Every 2 years FIDE organises a world team championship event and this was due to be played in August 2020 in Russia over a two and a half week period. Unfortunately, due to Covid 19 this event was cancelled and instead FIDE organised an online event. This event was organised at very different time limit of 15 mins each plus 5 second increments for each game. This was certainly a challenge for the players who are used to playing much longer time limits in such competitions.
163 countries entered this event and in July 2020 I had the surprise and honour to be invited to represent Wales for the first time. I have always dreamt of representing my country and this invitation is certainly a highlight of my chess career. Normally these events are separated into a Men’s, Women’s, Boy’s and Girl’ s events but FIDE decided to have one mixed team online event. A squad of 11 players were selected including 4 men – Grzegorz Tocsek, Tim Kett, Jason Garcia and Bill Hewitt, 3 women – Olivia Smith, Kimberly Chong and Julie Wilson, 2 junior male players being Ifan Rathbone-Jones and Hugo Fowler and 2 junior females being Venetia Sivarajasingam and Shayanna Sivarajasingam. It came as an even greater honour to be invited to captain the team and it did not take me long to accept this offer.
We were ranked 80th of the 163 countries and were placed in Division 3 of the competition which started on Friday 7th August 2020. The 50 teams in Division 3 were put into 5 groups of ten teams.
We played 3 games each day on Friday, Saturday and Sunday against the other 9 countries being Jordan, Belgium, Malta, Iraq, Kosovo, Madagascar, Zambia, Lebanon and Thailand. To progress to Division 2 we needed to finish in the top 3 teams in our section.
Each match included 6 players being 2 men, 2 women, 1 junior male and 1 junior female and they played against their equivalent from the other countries. The pools were a straight forward league structure with 2 points for each match you win and 1 point for each match you draw.
As captain I had to quickly get up to speed on the technical requirements of the competition. It can be so easy for a player to use a chess computer to tell them what moves to play in such a competition. FIDE did all they could to avoid cheating. All games were played whilst on webcam and we were not allowed to have any books, papers or other electrical devices in the room whilst the match was being played. We could not have our desk facing a window in case someone was outside the window giving us messages and we were not allowed to leave our desk whilst the game was ongoing. No one was allowed to enter the room either and we were observed by an independent arbiter for the duration of the match. After each game we had to make ourselves available to be interviewed by the arbiter if required to explain why we played certain moves.
Some of the matches were commented on by Grandmasters on the Chess.com website which was a particular privelege for individuals. Continue reading Wales at the FIDE Online Chess Olympiad – August 2020 by Jason Garcia
