satisfy the FIDE requirements who don’t otherwise fit in the picture. Of course, it is better if these invitees fit the logic of the tournament. Perhaps the “outside” masters come from a Chicago sister city or are people who went to school in Chicago and used to play in local tournaments. Or maybe they are world-famous players. I dare say Kramnik can play in the Chicago Championship if he likes and nobody is going to protest that the tournament isn’t “real” because of his presence.
But if it can’t be achieved that there aren’t any ringers, it still isn’t a huge fault to have a few “outside” players to meet FIDE requirements, as long as the rest of the event is “real”.
Another type of event could be a “candidates” or “futurity” event with young and/or promising players pitted against titled players. To seem real, the “candidates” should be all the players from a region (for example) with a valid claim to be viewed as “up-and-coming”, or else players who have qualified in some way through preliminary events. If all the “candidates” form a real group, it isn’t too much of a problem if the invited masters are an arbitrary group, chosen with some eye towards the FIDE regulations.
The point is to have group that doesn’t just seem like an entirely arbitrary assemblage designed to meet FIDE regulations. The only logic of the invitation list should not be to have the right distribution of federations or FIDE titles, or the right average ELO.
One nice feature of “real” events is that they should be or greater interest to local sponsors and media than random assemblages.
Anon “#2”
P.S. Having just read Jacobs’ post, while in preview mode, let me add, egarding the First Saturday events in Hungary, I don’t know how those got started, how one qualifies to enter them, or how the titled players are chosen and compensated. I could imagine answers to those questions that would make me want to criticize the First Saturday tournaments the same as I have with the NACA events. I can also imagine answers to which nobody would object, including me. I don’t know. So I won’t say anything about the First Saturday tournaments. Also, apparently they have become traditional and famous, which in itself is another form of “real”.
After writing the postscript on the previous post, I found the “First Saturday” web site. (http://www.firstsaturday.hu/) (What did we all do before Google?)
Right on the home page is a big link “How to come to our tournaments”. This leads to a form where a person can apply for an invitation to compete, including available dates, ELO, etc.
If the organizers are inviting the best-qualified of those who apply — perfect! That leaves the question as to how they select and compensate the titled players who effectively make up the “examination board” for the untitled participants (and satisfy the FIDE regulations). But with these tournaments, given the number of well-known grandmasters that have previously gained their norms from these tournaments, they don’t really have to explain themselves to me. A new organization should expect to answer more questions.
OK, guys 🙂 Can we all respect each other? We need so much support for chess and it is nice to see people organizing and sponsoring chess. Let’s not chase anyone out of town please 🙂
Best wishes,
Susan Polgar
http://www.PolgarChess.com