The International Correspondence Chess Federation (ICCF) is the worldwide organisation for correspondence chess. It was founded in 1951 as a new appearance of the ICCA (International Correspondence Chess Association), which was founded in 1945, as successor of the IFSB (Internationaler Fernschachbund), founded in 1928.
In 2021, the ICCF celebrates its 70th anniversary.
The Executive Board (EB) to celebrate this anniversary, according to its tradition (from the 50th and 60th anniversary), conducts several activities such as:
- Special Jubilee tournaments (world champions, elite players, chess 960 elite players, ICCF officials, also events for postal players) – start date 2021-03-15, duration about 2-4 years.
- Jubilee World Cups (regular and chess 960), separate events from the regular ICCF activities, carried out with the Silli system in 2 stages (preliminaries and final) over a 4-year period with special provisions for promotions – start date 2021-02-15.
Both jubilee world cups have been launched recently.
After registration all entries were verified. Assumed rating for a player without a published rating at the beginning of this tournaments is the average rating of the rated players (standard=2207 -> 53 cases, chess 960=2310 -> 4 cases), unless player’s FIDE rating is higher (no cases).
Final status of the entries (as of 2021-01-16) is presented below.
| Specification | Jub World Cup | |
|---|---|---|
| standard | chess 960 | |
| entries 684= | 610 | 74 |
| countries 51= | 50 | 25 |
| players 480= | 454 | 66 |
| entries above 20 from: | ||
| Germany 124= | 114 | 10 |
| Russia 80= | 70 | 10 |
| USA 77= | 69 | 8 |
| Poland 55= | 46 | 9 |
| Italy 33= | 28 | 5 |
| England 27= | 26 | 1 |
| Brasil 22= | 21 | 1 |
| titled players 393= | 341 | 52 |
| highest rating 2584= | 2555 | 2584 |
| rating span 1189= | 1189 | 838 |
| average rating = | 2207 | 2310 |
| sections = | 10 | 2 |
| players per section = | 61 | 37 |
| promotion per section (tie-break) = | 10 | 4 |
Final pairings for world cups were completed on 2021-01-29 (chess 960) & on 2021-01-30 (standard).
In the preliminary stage (standard world cup), in each section there is no more than:
- 13 German players (but at least 8);
- 8 Russian or American players (but at least 4);
- 6 Polish players (but at least 3).
With that assumptions we managed to distribute players to 10 sections (61 players each) with average rating from 2198 to 2214, which is close to average rating of all entries 2207 (-8/+8). Rating span of individual players is huge = 1161 rating points (from 1366 to 2555), but this is an attractiveness of world cups.
The first 10 players of each preliminary section will qualify for the Jubilee World Cup final (tie-break applies).
Although the number of preliminary sections which each player could enter was limited to number of sections, no player will qualify for more than one place in the final. In case of double qualification, the best runner-up from all sections will be qualified instead.
Jubilee tournaments are directed by 7 TDs from 4 countries:
| # | Tit | Name | FED | Directed events |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | IA | Krzyżanowski, Wojciech | POL | WCh, Elite A&B (combined); Elite C; officials A1 |
| 2 | IA | Lubas, Józef | POL | chess960 wcup; chess960 elite; postal |
| 3 | TD2 | Fałatowicz, Piotr | POL | wcup |
| 4 | IA | Kracht, Jörg | GER | wcup; officials A2 |
| 5 | TD2 | Gredescul, Andrea | MDA | wcup |
| 6 | TD2 | Leonard, Andrew | USA | wcup; officials B, C, D |
| 7 | TD2 | Anderson, Aaron J. | USA | wcup; officials E |
We hope that these will be very successful ICCF jubilee tournaments.
Amici Sumus
Mariusz Wojnar
Tournament Organizer
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Message published also at ICCF webserver.