Position 02

Second Position

Black to move

Click here for the solution

FIDE And Meaningless Titles

These days, in its quest to popularize chess (a camouflage for enriching its coffers) FIDE has launched so many meaningless events. I’m not talking about the top events like the Grand Prix, but at the bottom end of the scale.

There are so a many useless events that award titles to winners of junior events that their strength of play does not entitle them to.

Certain Continental Youth events are simply just fought out between the players from the host country, with the so-called donor entries only allowing for a tournament to be kept. (Else it might be only just the player allowed per country plus the additional player allowed for the host nation making a grand total of two players). Yet the winner might walk out with a CM (What’s Candidate Master, any way? Candidate to be a Master?) or if he’s in the right age bracket an FM title.

But the FIDE account is credited with a minimum of 100 Euros per entry in so called FIDE Events and they just keep bidding out to these events. And worse because of the number of tournaments the events clash taking away what ever possibility of any meaningful competition as one event (the real one) attracts the players and the other is fought out between a bunch of pretenders.

Click here to continue reading