FIDE suspends Ukrainian ratings

Services for the Ukrainian CF are temporarily suspended

Thursday, 14 April 2016 10:59

Following the decision of the FIDE Presidential Board at its meeting in Moscow, 28-29 March 2016, the services for the Ukrainian Chess Federation are temporarily suspended, as the full amount in respect of the Women’s World Championship match in Lviv has not been paid within the set deadline.

The ratings will be withdrawn at the date of the next publication of the rating list, downloadable FRLs and the players will not be able to participate in the events organised under the aegis of:

a) the World Championship & Olympiad Commission or Events Commission,

b) Continental competitions that provide qualifiers to any of the aforesaid competitions.

The Federation will be published in the list of arrears - http://ratings.fide.com/arrears.phtml

• Source: FIDE press release

Below you can see some examples of top players who have (temporarily) lost their ratings. This is somewhat problematic when you consider that Tuesday will see the start of the Norway Chess 2016 super GM tournament, where Pavel Eljanov is one of the participants. Will he be playing without a rating and will the performance of his opponents in the games against him be ignored? (We assume not).

In addition the FIDE Women's Grand Prix in Batumi is starting on Tuesday, with two Ukrainian players (the Muzychuk sisters). Let's see how that is handled.

Other chess federations in arrears

Incidentally, if you download the Full Rating List (FRL) for April 2016 from the FIDE site you will not find any Ukrainian players in it. So better keep your March files for a while.