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World Chess Championships 1999

"Las Vegas; Surprise, Surprise!!"

by Geurt Gijssen

 

Appointment
It was immediately after the closing ceremony of the 33rd Olympiad, at Lenin Square in Elista, that the FIDE President, Kirsan Ilyumshinov, surprised me by saying that he would appoint me Chief Arbiter of the next World Championship in Las Vegas. 

Format of the Tournament 
The format of the tournament was the same as Groningen 1997 and Lausanne 1998a knock-out tournament. In the first round there would be 72 players and in the second round 28 seeded players would be added to the 36 first round winners. 5 of these 28 players were qualified based on their results in the previous championship (Karpov, Anand, Adams, Gelfand and Short); the other were seeded on the base of their high ratings.

Pairings 
The pairings were also to be based on the ratings of the players, as in Swiss tournaments. The number 1 rated player of the first half would play the number 1 of the second half, the number 2 of the first half plays the number 2 of the second half, and so on. If the higher rated player loses, his pairing number was taken over by the winner. 

As soon as all participants are known, the Chief Arbiter is able to make and publish the pairings.. Of course, I made some preliminary pairings and kept them to myself. But I then received a phone call that some people who were involved in the organisation wanted to see these preliminary pairings. I thought it impossible to decline, the more so as I was promised they would not be published. However, I was really astonished when I saw the pairings two days later on the Internet. Afterwards I understood that there had been some misunderstandings, but we still had a very unpleasant situation. 

Some players were still involved in negotiations. In the end, six players did not show up2 players did not get visa for the USA (they were not replaced); 4 players did not show up for various reasons. Two of them (Karpov and Morozevich) had been seeded into the second round, the other 2 (Zsuzsa Polgar and Velimirovic) were supposed to start in round 1. Initially the organising committee had not intended to replace them, but at a request of the Chairman of the Players Council, Jan Timman, who had consulted several top players, FIDE decided to replace them. The organising committee had invited 4 reserve players to Las Vegas; the two highest rated reserves (Milov and Dreev) would start in round 2, the other 2 (Andersson and Lautier) in round 1. This would not have necessitated too many changes in the published pairings. But, after their arrival in Las Vegas, the two highest rated players in round 1 (Fedorov and Krasenkow) protested against this decision and claimed that they should be seeded in round 2 instead of Milov and Dreev. They wrote a letter to the Appeals Committee and this committee decided to seed them for round 2 and Milov and Dreev had to start in round 1. But suddenly there was another complication. Milov was still playing a tournament in Biel and would not arrive until the evening of July 31, the day of the first game in round one. I had no choice and forfeited his first game. 

Upon his arrival I recommended to him that he write a letter to the Appeals Committee protesting my decision, because it was not his fault that he had to play unexpectedly in round 1. The Appeals Committee upheld his protest, but now I had a problem. They would be able to play two games, but what would happen if a tiebreak were necessary? After long discussions with the players it was decided that they should play the second game on the second day, the first game on the tie break day, and, if they had to play a tie break, it would be a 15-minute match the morning of the first day of the second round. And this is what happened. 

The lesson for next World Championships is that pairings will be published only after the organising committee is 100% sure about the participation of all players. And it is still my opinion never change published pairings.

Playing Hall 
Before the tournament I visited Mr. Willy Iclicki, the chairman of the organising committee, who lived in Belgium, twice. He showed me the floor plan of the playing hall and I was quite satisfied. Although the hall was smaller than the hall in Groningen 1997, it was fine. A hall 43 meters long and 20 meters wide should be big enough for 72 players and spectators. 

Unfortunately, upon my arrival I was confronted with a hall that was only 30 meters long. With some special effort, it was possible to put 36 playing tables in the hall, but it was quite difficult to have a good survey of the playing hall. From round 3, with only 32 players or less, there were no problems. I even have to admit that we had a fantastic playing hall for the semi-final and the final. It looked really great.

There was also a problem with the distance between the playing hall and the restrooms. This distance was about 60 meters. But the real problem was how to control the players. We had some volunteers, who stayed outside the playing hall and kept an eye on the players when they had to leave the playing hall. But several times I had to do it myself and even to warn some players not to speak with other people. 

Time limit and DGT clocks In this tournament the DGT clocks were used again. We had 4 different time limits1. In normal games40 moves in 100 minutes, then 20 moves in 50 minutes, finally 10 minutes for the remaining moves, with an increment of 30 seconds after each move. (201 games). 2. First series of tie break games25 minutes for the whole game with an increment of 10 seconds after each move (78 games). 3. Second series of tie break games15 minutes for the whole game with an increment of 10 seconds after each move (24 games). 4. Sudden death games 4 minutes for White and 5 minutes for Black for the whole game with an increment of 10 seconds after each move (3 games). Curiously, there was an American player involved in all sudden death games (Dimitri Gurevich and Benjamin).

In each tie break and sudden death game the arbiter assigned to that game wrote the moves and generally this was easy to do. More remarkable is the fact that there was no any incident among the players during the game. I would like to reiterate my proposal to apply the Fischer modus in all FIDE events.

There was only one incident I would like to mention. In the game Nielsen - Polgar, Judit pointed out that after White's 20th move 50 minutes were added to White's time. I stopped the clock and I replaced it, trying to find out what had happened. Albert Vasse, the producer of the DGT clock, and I discovered that the arbiter had installed the clock incorrectly. He had set the first control for 20 instead of 40 moves. Albert and I came to the conclusion that we had to replace or to re-install the new clock. This was because the first move played on the new clock was a Black move, but the clock would recognise it as a White move. This would cause a problem at the end of the time control in question. We therefore reinstalled the clock after a Black move. The lesson we can take from this incident if there is a problem with the clock, try to replace or to re-install the clock after a Black move.

Transmission System 
Nowadays, in most self-respecting chess tournaments electronic chessboards are used. Moves are displayed in the playing hall to the spectators with the help of computers. It is also possible to connect them to a website and then the whole world can follow the games live. A young enthusiastic Russian team from Moscow had built such a system for this tournament. But it became very clear all too soon that they did not have enough experience and they were not chess players. 

There were three main mistakes in the system. 1. There were situations in which the computer did not know how to make a move; for instance, I there was white rook on c1 and c5, and white played Rc1-c5, the system stopped immediately. 2. When a player moved a piece very slowly from one square to another, the piece "stopped" on its way to the final square. The game Hamdouchi - Beliavsky was for a very long time not shown on Internet. White played 12 Qd1xd8, but the system showed Qd1-d3 and even made a few more moves after this move that was in fact never played. 3. The system was too slow. Especially in the tiebreak games, the system was sometimes 4 or 5 moves behind. Almost all these errors and failures were corrected during the tournament, which was, in my opinion a great achievement.

Commentators 
The spectators were able to listen to comments to the games using headphones. The commentators were Yasser Seirawan and Larry Christiansen, and later Walter Browne and Valery Salov. Since 1990 (the match Kasparov - Karpov in New York) the situation has really improved. In 1990 it was occasionally quite unpleasant when the commentators would make jokes and the audience would start to laugh. Nowadays the commentators act very professionally and refrain from anything what might be disturbing for the chess players. 

Journalists 
There seems to be a trend developing where chess journalists visit tournaments less and less. Las Vegas was no exception. Only a few journalists were present. The influence of Internet is clear. I think that organisers have to take into account this development. More and more we have to deal with Internet journalism. Personally I regret this development, but the organisers have to be creative to make the tournament attractive for journalists. In my opinion there is a great challenge for the Chips committee of FIDE (this committee discusses all matters about information, publication and so on).

Bulletins 
The bulletins were not always on time. I had the impression that producing the bulletins was not the first priority of the organising committee. I know the players like to have the games of the previous round as soon as possible. Therefore it was not a bad idea to publish the PGN-files. It might not even be a bad idea to offer, in the future, the games on diskette after each round for the players, because the great majority of the chess players come to a chess tournament with their laptops.

The Russian computer team did a good job, but it was also clear that they did not have enough experience. On the last day I worked with one of them for hours to produce correct files. We had 100 players in the tournament, but when I checked the number of participants in my Tascbase program I found 174 players. The reason was very simple the spelling of the players was not consistent. I found, for example, four players with the name "Nisipeanu"L. Nisipeanu, Nisipeanu, L., Liviu Nisipeanu and Nisipeanu Liviu-Dieter. But finally we had our 100 players.

General Impression 
I like the format of the tournament. It is very democratic and it gives chances to every chess player. We have to keep the time limit, because it is one of the best. I am not sure that Las Vegas was the most ideal venue for a chess world championship tournament, because Las Vegas itself has no chess culture. But I may be wrong; it is also more important to concentrate more on the Internet and not on spectators and chess journalists at the venue. 

I was very happy to work with people who took pride in their work. In this regard, Takis Nikolopoulos from Greece, the deputy chief arbiter of the event, was a great help for me. And finally, the tournament started with 20 consecutive days without any rest days. At least one additional break, probably after the third round, should be considered