The field is set. Pairings will be available tonight on our website (nachess.org/fide).
Here is the field:
IM David Vigorito (USA)
IM Arjun Vishnuvardhan (IND)
IM Angelo Young (PHI)
FM Mehmed Pasalic (GER)
FM Raymond Kaufman (USA)
FM Albert Chow (USA)
Gauri Shankar (IND)
Dennis Monokroussos (USA)
Jon Burgess (ENG)
Michael Thaler (USA)
6.5/9 for IM norms.
I should start getting lines put on what people score!
Pairings can now be found on the tournament website at nachess.org/fide
A change in the line up:
FM Igor Tsyganov is replacing Gauri Shankar.
Norms remain 6.5/9.
Sevan, I’m assuming this is a round robin event, what’s the average FIDE rating (ie what category event is it?)
Yup it’s a RR event. RR’s are all that I will be using until I can get FIDE to allow the use of the Schiller System or another modified system I am proposing to them.
Avg rating of the event is 2298 but remember that (1) categories are no longer used for determining norms, and (2) avg rating of opponent will be different than avg of the event.
Since #1, I don’t bother figuring out what category it is.
Here is the FIDE Category listing:
Cat 23 2801-2825
Cat 22 2776-2800
Cat 21 2751-2775
Cat 20 2726-2750
Cat 19 2701-2725
Cat 18 2676-2700
Cat 17 2651-2675
Cat 16 2626-2650
Cat 15 2601-2625
Cat 14 2576-2600
Cat 13 2551-2575
Cat 12 2526-2550
Cat 11 2501-2525
Cat 10 2476-2500
Cat 9 2451-2475
Cat 8 2426-2450
Cat 7 2401-2425
Cat 6 2376-2400
Cat 5 2351-2375
Cat 4 2326-2350
Cat 3 2301-2325
Cat 2 2276-2300
Cat 1 2251-2275
The 8th NA FIDE Invitational would be defined as Category 2.
Thanks Chris! Looks like we missed Cat 3 by 3 points!
But again it’s a moot point since Category levels aren’t used.
The FIDE handbook still talks about category events in a few places even though that appears to be equivalent to ‘average rating’ these days.
A round robin event with an average rating of 2300 or less costs the USCF 50 Euros (or about $73.20 at today’s exchange rate) to submit to FIDE. A 2301-2400 event would be twice that.
It also will take Walter Brown at least an hour, probably longer, to go through the event and prepare it for submission to FIDE. (Among other things, he has to add the color each player had in each game, because FIDE won’t accept the submission without that information.)
I provide the crosstable to Walter with all of the color information per game along with score in the cross table format required with all player fide id’s.
Once Walter has a copy of the crosstable with color information (not every TD submitting a FIDE event sends one right away), Walter has to create a file in the FIDE reporting format then hand-edit that file to insert the color of each game and double-check that he hasn’t made any errors in that. For a 10 player RR, that may only take him a half hour, for a large event like the US Open it takes most of a day, and that’s not counting the time it takes to issue FIDE IDs for players who don’t already have one.
(And to make matters worse, FIDE’s system to assign FIDE IDs to players has some problems. Periodically it has reassigned an ID, one formerly assigned to someone who has passed away. I just got a note about another one of these yesterday.)
The next installment of the NA FIDE Invitationals Title Norm series is going to start this Sunday Feb 17!
Watch as NY area youngster Michael Thaler makes his first foray into the crazy world of closed norm events.
Who will emerge in the top spot? Who will capture a norm? In Oct 2007 FM Ray Robson captured his first norm that started a whirlwind for him on his way to his other 2 IM norms! In Jan 2008, Dr. Tansel Turgut secured his first IM norm.
Place your bets people!
nachess.org/fide and games will be broadcast as usual on the MonRoi World Databank of Chess.
The 8th NA FIDE Invitationals are done with now. Thankfully all players completed all rounds.
NM Dennis Monokroussos was alive for the norm into the final round but was defeated by local player NM Jon L. Burgess of the UK. This was both Jon and Dennis’ first time playing and both did a very good showing.
NY native Michael Thaler, the lowest seeded player, came away with 3 upsets - against IM Vigorito, IM Young, and IM Kaufman (who has 2 norms). A fine job done by a nice young man. It’s nice to see that teenagers can be nice 
I look forward to next month when some other NY natives come around looking for a norm like Marc Arnold and Teddy Coleman.
Good Chess to All…
I was surprised that, in the 10 player field, player 1 started with two Whites while player 6 started with two Blacks. That could have been fixed with having 1 with White against 10 while 2-5 have Black against 6-9 respectively. Or, just use the Crenshaw-Berger table in the Official Rules.
Which Official Rules are you talking about?
USCF or FIDE?
USCF. I’m surprised FIDE hasn’t changed its tables yet. The ones in the USCF rules are the defaults here.
It was a FIDE tournament, and violating FIDE rules would have put everybody’s norm chances at risk (both current and future) as well as risking suspension for the TD.
Exactly. Hence why I follow only FIDE rules during FIDE tournaments. Too many instances of USCF and FIDE guidelines out of sync.