All Things Human

FIDE’s Presidential Board meets in Elista on September 22 and 23 and one of the items on the agenda is payback for the supporters of Bessel Kok. For many years, actually decades, the United States and Canada have each been separate zones unto themselves (and their championships have thus been zonal tournaments or qualifiers for the World Championship or World Cup or whatever it is now). This makes a lot of sense for the United States (nearly 300 million people, strong chess tradition and organization as evidenced by their recent bronze medal in the Olympiad) but no sense for Canada (only 30 million people). Germany, by contrast has over 80 million people, a strong chess tradition (think Dortmund and Mainz) yet it shares a zone with Austria, Liechtenstein, Slovenia, and Switzerland. There is a proposal to merge the United States and Canada (both strong Kok supporters) into one zone. This will upset the Americans (especially the organizers and money behind the U.S. Championship) and the Canadians, but few others. So it will likely pass.