The European Chess Union
All European Chess Federations
OPEN LETTER REGARDING THE EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIPS FOR JUNIORS (AND YOUTHS) 2001
As the responsibles for International Youth Championships within our Scandinavian Chess Federations, we have received prelimenary information about the 2001 European Championships for juniors (Patras, 15.-28.07) and youths (Kallithea, 30.08-10.09). We are of course thankful to receive this information so early, and it generally appears very trustworthy. The Greek federation has proven itself to be an excellent organizer during the later years, and so the European Championships of this year should be very attractive for our best young players - even compared to their respective World Championships of FIDE.
Regarding the time limits, we are however surprised as well as dissatisfied with the information received so far. Regarding the Junior Championships, a new and reduced time limit on 75 minutes on 40 moves and the 15 minutes for the remainder of the game with an incremental 30 seconds per move is introduced. Regarding the Youth Championship no time limits are presented yet, but the late schedule (rounds starting at 15.30) indicates that they are intended to be reduced here too. According to the latest available ECU-Manual the time limits of the Junior championship is 2 hours in 40 moves, 1 hour in 20 moves and 1/2 hour for the rest of the game, and for the Youth Championship 2 hours in 40 moves and 1 hour for the rest of the game. We cannot see any reason to reduce this any further just to comply with the FIDE presidential Board recommendation. Our federations and a lot of other Europeans have delivered or are about to deliver protests against this recommendation, while as far as we know no European federation has expressed any kind of positive support for it. According to the title regulations given by the FIDE-congress in Istanbul the new time limits actually are not accepted for title tournaments, and many national rating systems do not accept those time limits (or eventually values them very low). As both championships got only single rounds, shortened time limits hardly offers any practical advantages related to the playing schedule. Most participants will then probably play chess for an average of something like 2-3 hours a day instead of 3-4 hours, and we cannot see why that should be any kind of improvement neither for the future of the players or for the future of chess. Any argument related to making the games more attractive for onlookers can hardly be presented for the two championships mentioned here, as hardly any onlookers are allowed to follow the games and hardly any of the games are presented live at internet. Finally the European Championships seems having become just more popular during the later years, so why should we change the obviously popular concept used then?
In short : We ask all other European federations to clearify their views regarding the very important question about the future time limits of the European Championships. Unless reactions then behind all doubt support reduced time limits, we ask the organizer in agreement with ECU to change the time limits of the European Junior Championship (and to clearify the time limits of the European Youth Championship) into the regular ones used last year.
Otherwise less time obviously means less chess of less quality for the participants, and we then seriously fear that the result naturally becomes less participants. At least among our young stars (to the extent in which we got any on this level!), the tendency clearly seems to be that fewer players are interested to travel abroad 10-14 days and spend a lot of money if having to play with reduced time limits. We do not want such an outcome for the European Championships, and it obviously should make the championship less attractive for ECU and the organizer too - not even to mention the sponsors.
Yours Sincerly
Per Andreasen (Denmark) Mats Eriksson (Sweden) Hans Olav Lahlum (Norway)