Friday, June 27, 2008

Malaysian Attracts FIDE's Fire

Quah Seng Sun took aim at FIDE. And he got no less than Ignatius Leong firing back.

I wonder if the local ACF has had problems with that FIDE Ratings Server.
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2 comments:

Peter Long said...

I am in a position to throw some light on the matter as I was asked to assist (not by the parties mentioned but by players) given my role in ASEAN chess and also because I live in Malaysia!

1. The article did not reflect this but basically the problem first started because MCF did not submit the results in the rating period because the Chief Arbiter/MCF Secretary just did not do so. That irritated lots of players whose ratings were affected (and I think at least one norm/title as well).

2. In the next rating period Hamid (that's his name) was encouraged to do his work and when criticised he quickly blamed FIDE never imagining local comments which be picked up internationally thanks to electronic media. Later he added the excuse of the FIDE server not working, etc. (but the fact of the matter is he is largely computer illiterate and was too embarrassed to ask for help).

3. Ultimately he did as we all can see. Ironically enough, a local - Mas Hafizuhelmi who gained points from the event in question benefited as he has played many events in this 6 month period with a lower rating. But that's for conspiracy theorists!

2:16 pm, June 28, 2008
Anonymous said...

Amiel wrote: "I wonder if the local ACF has had problems with that FIDE Ratings Server."

I know it's unfashionable to compliment FIDE, but the FRS, while not likely to revolutionalise the IT world, really is a vast improvement over the old system.

The ACF, like every other federation, was given detailed instructions and ample time to get used to the new text-file submission format before we were given access to the server, which, by the way, is not difficult to use.

The few minor bugs and problems I have had were fixed almost immediately; there have been continual enhancements; and what few errors that I don't have permissions to correct myself on the server have been fixed almost immediately after a single email. Combined with this, FIDE obviously went to a great deal of effort to fix all the old ratings errors from years ago (many of which I'd given up on in despair) by the end of last year.

From FIDE's point of view, they've had to migrate more than a hundred federations to a modern system and have been patient enough to do it over a couple of years. It's understandable that FIDE officials would get annoyed if a particular federation is still not up to speed then tries to blame FIDE.

Greg Canfell

9:56 pm, June 30, 2008

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