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Personal problems
The European
Delegates have already been informed about the problems I had in
year 2007, for a hard illness of my older son (now he’s very better
and I do hope he will completely recover in a few months). Therefore
I beg your pardon if sometimes I have not been so quick to answer
your enquiries as in previous years.
Nevertheless, I think the activity in the European Zone has
gone on without too many problems or delays.
Organization
There was no
problem in the “Managing Team” (G-M Tani -ITA-, Zonal Director,
S.Ja. Grodzenskij -RUS-, Deputy Z.D., Carlos Flores Gutiérrez -ESP-,
Treasurer).
The Tournament Office Commissioners (L. Madonia -ITA- and R.
Battistini -ITA-) have -as always- very well worked.
There have been two new entries in the Tournament Directors’ team:
L. Lahdenmäki (FIN) e J. Ryška (CZE): Many thanks to them and the
other European T.D.s (E. Neri -ITA-, K. Metelmann
-GER- and L. Tinture -FRA-).
European Team Championships
The Semifinals of
7th E.T.C., started on 20.12.2005 and played on ICCF
web-server (T.D.: T. Klauner -LUX-), are going on regularly and most
of games is already over.
The Final of 6th E.T.C., started in 2004 and played by
post, is near to its end and I can announce that the German team is
mathematically the 6th European Champion. Congratulation
to BdF!
European Individual Championships
I’m happy to
announce that we have two new European Champions: IM Klaus Weber is
the 63rd European Champion: he got 9.5 points out of 14
in the e-mail Final; SIM Andrej Loc (SLO) is the 64th
European Champion: he got 11 points out of 14 in the postal final.
Both finals (T.D.: A. Rawlings -ENG-) have still a few games running
on.
The Semifinals of 65th E.I.C. (T.D.: L. Tinture -FRA-)
are quite over (there’re just a few postal games running on). The
Semifinals of 66th E.I.C. (played on ICCF web-server;
T.D.: V.I. Myakutin -RUS-) and 67th E.I.C. (played by
post; T.D.: C. Flores Gutiérrez -ESP-), both started on 1.09.2005,
are also regularly going on.
Harro
Otte Memorial
I think the
organization of this tournament (the first championship for national
teams reserved to players with low ELO) has been the greater success
of ICCF-Europa in year 2007.
26 National Federations entered their team and so I could arrange
three preliminaries groups. On 17.06.2007, the second anniversary of
Harro Otte’s death, 156 players “officially” started their games.
Many thanks to all the delegates who helped me to organize this
important championship and to T. Klauner -LUX- who agreed to be the
T.D. of all the groups.
Friendly team matches
Three ICCF-Europa
teams, with 24 players, have been entered in “Interzonal 2006”
(Captains: G. Sapundjiev -BUL-, Jan M. Pheby -ENG- and J. Mrkvička -CZE-).
The
Europa/B team has still very few chances to win the “Interzonal
2004”, but the winner will quite surely be the NAPZ team.
Promotional tournaments
The European Zone
is the only one who still organizes postal tournaments. And European
players continues to be interested in postal play!
In 2006 the European Tournament Office started 19 postal groups (5
“M”, 7 “H” and 7 “O”); 13 postal groups (3 “M”, 5 “H” and “5 “O”)
have been started in the first month of 2007.
On the contrary, there are many problems to start e-mail
tournaments: only 6 groups in 2006 (3 “M”, 2 “H”, 1 “O”) and just 2
groups (1 “M”, 1 “H” and no one “O”) in the fist half of 2007.
Last year there was a proposal to organize European web-server
promotional tournaments, too. Accordingly with L. Madonia, we
decided to wait for 2008, because it’s not possible to have both
e-mail and web-server European tournaments (not enough entries!).
So, the question is: to dismiss European e-mail tournaments or to
try to replace them with European web-server tournaments?
We’ll discuss it during ICCF-Europa Meeting.
Web-site
The numbers of
visitors of our web-site,
www.iccf-europa.com,
is continuously decreasing, in spite of the accurate work of our
web-master, G. Ruggeri Laderchi -ITA-.
Until the month of April we had an average of 90 visitors / day, but
now the average is ~ 60 visitors / day. The reason is that quite all
the tables have moved to
www.iccf-webchess.com.
At ICCF-Europa Meeting we’ll have to decide if to continue to have
our own web-site or if it’s better to close it.
ICCF-Europa Regulation
During 2006
ICCF-Europa Meeting the European Delegates agreed on a draft for
ICCF-Europa Regulation.
With the help of George Pyrich, I arranged a final draft that will
be discussed and voted at ICCF-Europa Meeting.
New tournaments for 2008
In 2008 I’d like
to start two new finals of E.I.C.: a postal one (probably the last
postal final for a lot of years) at the beginning of the year and a
web-server (or e-mail) final in autumn/winter.
It’s necessary to start the Semifinals of 68th E.I.C.,
too (spring/summer 2008 ?) and –probably- the Semifinals of 8th
E.T.C.: all these items will be discussed in our Meeting.
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At
the end of my four years’ serving period, I’d like to thank all the
delegates and the officials, let me say “all
the friends”, who have helped me.
I don’t know if
everyone is satisfied with my work… very soon we’ll have new ballots
and you’ll have the possibility to confirm or to reject me…
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THANK YOU
and… amici sumus!
Torino, 20.09.2006. |
