After clearing up a few technical glitches and logistics, we are well underway with the online seminar.
A few well known names from the USCF Tournament Director ranks are participating:
–David Kuhns
–Allen Priest
–Boyd Reed
–Tom Langland
–Ken Ballou
And we’re done for the first day…
Hopefully some of the participants will comment on their experience…
The seminar is going very well. I was pleasantly surprised that there were not more technical glitches. After everyone realized once you had the skype connection established, that the best thing to do was to turn off your microphone, the instructor was very easy to hear. As expected, most of the questions from the participants center around the differences between the FIDE rules and the USCF rules. I look forward to tomorrow’s session and next weekend.
I thought it went very well. It was a neat experience to have a multi-national training session going on while sitting at the kitchen table. The group gathered for the seminar was a pleasure as well.
This has the potential to substantially reduce the cost and make it easier to develop FA/IA, as well as potential uses for USCF TD training.
It must be an interesting experience for the presenter (Panagiotis Nikolopoulos, “Takis”). He’s presenting the material with no visual feedback from the audience whether we’re “getting it.” That probably takes getting accustomed to.
It looks promising so far. I hope this experiment succeeds. It really is wonderful to be able to avoid the expense of travel and lodging.
Kudos to Sevan for organizing this and providing this much-needed opportunity for USCF TDs! Too bad the USCF Executive Board can’t provide a similar service to USCF members. I certainly would have liked to have taken part myself, especially since the USCF cancelled its own “live” FIDE Arbiters’ seminar which was originally to have been held at the U.S. Open, but the final weekend conflicts with the Pacific Coast Open. Personally I hope you might schedule more online opportunities like this in the future, as it appears the EB is not going to bother to address this demand.
Steve:
Thanks for the kind words however don’t get down on the USCF EB. They have to play a delicate balancing game at this time with finances. Holding an arbiters seminar live ‘on-the-ground’ is an expensive engagement of paying all expenses (airfare, lodging, meals, local transport) plus 1500 euros. So you can be looking at $5,000 to do this.
We will be scheduling more of these. I’m trying to get another session in after the next FIDE Presidential Board meeting and prior to the next FIDE Congress.
After initial discussions with participants, they all seem to like the format. 2 more days of lecture left, then the exam.
I think the biggest value has come (and the participants can chime in here) has been the detailed review of the FIDE Laws of Chess and where there are differences with the USCF Rules. Everyone has been good also at keeping this at a ‘what are the differences’ and not getting into the ‘who is better’.
We completed the second day of the online seminar. So the first weekend is over.
So far we’ve covered the FIDE Laws of Chess (with a lot of input on the differences between rules), Tournament Regulations, and Tie Breaks.
Next weekend will cover Swiss Rules, Rating Regulations, and Title Regulations. The exam will also be administered on the final day.
The second day went very smoothly. It seems everyone is used to the drill now … log in to Skype, answer the conference call, mute the microphone, and we’re off!
FIDE tournaments must be luxurious. The FIDE Laws of Chess consider “adequate supervision” for “rapidplay” chess (oversimplifying, G/15 up to, but not including, G/60) to be one arbiter for every three games. “Adequate supervision” for blitz (anything faster than G/15) is one arbiter per game.
The FIDE model makes me think of the full service filling station, where the attendant (dressed in the tidy uniform, of course) not only fills your tank but also washes your windshield and checks all the fluid levels. By comparison, USCF tournaments are more like the self-service station (pay inside first if paying cash). 
Anyway, those comments are (somewhat) tongue in cheek, but in all seriousness, the seminar is going quite well indeed.
The 1997-98 and 2000 New York Open were played under FIDE Laws and adequate supervision. At every time control, every director in the house went to the Open/U2400 sections to provide the supervision, something like 15 directors covering the end of time controls. Definitely your “full-service” station…
Mike
At the (11-round, Game/25) 1994 New York PCA/Intel Grand Prix Qualifier, there were over 82 players (including 70 GMs). There were about a dozen or so TDs, and the TDs did call flags (but then so did the players).
I remember the classic and funny situation at one of the NY Opens…Carol Jarecki calling the flag fall of Albert Chow by saying “Chow Down!”
My general impression of the first weekend is that it’s going rather well, even with the expected technical issues we’ve occasionally encountered.
It does help that pretty much every TD in the seminar has extensive experience. It really helps to have someone like Panagiotis Nikolopoulos as the lecturer. And Sevan Muradian has helped keep things from bogging down, serving as an excellent facilitator.
All in all, if Sevan can arrange for more of these, I’d probably rather keep the EB out of organizing them entirely. Makes you wonder why this hadn’t been tried long before now.
I have been pleased at how minor the technical glitches have been.
I have really enjoyed the experience.
It has been an honor to be in company of experienced TD’s for this seminar. A big kudos for Sevan for organizing and facilitating this, and to Takis Nikolopoulos for being the lecturer. I’m impressed with his stories and what he can teach in what is not his native language.
What is eye-opening is the differences between FIDE rules and USCF rules for tournaments.
It’s amazing what the technology can do to bring a seminar between the lecturer in Greece and the participants scattered over North America. It saves a fortune in travel - the only downside is that I don’t get to meet such an august group in person (associate names with faces). The bandwidth for this kind of seminar scattered over the world allows for audio interaction but not video interaction.
Thank you for putting this together, Sevan and Takis, and thank you for the invitation. I hope I can pass the exam the first time… 
I hope Sevan and FIDE can arrange more of these Seminars in the future and that I can be an arbiter in FIDE events in the future.
Chris Kim
I thoroughly enjoyed the first weekend. The best part for me was hearing Takis give examples from tournaments where he was the arbiter.
The format worked perfectly for me and I appreciate the opportunity to expand into “the FIDE side of chess.”
Kevin Hyde
The second half of the arbiters seminar is underway now…
Now if I can just pass the test!
Thanks for doing the seminar.
Do you hear the wheels turning in TD heads around the country? They are hard at work on their arbiters examination now…
i finished the test… 
my brain hurts… 
Tom