It’s All In The Planning!

The cost of being on the Fide rating list.

HEY, Greg,” I asked the Malaysian Chess Federation’s secretary when I bumped into him in Kuala Lumpur recently, “what’s become of our standing with the World Chess Federation (Fide)?”

In case you are not aware, Malaysia’s name had been missing from Fide’s list of member countries since the beginning of the year. Our Fide-rated players suddenly found themselves delisted from the Fide rating list. Gregory Lau, the MCF secretary, would be the best person to bring me up to date on this matter.

  Gregory Lau

“Oh, don’t you know,” he replied almost casually, “we are back on board Fide since last Friday at about 9pm. If you check the Fide website, all our players are back in the rating list.”

That was quite a relief to hear. We are again a member in benefit. At first, I wanted to say that MCF should shoulder the full blame for letting our membership lapse but on second thoughts, was it really MCF’s fault?

I don’t think so. In fact, MCF’s position is beyond envy. The federation receives so little or no funding from the Government and whatever little financial resources it has goes back to cover its administrative costs.

From what I know, Fide was owed in excess of €2,000. At today’s exchange rates, that’s at least RM10,000. While a chunk of it went towards settling the membership dues, there are also other obligations towards Fide.

For example, it costs €270 to register a team for the Chess Olympiad. If we send both the men’s and women’s teams, the cost is doubled. Then there are also the rating fees for our players. As long as a player is registered with Fide and he is in their “active” list, the federation is required to pay ?1 for that player.

Getting a chess title confirmed is also not cheap. For instance, an application for an international master title will cost the federation €165 and in the past year, we had two new international masters. Fide has the right to increase the fee by 50% to 100% if title applications are made after their deadline for submission.

And finally, if you want to organise a Fide-rated round-robin tournament, be prepared to pay the registration fee, too. It’s calculated based on the strength of the tournament. For Swiss tournaments, the fee is €1 per player. On top of that, if the organiser fails to submit the results to Fide, a penalty fee kicks in.

All in all, these fees simply add up to a lot of money. For voluntary organisations like the MCF, it digs a deep hole in the pocket. And this is just fees due to Fide alone. What about participation in regional events? They cost money, too, but only this time, the Asian Chess Federation is the beneficiary of the fees.

So don’t think that chess is a cheap game. If a federation is not careful, one fine day it will find itself temporarily excluded from Fide until the arrears are settled. That’s what happened to MCF. The big fear is this: okay, so our arrears have been settled for now but what will happen in the next one or two years? Nobody knows.

Finally, still on the topic of ratings, I have some quick statistics here based on the latest January 2010 list. Malaysia has three players rated above 2400 in Mas Hafizulhelmi (2420), Mok Tze Meng (2414) and Wong Zijing (2410).

We also have four players above 2300: Nicholas Chan (2398), Ooi Chern Ee (2336), Peter Long (2331) and Jimmy Liew (2315).

Then comes 26 players with ratings of above 2200, followed by 37 players rated above 2100. The rest are below 2100.