An Arbiter's Notebook
by Geurt Gijssen

Las Vegas - Surprise, surprise!!

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was promised they would not be published.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 opinionnever 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
games4 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 incidentif 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 chessplayers. 

There were three main mistakes in the system1. There were situations in
which the computer did not know how to make a move; for instance, if
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 chessplayers. 

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 chessplayers 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 simplethe
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 chessplayer. 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. 