NA policy

[Victor Plotkin]

1. Recommendations

a. 2 recommendations from IA/FAs based on tournament experience

b. Seminar + test = 1 recommendation

c. Provincial president's recommendation + any NA recommendation = 1 recommendation

2. Tournament experience as arbiter/player

a. At least 10 tournaments as an arbiter/organizer

b. At least 20 tournaments as an arbiter/organizer/player

Any FIDE rated tournament outside of Canada is counted. CMA events counted only if they are CFC rated.

3. In certain cases CFC could waive 1 recommendation.

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

While this might go without saying - the policy is from now on, and no re-evaluation of the previous NAs will be done. Yes?

[Victor Plotkin]

Yes, from the last AGM on. No re-evaluation of previously approved NA titles.

[Michael Corrie]

I have a number of questions about this new policy.

1. What form should the recommendation from an IA/FA take?

2. Does the NA applicant need to meet both the requirements of point 1 and point 2 or is it either point 1 or point 2? Similarly, does the applicant need to meet both the requirements of 2a and 2b or is it either 2a or 2b?

3. How were the numbers 10 and 20 arrived at in points 2a and 2b? FIDE only requires 3 tournaments to become a FA, so 10 or 20 tournaments to become an NA seems excessive.

4. Are all tournaments considered the same? For example, is a 1 day blitz tournament treated the same as a 9 day standard tournament?

5. Is there a time period over which the requirements need to be met? FIDE has a 6 year limit for tournaments and a 4 year limit on seminars before they expire. Does this CFC policy have any similar expiry dates?

I have other questions, but I will stop here for now.

[Victor Plotkin]

I have a number of questions about this new policy.

1. What form should the recommendation from an IA/FA take?

2. Does the NA applicant need to meet both the requirements of point 1 and point 2 or is it either point 1 or point 2? Similarly, does the applicant need to meet both the requirements of 2a and 2b or is it either 2a or 2b?

3. How were the numbers 10 and 20 arrived at in points 2a and 2b? FIDE only requires 3 tournaments to become a FA, so 10 or 20 tournaments to become an NA seems excessive.

4. Are all tournaments considered the same? For example, is a 1 day blitz tournament treated the same as a 9 day standard tournament?

5. Is there a time period over which the requirements need to be met? FIDE has a 6 year limit for tournaments and a 4 year limit on seminars before they expire. Does this CFC policy have any similar expiry dates?

I have other questions, but I will stop here for now.

1. Any form.

2. Applicant needs 2 IA/FA recommendations. If he/she passed the test after arbiter's seminar, he/she needs just 1 recommendation. Applicant needs both 10 events as an arbiter/organizer AND 20 events as arbiter/organizer/player.

3. -

4. Yes, all tournaments consider the same. Otherwise, the system becomes too complicated.

5. No time period.

6.?

[Michael Corrie]

Thanks for the response, Victor.
I realize that you want to keep the policy simple and I don't want to be too annoying, but I hope you don't mind me asking two more questions.

1. If a tournament has multiple sections, does this only count as one tournament or multiple tournaments? For example, some tournaments might have an open section and an U1600 section and an U1000 section. Is this 3 tournaments or 1? To complicate things some more, sometimes the lower levels of the tournament have a different playing schedule and a different time control. For example, the upcoming Hart House Holidays Open, the main tournament is 3 days with a 90+30 time control, while the junior sections are over 2 days with a 30+30 time control. Are these 2 different tournaments for the purpose of point 2 in the NA Policy?

2. How many rounds or what percentage of a tournament does someone have to work or play for the tournament to qualify in part 2 of the Policy? Some chess clubs have tournaments that run over multiple weeks. For example, the Toronto Junior starts today and runs until December 14. How many of the 9 weeks would someone have to work to get credit for the tournament? Similarly, if someone is playing a 5 round weekend tournament, how many of the rounds to they have to play to get credit under Part 2b of the Policy? Can the player take a bye? What is they are given a bye because there is an odd number of players? What if they withdraw from the tournament?

I apologize if I am going too deep into the details, but I expect some of these issues to come up in the future, so they should be addressed early to clarify the Policy and perhaps make changes where they are needed.

[Victor Plotkin]

Actually, you ask good questions. I was thinking about 1, but honestly, did not think about 2.

Please take in mind, the NA policy is very young (by age). My initial intention was to create something simple, logical and fair and maybe adjust it later. Later - that means after 1 year at the next AGM.

I used a similar approach 7 years ago than we created a new set of rules for Olympic qualification.

To your questions:

1. Tournament in multiple sections counted as multiple tournaments. I want to keep it simple and check chess.ca for players/arbiters accounts. Every line on arbiter account = 1 tournament. That was one of the reasons to put a relatively high initial number of tournaments (10).

2. My initial inclination is to use the threshold of 50% of rounds. Otherwise, this is not a real tournament, just a number of random games.

[Michael Corrie]

Actually, you ask good questions. I was thinking about 1, but honestly, did not think about 2.

Please take in mind, the NA policy is very young (by age). My initial intention was to create something simple, logical and fair and maybe adjust it later. Later - that means after 1 year at the next AGM.

I used a similar approach 7 years ago than we created a new set of rules for Olympic qualification.

To your questions:

1. Tournament in multiple sections counted as multiple tournaments. I want to keep it simple and check chess.ca for players/arbiters accounts. Every line on arbiter account = 1 tournament. That was one of the reasons to put a relatively high initial number of tournaments (10).

2. My initial inclination is to use the threshold of 50% of rounds. Otherwise, this is not a real tournament, just a number of random games.

Once again, thank you for your response.
I now understand better where you are coming from and I am more comfortable with the new policy.

My last comment is in regard to FIDE rated tournaments. The FIDE Handbook says "All arbiters of a FIDE rated tournament shall be licensed otherwise the tournament shall not be rated." It was suggested by some people that a work around solution could be arranged where the prospective NA candidate could help at the tournament, but not be listed as an arbiter on the official paperwork. In this case, the tournament would not appear on the person's account on chess.ca. Maybe this is a good thing if we want to discourage people from working around the FIDE Rules, but it does limit the available tournaments for people to get experience in, especially with more and more tournaments being FIDE rated. However, if you wanted to give the person credit for helping at the tournament, then simply looking at chess.ca wouldn't be sufficient. Also, tournaments played outside of Canada won't appear on chess.ca. These exceptions can probably be handled by e-mail though when the person feels they have met the requirements to become an NA.

Thanks for your time discussing this issue.

[Michael Corrie]

Hello again, Victor.

First, congratulations on the draws against GMs Dlugy and Mohr.

Second, I had a look at some tournaments on chess-results and compared them to the information on the chess.ca database. It appears that only people who are listed as Chief Arbiter on chess-results appear on chess.ca. People listed as Arbiter or even Deputy Chief Arbiter on chess-results do not appear on chess.ca, so your desire to keep things simple and just look at the chess.ca database won't be sufficient, because chess.ca isn't picking up all of the relevant information.

Third, can you please address how we should handle FIDE rated tournaments. As I pointed out before, people who are not licensed as NAs or higher are not permitted to be arbiters on FIDE rated tournaments. If a prospective NA helps out at a FIDE rated tournament, but is not listed as an arbiter, would this count towards the 10 tournaments? or the 20 tournaments? How would you track these tournaments?

[Alex Ferreira]

Hi,
I probably should have checked this post / thread earlier :-) but never too late.

It's excellent that there are pre-requisites for people to become arbiters. After all, they're overviewing events for many players and there is a set of responsibilities and standards that come with it. It also provides a safety-zone against empty recommendations which could hypothetically result in paper-arbiters.

Michael, for purposes of recognition, I believe arbiters who are not NAs should not be listed in FIDE event reports. However, most FIDE-rated events have dozens of support staff, not all of them are accredited arbiters. But that does not mean it cannot count as references for CFC. Note also that all FIDE-rated events in Canada must also be rated with CFC. In some countries, all events get FIDE-rated, so a prospect arbiter will have to start there as well. Big tournaments need tons of support, from setting clocks, sets and pieces, signage, etc etc... even simply collecting results can be done by a helper. Rulings on disputes, pairings should be done by NAs / chief arbiter at FIDE events. And whereas you will not get accreditation from helping at a FIDE-rated event, until you're a National Arbiter, if you help at one of my tournaments and you screw up, it will be my fault so it's good practice.

My recommendation would be to compile a list of events you've been involved in helping out, such as the Hart House October Open, and then submit them for accreditation, ideally with a note from the chief arbiters of those events.

Alex Ferreira