World Cup 21 – initiated

After registration all entries were verified. Final report includes players with new ratings (from Rating List 2015/4). Assumed rating for a player without a published rating at the beginning of a cup preliminary round is 1800, unless player’s FIDE rating is higher (20 cases).

One week and a half after closing entries late withdrawals happened. That was very unfortunate, because pairings was made already and resulted enormous additional work. Anyway, final status of the entries is presented below.

Status of the entries as of (Stan zgłoszeń na dzień) 2015-09-14

1. Report #13, Final summary list updated (Końcowa lista skorygowana), 2015-09-14
2. Summary (Podsumowanie):
   • entries (zgłoszeń) = 928
     • DE = 308
   • countries (krajów) = 52
   • players (zawodników) = 718
   • titled players (utytułowanych zawodników) = 93
   • highest rating = 2507
   • average rating of all entries (średni ranking wszystkich zgłoszeń) = 2132

Those countries with 20 or more entries  are:

• Germany 154,
• Russia 102,
• USA 70,
• Poland 46,
• France 44,
• Italy 41,
• Czech Republic 37,
• Netherlands 37,
• England 36,
• Spain 30,
• Brazil 25

Final pairings was completed on 2015-09-12.

In the preliminary stage, in each section there is no more than:

• 4 German players (but at least one);
• 3 Russian players (but at least one);
• 2 American, Polish, Czech or Lithuanian players;
• one player from any other country.

With that assumptions we managed to distribute players to sections with average rating from 2100 to 2162, although most of them (64 out od 72) is close to average rating of all entries 2132 (-10/+10). Rating span of individual players is huge = 1161 rating points (from 1346 to 2507), but this is an attractiveness of world cups.

We have 72 sections (64 of 13 players and 8 of 12 players). The first two players of each preliminary section will qualify for the World Cup 21 semi-final (tie-break applies).
Although the number of preliminary sections which each player could enter was unlimited, no player will qualify for more than two semi-final sections. In case of triple qualification, the best runner-up from all groups will be qualified instead.

Sections are directed by 7 TDs from 4 countries:

• IA Joop Jansen (NED),
• (FIDE-IA) Shaun Press (AUS),
• (FIDE-FA) Dr. Wojciech Krzyżanowski (POL),
• (FIDE-FA) Brian Jones (AUS),
• Peter Maylott (AUS),
• Przemysław Łukasiewicz (POL),
• Carlos Martín Sánchez (ESP).

The official start date for all preliminary sections is 2015-10-01, when time counting begins. There is a fixed closing date of 2017-05-01.

All unfinished games are called for adjudication. Players involved shall submit their claim (win or draw) and supporting analysis to their TD for adjudication no later than 2017-05-15. The adjudication will be organized in such a way that all qualified players will be known by 2017-06-15. Games which have no influence on promotions might be continued.

Prizes will be awarded to winners of the preliminary sections (such prizes, each to the value of approximately 25 EUR, will be in the form of books or other chess material with tie-breaks to be applied if necessary to determine section winners).

We hope that it will be a very enjoyable tournament.

Amici sumus
Mariusz Wojnar
Central Tournament Leader

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Message published also at ICCF webserver.