GSC Meeting on Zoom

on 12 December 2023, 14:00 – 15:25 CET

Report by Pavel Tregubov

PRESENT:   

FIDE President          Arkady Dvorkovich

FIDE Treasurer          Chen Zhu

GSC Chairman           Emil Sutovsky

GSC Secretary           Pavel Tregubov

GSC Councillors        Bassem Amin, Yifan Hou, Jeroen van den Berg

GSC Members           Altan-Ulzii Enkhtuul, Frankie Farley, Morten L. Madsen

Guests                        Abd Hamid Abd Majid, Mahdi Abdurahim, Anandh Babu, Marco Biagioli, Kevin Bonham, Almong Burstein, Gopakumar M S, Irina Manakova, Peter Myers, Chandra Nsakanya, Elena Polovina, Shaun Press, Alan Priest, Daniel Scotland, Ozgur Solakoglu, Francois Strydom, Patrick van Hooland, Benard Wanjala, Ali Nihat Yazici, Ronald Zarza Pelissier.

SUMMARY

1. GSC Chairman Emil Sutovsky reports

Emil Sutovsky welcomes GSC members and guests.

2023 was particularly eventful year for GSC. All numerous GSC events have been hold smoothly.

Two innovations were successfully implemented:

• FIDE Circuit
• FIDE World Rapid Team Championship

FIDE top events have got good numbers of views on FIDE official media channels and they are growing. E.g. last year R&B has got 220,000,000 views.

The income of top FIDE events turned out to be higher than expected.

It should be mentioned that it is not a problem nowadays to find hosts for majority of FIDE events. Moreover, many Organisers are known/apply in advance. That was the case for many events scheduled for 2023. This is also the case for Candidates 2024, Grand Swiss 2025. The only event that remains complicated to have a host in advance is R&B.

Toronto will host Candidates and Women’s Candidates simultaneously in 2024 for the first time in the history of Candidates tournaments. It should allow to promote better women’s chess.

Marco Biagioli takes the floor to support the idea of combining Open and Women’s Candidates.

1. Preparation of R&B 2023 in Samarkand (Emil Sutovsky)

The event is financially supported be the state of Uzbekistan, Silk Road Company and Freedom Finance group.

One of the best venues in the country will host the event.

It’s going to be the strongest ever edition in both open and women section.

An experienced production company is engaged for the official broadcast. Many technical innovations are expected.

4 inspections have been conducted to ensure the best possible organisation. More people than usual are involved. FIDE’s operations team is joined recently by experienced professionals and getting more and more efficient.

1. Preparation of the FIDE Candidates Tournament 2024 in Toronto (Pavel Tregubov)

All financial matters had been settled out in April 2023. We should praise once again the main sponsor – Scheinberg family.

The Great Hall Toronto will be the playing venue. 1 Hotel Toronto will be the official hotel.

The preparation started in October.

Canadian visa is not easy-to-get at the moment. One of the priority was to provide all the players with official invitations enabling them to apply for visa.

First inspection has been conducted in November. Both, the venue and official hotel meet the highest-level requirements. Venue plan and facilities zoning are set up.

The official logo is expected to be presented by the end of the year.

Many inquiries from potential spectators are received. Chess is booming in Canada nowadays, lot of visitors can be expected for the event. Providing a high level of service for spectators is one of our priorities. The ticketing policy is being developed now. The sale is expected to be launched in the beginning of 2024.

1. Discussion on the World Championship Cycle format modification

Eventual format (particularly, time control) modifications of Candidates and World Championship Match have been discussed.

Emil Sutovsky: recent poll conducted among top players showed that they are against of drastic shortening of time control. But switching from 7-hour to 6-hour of FIDE time control would not be shocking for them.

Bassem Amin: If time controls are different, critical moments (time troubles) of games in two sections are separated in time and can be better shown over a broadcast. Candidates and Match should have the same controls.

Patrick van Hooland supported the idea of having the same controls for Candidates and Match

Jeroen van den Berg: I feel a new tendency coming: players getting more inclined toward shorter controls. I am now less adept of the classical time control, then I used to be. Even for Wijk-aan-Zee we’ve been thinking about shortening.

Chen Zhu: Mixed format could be used for the Match (set system, mixing different time controls) to make it more attractive for spectators.

FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich joined the meeting to praise GSC members for their involvement and ensure that their work is highly appreciated. Special thanks to the Chair Emil Sutovsky for the tremendous input.

• Other issues

Abd Hamid Abd Majid gave thanks to FIDE for introducing the Open Aid Project.