ACP to FIDE: Why must women's tournaments collide?

Letter to FIDE President Kirsan N. Ilyumzhinov

#05-05/2009 – 19.05.2009

Dear Mr. President,

The Association of Chess Professionals expresses its deep concern about the female tournament calendar for year 2009. The new Grand Prix event series have been created this year, which is undoubtedly an excellent innovation in women chess. However, the first stage of the Grand Prix (Turkey, 5-20.03) clashed with the European Championship (Russia, 7-21.03). The second stage (China, 27.09-10.10) is scheduled for the same dates as the European Club Cup (Macedonia, 3-11.10).

Thus, professionals face a difficult choice now as they cannot participate in both major events. The organizers cannot count on strongest players’ participation. Since the calendar of female tournaments is not overloaded at the moment, and there are months that are free of female competitions, we kindly ask you to avoid a clash of major female competitions.

Best regards,
ACP Board

Contact person: Elmira Mirzoeva corr_elmira (at) rambler.ru

Open letter by Co-Chair for Commission for Women's Chess

From the Desk of Alexandra Kosteniuk, Women's World Chess Champion, Co-Chair, Commission for Women's Chess

To FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, FIDE General Secretary Ignatius Leong, the Commission for Women's Chess Co-Chair Susan Polgar, the Commission for Women's Chess Secretary Martha Fierro Baquero, Councilors Xie Jun and Maya Chiburdanidze, Members Antoaneta Stefanova, Xu Yuhua, Zhu Chen, Nona Gaprindashvili, and Franca Dapiran

May 7, 2009 (Ref. AK-20090507)

Subject : FIDE Commission for Women's Chess Proposals

Dear fellow supporters of Women's Chess!

Since being appointed Co-Chair of the FIDE Commission for Women's Chess at the recent FIDE Presidential Board in Istanbul, I have studied in detail the current situation of women's chess around the world.

While there has undoubtedly been great progress in women's chess in the past few years, evidenced by the larger number of women participating in chess tournaments, as well as the general increase of women's ratings, I believe there is much we can do to improve the situation further. We have to work on all levels, so that chess is perceived as a game equally suited to girls as to boys, beneficial to their development, in school and later on in life. This will lead to more girls starting to play chess, becoming members of their national chess federations and consequently more girls and women taking part in chess tournaments. With time, this will further raise the overall level of women chess players. With further work to make our women champions better known, girls and women will have role models to follow and that will help them become better chess players, too.

Besides that, developing Women's Chess also can help attract more press to chess, thereby pulling in potential sponsors, raising its profile and helping the game of chess as a whole.

My belief is that, with some good ideas, coupled with sound policies and precise targets for improvements in Women's Chess, we can reach significant improvements.

In this letter, I raise some important issues and give some proposals to improve women's chess over time.

Improvements won't come all at once, we will need everyone's input and active involvement. I am firmly committed to helping to develop Women's Chess in the world, and so I propose to take upon me the role of centralizing all the ideas, improving on them with everyone's help, and try to push them around until they become a reality.

I need and welcome all of your comments and suggestions to any of these points. Feel free to respond to the committee members as a whole so we can all be informed of how our issues advance. You can also add issues that are close to you and we can try to improve the situation in those too. I will follow up on all issues until we either succeed or decide it is an avenue not worth being followed.

Specially for the goal the Improving Women's Chess, and to have a central depot for the ideas generated and comments to them, I have set up a Women's Chess Blog, where you will be able to post messages with your ideas and comments to any other ideas. The address is www.chessblog.com and I will make sure that it meets its goal of positively promoting Women's Chess in the world.

Today I have posted on www.chessblog.com this letter in its entirety, and in the days ahead, each point raised below will have its own post, so you will have a chance to comment on any and all of the issues at hand. If you have a new issue you'd like to raise, simply send me an email to alexandra@kosteniuk.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and I will post the issue as a new post on www.chessblog.com .

The goal of the WOMEN'S CHESS BLOG is exclusively to improve Women's Chess in the world, in a positive way, with new ideas and constructive criticism only. Women's Chess will be shown to be the kinder and more attractive side of chess.

Open issues and Proposals:

1. Predictable Tournaments Calendar

It is important to make the calendar for professional women's players as predictable as possible. For that we need to set up a reliable system where tournaments are announced as far as possible in advance and dates are recorded in a central FIDE database (for example at calendarwomen.fide.com). Official FIDE tournaments and Grand Prix events should have dates fixed at least 6 months in advance and cannot be changed after the bidding host has been accepted.

2. Making our Women Stars better known and turn them into Role Models

When the press talks about chess, they sometimes don't have any ideas about the fact that women play chess too or they think it's not interesting. We propose FIDE make women's presence on their site closer to 50% of coverage. I looked today and there is practically not a word about any women's chess champion nor any women's event on the FIDE home page. At the minimum, FIDE should have a well placed button or banner on their home page called "Women's Chess Stars", for example at women.fide.com, where we could find the history of Women's Chess, previous World Champions, as well as the current women's champions in all sections (World, Continents, all Countries, all age groups). Any women on that page become FIDE WOMEN STARS and FIDE should promote them as such. Any girl from any country, whatever small it is, should be able to go to that page, and find her country "star", which will be her role model for the time, before she gets better and becomes a "star" herself, then trying to become a bigger "star". I think that this idea, while very easy to implement and which does not cost anything really, will help more girls think of chess being cool, and will bring them to chess. And it will be useful for the press, who at a glance, will be able to see all of the worlds past and present stars, on a global scale going down to each country. That's much better than having to search on dozens of Wikipedia pages and FIDE top lists.

3. Women's World Blitz and Rapid Championships

Those tournaments, which could be a hit with sponsors and especially with TV, unfortunately don't exist. FIDE should develop tournament regulations for them and put them up for bidding. ?FIDE could make official the titles of Women's Blitz and Rapid Champions, which would make these events very attractive to all the top players, as well as to sponsors and the press. Further, organizers of continental championships should be encouraged to add 2-3-4 days to their schedules to hold continental Blitz and Rapid Championships, and give out additional titles of Blitz and Rapid Champions. I am sure many players would gladly participate in the extra competitions and this has a great potential to bring in the press and even additional sponsors. Also, playing a continental championship will then offer 3 chances to become the champion, which is better for the players. This can be also extended to the Women's Grand Prix.

4. Creating the CAISSA Award

This award could be given to the best woman player of the previous year, based on some criteria to be determined (highest ELO improvement from 2400 up, highest performance in a top tournament, most titles won, etc.). FIDE could put this also up for bidding with sponsors and the title could come with the sponsor name, for example the "Microsoft Caissa award", with a part of the sponsor's money going to the budget for women's chess.

5. Creating a GOLD ORGANIZER award

Our FIDE Commission for Women's Chess can make a list of positive qualities women's chess tournaments should have and evaluate each major tournament based on these factors. For example, level of prizes, web presence, satisfaction of players, etc. The tournaments and organizers who make the mark should be given a GOLD ORGANIZER award. The award is honorific in nature, but could carry some advantages in the future for example in scheduling tournaments. Also, FIDE could post on their web site information on all chess organizers , with a particular mention for those achieving the GOLD status.

6. Increasing Women's Prizes in Open Tournaments

At the moment the difference between the top prize and the top women who play in the same strong open tournament is significant, making it not at all interesting for the strongest women to play in large open tournaments. For example top men's prize in an open could be $4000, but top woman in the open $200, which is not reasonable if there are several men GM playing, it becomes totally uninteresting for women to play or even costly since they often have to pay for they travel, hotel and sometimes trainer. This is detrimental to the progress of women's chess as women miss out on opportunities to play strong opens with men. FIDE could require for all FIDE rated tournaments to have a prize for the first woman to be no less than 30% (for example) of the top prize, this way with time it is sure that more women would participate in open tournaments, which would increase their levels.

7. Supporting women's events with its Budget

FIDE is a little too silent on the way it uses its budget, as they don't have a transparent reporting of their incomes and expenses. For example, while I am Co-Chair of the Commission, it is not clear what the budget, if any, the Women's Commission has. It is also not clear how the budget is funded, from where. Recently I received an email asking about having the Women's Commission support financially the Central American and Carribean Women's Championship and we don't know if there is a budget for this and what are the procedures to follow.

I think this Commission for Women's Chess should have a budget in accordance with its duties, and the right to spend it to further Women's Chess, in a totally open and transparent way, and taking everybody's votes into consideration. It should be clear how the budget is funded, for example, a part of the 20% paid to FIDE from prizes of all major tournaments should go to the Commission for Women's Chess (at least from the Women's tournaments).

By this letter I ask the FIDE Secretary Mr. Ignatius Leong to inform us about the current budget for this year, as well as the correct procedure for spending it. This way we will be able to monitor the progress we make and support causes that deserve it.

I look forward to seeing you all on www.chessblog.com where I will inform everybody on the progress we make in all areas and you are welcome to add your comments. If you wish to contact me personally, for any reason and to add issues or suggested improvements for Women's Chess to my list my email is alexandra@kosteniuk.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Best chess wishes to all!
Alexandra Kosteniuk
Women's World Chess Champion
www.chessblog.com

Reply by the FIDE Treasurer to point 7 of the above letter

Dear Alexandra,

I refer to your Open Letter which I have only just seen on the FIDE website, it has many excellent ideas which I am sure will do much to improve the position of Women's chess.

However, I am somewhat surprised by your claim in point 7 that:

as you have never contacted me, as FIDE Treasurer, on the subject.

In fact, if you had bothered to do so and read the papers for the Dresden General Assembly, you would have discovered that FIDE is probably the most transparent international sporting organisation with regards to its income and expenditure.

The procedure for the budget is as follows: at each General Assembly/Executive Board, the various Committee Chairmen come to me with their proposed budgets and I then discuss these with them. Having done this and on the basis of how much is available, the budget is then drawn up, discussed and approved by the General Assembly/Executive Board.

In Antalya in 2007, I had a long discussion with your predecessor, Ms Reimova, and she requested a figure of EUR 15,000 for 2008, which was granted, but only EUR 1,012.75 was spent in 2008. (At the same meeting, it was also suggested that a target of at least 20% was set for Women's Arbiters at FIDE and Continental Youth events, which I do not think has yet been implemented). Despite little being used in 2008, I kept the same amount (EUR 15,000) for Women's Commission for 2009.

The major amount of the spare budget for Commissions goes to CACDEC (EUR 225,000 for 2009) and, as this was a large increase, I personally decided and instructed that at least 20% of this budget should be spent on women's chess. It is up to your Commission to liaise with CACDEC and the Continental Presidents as to how it is spent.

All monies budgetted can only be disbursed if there is sufficient income. The budget was based on our receiving EUR 250,000 from Global Chess, which I was told would be paid, but now is not being paid, and also the World Championship Match, which was scheduled for September 2009 has now been rescheduled for 2010. These two events have meant that FIDE's income is EUR 450,000 less than was budgetted. I am hopeful that I will not have to cut too much from the budgets for Commissions, but will have to see what the financial situation is later in the year.

I hope that the above makes the matter more clear to you and should be grateful if, in future, you would contact me regarding financial matters first in order to get the correct information prior to issuing Open Letters.

Best regards

Nigel Freeman
FIDE Treasurer

Reply by Women's World Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk

to Nigel Freeman's Reply to my letter published May 11

Dear Nigel,

Thank you so much for your reply, with your help, we are advancing in the right direction!

While I had seen the number of 15,000 Euros for the Commission for Women's Chess in the budget papers while in Istanbul during the last Presidential Board meeting (I did not get the Dresden General Assembly papers at the time, as I was playing at the Olympiads), I did not know how it came about, and what were the procedures associated with its formation and expenditure.

I have now studied the FIDE site (especially the minutes page: http://www.fide.com/fide/minutes ) and see that indeed, there is quite some good transparency in the financial documents, audited by Ernst & Young. I must say that the documents and all minutes are quite complete, it's my mistake for not having studied them earlier, please do not take offense.

Now you explained very well that it's the previous Chair of the Women's Committee, Ms. Reimova, that requested that amount, although it seems it was not for anything concrete since almost nothing was spent in 2008. I understand now how the budget was created for 2009, simply by repeating the same one as 2008. In the absence of any new proposal that's reasonable of course.

Thanks also for explaining about the CACDEC, and it's good to know that part of it (at least 20%) should go to women's chess (that's 20% of 225,000 = 45,000 euros). I will try to liaise with the appropriate persons there, to make sure that the continental presidents keep women's interests covered at the level you mention of no less than 20% of their budgets.

Note that my letter was published on May 7, and your letter mentioning that 20% of CACDEC goes to women's chess was sent on May 8, so I did not know about it when I was writing my letter. Thanks to the clarifications, all is much clearer now.

Thanks for pointing out that budgets depend on income received by FIDE, and so commission's budgets may be cut due to possible income shortcomings by FIDE.

I suggest now in order for transparency to be total, also in our Commission for Women's Chess, that I prepare, together with the co-chairman and women commission members, a project for the allocation of that budget, which will be for you to review and comment on. We should also monitor how CACDEC supports women's chess on all continents and make sure we all know what we're doing to help women's chess in the world.

It's only with total openess and the strong desire to help women's chess that we will advance together towards our goals, which I am sure you want as well as I do.

Please don't worry, I will make sure to contact you directly in the future, if I need financial information, before stating that I don't have that information.

I will post this letter also on http://www.chessblog.com on the post relating to my letter.

Very best chess wishes to you!
Alexandra

Source: FIDE