World Internet Chess Championship
or the last opportunity to qualify for the World Championship
By FIDE GM Dorian Rogozenko
First published in "Sweedish Schacknytt"


I was one of the lucky eight players who qualified for the World Championship via Internet in a competition called World Internet Chess Championship (WICC), which finished in the middle of October. The tournament was organized by FIDE on their website www.fide.com. In the present article I will share my thoughts about this event and will comment two games, which were crucial for my qualification.

The idea of having qualifying on-line tournaments is not a new one. There are two main problems when having such tournaments: 1. technical part and 2. the control over external help that participants might use during their games. The technical part is essential - playing zone program should be tested very well before the start of the tournament. ICC (Internet Chess Club) seems to have good experience in this aspect.

During chess game via internet different kind of problems can appear, such as time lags or disconnections. The program used by organizers must very good cope with it. FIDE did it quite well and tested their playing zone before the start of the competition. Even so there were complaints. In round two for instance, Epishin was not able to connect to FIDE server at all. That game was replayed. So the conclusion here would be that one needs to test the playing zone until all possible bugs are eliminated.

The second aspect of using help during an on-line game is much more complicated. I am firmly convinced that it is impossible to detect such a help unless arbiters are present during the game. Sometimes experienced players can play the whole game like a computer, sometimes they make multiple mistakes. And the bad part is that suspicions mean nothing; there is no way to prove it. Anyone will be convinced that when a unrated player wins many games against much stronger opponents he is using some external help. Nobody will be able to prove it. By help I mean first of all chess playing software, such as Fritz for instance, but also it can be either an advice from a better player or using of books, databases etc.

One example: at one point I was playing an unrated person who does not have any games in my database. He was doing pretty well in the tournament before our game and I was more or less suspecting he used some external help. So I decided to play an unusual opening for me, which would increase my chances to avoid his preparation. The surprise came when he made all theoretical moves instantly anyway and then offered a draw in equal position. I declined, willing to prove my better endgame technique. No way - the guy totally outplayed me and I was on the edge of losing. On top of that he played really like a machine - very quick and quite good (at least much better than me). I realized of course that he is using a computer and got very nervous that there is simply no way out - I am going to lose this one, even if I play like 2800. The miraculous escape came at the moment when I succeeded to give up a piece and trade all his pawns for that. The soon arising endgame Rook versus Rook and Knight we played for another 50 moves when the game was automatically drawn. Immediately after the game I understood what happened - most chess programs would show that the part having a piece up is winning, unless these programs are provided with so-called tablebases, when they evaluate precisely the result of such theoretical endgames. For a better result next time my opponent must install these tablebases. Okay, so what did I do after that game? I was quite mad and soon after the game (in 5 minutes or so) I wrote a protest to FIDE. Guess what happened? Nothing! More than that - in the end my opponent qualified for World Championship!!

That's why my suggestion would be the following: in the final stage of the competition, there should be a tournament played over the board, not on-line. Best 32 players (or 16, or 64) qualify via on-line event, but then they come and play a normal chess tournament. The winners of this competition would really deserve to qualify for the World Championship.

Now it is time to speak about the schedule of WICC. I myself heard about it in June 2001. On the FIDE website it was announced that starting with end of July everyone who paid the membership fee of 39 USD is allowed to enter the first part of the competition. This first level was supposed to end on 15 September, when best 256 players would join another 256 (who are these another 256 remains unclear to me - in the end they never showed up) and enter the Semifinal. Out of these 512 players 64 would go further to the Final. Best 8 players out of these 64 would qualify for the World Championship. The time control used for WICC games was 25 minutes each player for the whole game with 15 seconds increment per move.

What happened in reality? By the end of August it was clear that EVERYONE who paid the membership fee would be in the first 256 simply because there were less participants (members) altogether. That was the moment when I thought: well, if I go through first stage without efforts and enter directly the Semifinal, why not trying my chance? There was one minor restriction though, every player who was willing to enter Semifinal had to play at least 4 games, which was hardly a problem, as you can imagine. I will not go through all the subtleties and only mention that Semifinal started on 25 September instead of the previously announced date of 15 September and had instead of expected 512 players, only 102. That increased a lot the possibility to qualify for Final (64 players out of 102 - quite an easy task). Giving the fact that there were a lot of unknown players in Semifinal and that even a 50 percent score would be enough to reach the Final, that task was even easier to achieve.

So the final stage - 8 rounds, 64 players are fighting for 8 places. Here it was tougher. When I looked through the list of participants, I saw such names as Shipov, Wojtkiewicz, Nataf, Nielsen, Agrest, Fressinet, Blatny ... Altogether I counted 11 GMs and a number of IMs. The good thing was that reaching first 8 places seemed to be a realistic task. Difficult, but realistic. I must mention another very important aspect - Semifinal and Final were Swiss system open tournaments. One would expect a KO system when 512 and respectively 64 players are announced, but FIDE made Semifinal a 9 rounds open Swiss system and Final - 8 round open Swiss system.

Soon I realized that some players would do everything to qualify. Here we come to a subject which proved very important to me - opening preparation. I was going to do my best to prepare for games, so immediately after I knew the pairings I started to prepare for the game. Sometimes for one hour, sometimes for 3-4 hours or even more. Starting with round four I was deeply disappointed: my opponents were avoiding the preparation! So what? You may say that in normal tournaments it is a very usual phenomenon - to avoid opponent's preparation. This is true, but it is very rare that one would play openings one NEVER played before and know them EXTREMELY well! That's exactly what happened to me in some games - I was preparing for many hours, but my opponents played openings they never had before in their practice. Confronting with such a choice during the game I was choosing not necessary my favorite lines in order to avoid preparation and was every time surprised that opponents knew the theory better than me anyway. At one point I got pessimistic. If they know the theory so well, then there is simply nothing I can do. It seemed that no matter for how long I was preparing - some opponents were playing quicker and better. I made several exciting draws, but to qualify I needed to win at least one more game. And in the end I was lucky - in round 7 and 8 I played GM Sergey Shipov with Black and IM Alexander Filipenko with White. So why I was lucky? Because these guys played like me - they simply played those openings they usually play in tournaments. And my preparation finally paid off. These two games I want to present below, both having a significant importance for the opening theory.
By the way, later my game with Filipenko won the First Award of Best Novelties in Informator 82.

The final standings of WICC:
1Vlassov, NikolaiIMRUS24536.5
2Touzane, OlivierIMFRA23686.0
3Rogozenko, DorianGMROM25366.0
4Nataf, Igor-AlexandreGMFRA25356.0
5Nielsen, Peter HeineGMDEN26206.0
6Sarthou, GaetanIMFRA23615.5
7Shipov, SergeiGMRUS26255.5
8Zeliakov, Nugzar-RUS-5.5

There was one more player among these eight, who was disqualified by the arbiters committee. His name is Rafal Furdzik (USA), and the arbiters decided unanimously he used computer software during the games.

In the end of this article I must say that the subject of on-line chess is a very serious and difficult one to discuss. Soon I heard there will be other big on-line tournaments. It is well-known that Braingaimes want to have Internet qualifiers as well for their World Champioship cycle. Another new Online World Chess Organization headed by Bessel Kok is preparing big events on the Internet. Unfortunately there always have been chaos in the world of chess lately and I think these organisations will hardly cooperate in this matter. Which means that further mistakes are unavoidable. All these big organizations must share their experience concerning on-line chess events in order to help each other. Because there are a many problems to be solved and a lot of room for improvement. For instance apart from the main two problems I mentioned above during on-line chess games, there are also other important issues, such as clear rules and very experienced and neutral arbiters. Because of shaky regulations and luck of contacts between FIDE and participants of WICC, quite an unpleasant incident happened in the end. Up to this moment I can't explain how was GM Igor Nataf allowed to replay his games from the last two rounds? I believe many WICC players are waiting for an explanation from FIDE. His draws in rounds 7 and 8 looked perfectly valid. Both ended by repetition of moves after long fights and seemed to be the most logical results. However, Nataf replayed both games and won them, thus qualifying for World Championship...

FIDE did a great and difficult job running WICC. Still they certainly faced many unpredictable things which disappointed them. For instance the number of participants in Semifinal was expected to be 512 instead of 102. At the same time there were many good things. I can tell you the best among them - FIDE made your truly to be a happy man in the end of the tournament!

© 2002 Dorian Rogozenko