61st World Congress of Chess Composition
Ohrid, Macedonia
September 1 – September 8, 2018
26 member countries were present. Neal Turner acted as substitute secretary.
WCCT: Mikalai Sihnevich (BLR) will be the director of the 11th WCCT. Countries are urged to submit their theme-proposals and inform about the sections they are willing to judge by 15 November 2018. The contact person is the WCCT committee spokesman, Georgy Evseev, 10wcct@gmail.com (same email address as in the previous tournament). It is hoped that the countries will submit sufficient feedback, so that the WCCT can be announced within March 2019.
WCCI: Selection of the judges for the 2016-18 WCCI was finalized. The announcement of the championship will be issued by the end of September and the closing date will be 20.1.2019. The results will be published on the site by the end of June 2019.
FIDE Album: Theme indexers are expected to finish their work by the end of 2018 and the 2013-15 album is scheduled to be ready in the 2019 congress. Selection of the section directors and judges for the 2016-18 album was finalized. The fairies section will be split in two groups (one group for fairies without conditions, and the other for fairies with conditions). The announcement of the 2016-18 album will be issued in early January 2019 with a closing date of 1 June 2019.
With regard to the rule for the number of allowed entries (30 entries, as a maximum, to each section or 3 times the number of selected compositions in that section in the previous album that the composer participated) it was agreed to change the last part of the rule to “…in any of the previously published albums.” The suggestion of Crisan/Loustau/Parrinello regarding changes in the judging phase schedule was reviewed by the Album committee and was discussed in the Assembly; advantages and disadvantages were spotted and the committee will contact the composers for further questions and clarifications.
Solving: Changes were agreed in the rules of ISC and WCSC/ECSC, as well as in the criteria for acceptability of tournaments at which ratings and norms can be gained. Roland Ott will be the director of World Solving Cup 2018-2019. Luc Palmans will be the new committee spokesman.
Youth: A new committee aiming to the development of chess composing and solving among youngsters was established. Marjan Kovačević was appointed as spokesman. WFCC will contact ECU to arrange the details of establishing a European Cup solving event in the context of the European Youth OTB championships.
New titles:
- International Grandmaster of the FIDE for Chess Compositions: Aleksandr Semenenko (UKR)
- International Master of the FIDE for Chess Compositions: Yury Gorbatenko (RUS), Vitaly Medintsev (RUS), Zlatko Mihajloski (MKD)
- FIDE Master for Chess Compositions: Georgy Evseev (RUS), Norbert Geissler (GER), János Mikitovics (HUN), Viktoras Paliulionis (LTU), Nikola Predrag (CRO), Dmitri Turevski (RUS)
- FIDE Solving Master: Nikos Sidiropoulos (GRE)
- International Judge of the FIDE for Chess Compositions: Yury Bilokin (UKR, helpmates), Aleksandr Bulavka (BLR, helpmates and fairies), Aleksey Ivunin (RUS, helpmates), Sergey Osintsev (RUS, studies), Mečislovas Rimkus (LTU, two/three/moremovers, helpmates), Dmitri Turevski (RUS, helpmates and fairies)
- FIDE Solving Judge: Ivan Denkovski (MKD), Borislav Gadjanski (SRB)
The presidium for the years 2019-2022 will be: Harry Fougiaxis (President), Thomas Maeder (1st Vice-President and Treasurer), Vidmantas Satkus (2nd Vice-President), Luc Palmans (3rd Vice-President).
Georgy Evseev, former 2nd Vice-President, was nominated Honorary Member of the WFCC.
15th International Solving Contest (ISC) on 27.1.2019, directors Axel Steinbrink and Luc Palmans.
14th European Chess Solving Championship (ECSC) in Glyfada (Athens), Greece 3-5 May 2019
62nd World Congress of Chess Composition (WCCC) and 43rd World Chess Solving Championship (WCSC) in Vilnius, Lithuania 17-24 August 2019