First Saturday September event Budapest: 3 IM norms
FIDE Vice president Adeyemi Olalekan visited the event Another monthly tournament festival First Saturday is completed in Hotel Berlin in Budapest, Hungary. The organizers of the event Nagy László and his wife Mrs.Nagy Ilona Borbély see their mission in providing alternatives for achieving GM, IM, WGM, WIM norms as well as getting or improving FIDE-ratings. To that end, they hold small tournament festivals monthly that usually attract 40-80 players representing 10-15 national federations. This time around the participants competed in GM and IM groups won by Song Raymond from Taiwan and Robert Stein from Germany respectively. All in all, three norms were completed at First Saturday by FM Robert Stein from Germany (his first IM norm), the Indian WCM Isha Sharma (her fourth WIM norm) and WFM from Israel Michal Lashav (her fourth WIM norm). Official site: www.firstsaturday.hu
Welcome to the new FIDE.com!
Dear members of the chess family, On behalf of FIDE, I am pleased to welcome you to our new website, which is now live and functional. Since my appointment almost one year ago, we have done a great effort to renew this organization and its spirit. Many areas, and FIDE’s structure itself, have been rebuilt from scratch. Some of those changes, although deep, are not always obvious from the outside. Others, like reactivating our social media channels or launching a new website, are much more visible for anyone. The latter was long due as we always have to adapt to the new technologies. Now, the new site will look much better on devices such as smartphones and tablets. We have tried to keep intact the main assets of the “old” website, like the players’ database and rating list, just improving the way they look and navigation tools as well. And we are planning to revamp the tournament’s calendar, turning it into one of the most important sections on our web. An important novelty will be our blog. On a regular basis a member of our team – management, secretariat, representatives of the commissions or members of the Presidential Board – will be given this space to share with the chess community our ideas, projects, and dreams. Of course, like most internet projects, this is a work in progress. This is just a beta version, and new functional elements will be added in the forthcoming months. Corrections will be needed; suggestions are always welcome. The whole purpose of a website is to establish a line of communication between an institution and its members, and we want this communication to go both ways. You can reach our team at website@fide.com; help us to make this a better website for us all. Arkady Dvorkovich – FIDE President