REPORT OF THE FIDE TRAINERS’ COMMISSION TO FIDE COUNCIL Q2 2021
1. INTRODUCTION
Our work in the last quarter has been consistent with our primary tasks and responsibilities as stated in the regulations as approved at the previous FIDE Council Meeting:
1.1 The FIDE Trainers’ Commission (hereinafter referred to as “TRG”) is responsible for regulating FIDE Trainer Titles and Licenses, organizing FIDE Trainer Seminars and TRG Professional Education & Development Workshops, administering the FIDE Endorsed Academies Program, and the FIDE Trainer Awards.
1.2 TRG work is both technical and administrative, and so is tasked with the development and implementation of all FIDE training programs and activities where TRG also reviews and gives its consent to continental and national trainers activities funded by the FIDE Development Fund.
Please note that as in 1.2. we have taken on new responsibilities which help explain some of the work we are now doing – summarised in this report – but here already will mention development starting with FIDE Chessable Academy and providing a framework to PDC for trainer seminar funding.
We will first share our current activities (giving the status and where possible any key accomplishments) and then inform of our priorities (objectives and targets) for the rest of 2021.
The FIDE Council is also asked for approval to add the financial obligations of academies to the regulations as given as an Annex.
2. CURRENT ACTIVITES
FIDE CHESSABLE ACADEMY
This has of course been our primary focus in the past few months, and we are happy to report that classes have started as scheduled on 3 July after an orientations and opening ceremonies were held on 26 & 27 June as published here: https://fide.com/news/1175
FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich:
“We are very happy with our collaboration with Chessable and the Play Magnus Group and our aim is to deliver the best coaching to the most talented young chess players around the world. Both of us are lucky. On the side of FIDE, together with Chessable, we have a chance to combine the coaches under the umbrella of our Trainers’ Commission with the young chess players who we believe is our future, the next generation to dominate the chess arena for the next decade and even more.”
For this program we invited two nominations between 8 to 16 years of age, one boy and one girl, from each Federation, also the top 5 boys and top 5 girls from each age group and the winners of the World Youth Championships in 2019.
DIS and WOM were also invited to nominate 10 deserving young talents.
Players are organised into ten groups, based broadly on ratings, six in English and two each in Russian and Spanish.
In phase one, of what is expected to be a three-year program, the two months of July and August, we have 231 participants (almost equal number of boys and girls) representing 94 Federations.
As a percentage of Federation participation, we have 71% of ECU membership, 50% of ACF membership, 44% of CCA membership and 25% of ACC membership.
In August we will be giving a second chance for Federations which have not yet registered for the program, and we have directly authorised in the case of ACC, a full mandate to make up the numbers including direct nominations.
We here acknowledge both the sponsorship and pro-active role taken by Chessable.
A pre-requisite for lecturers for FIDE Chessable Academy is to have the FIDE Senior Trainer title and ideally to also be Grandmaster with exceptional credentials.
Priority at the start has been given to long serving and active TRG official seminar lecturers, all who are eminently qualified, but we also welcome other qualified applications as we want to offer a wealth of knowledge to participants.
For phase one and most of 2021 we so far have engaged FSTs & GMs Alexander Motylev, Alonzo Zapata, Artur Yusupov, Dejan Bojkov, Evgeniy Najer, Georgui Castaneda, Igor Lysyi, Ivan Sokolov, Jakov Geller, Melikset Khachiyan, Mikhail Kobalia, Thomas Luther, Xie Jun, and Yu Shaoteng.
FIDE TRAINER AWARDS 2021
The FIDE Trainer Awards has again been a success, now with medals and specially designed certificates being awarded.
(Sample)
For trainers, the results is published here: https://www.fide.com/news/1075 and we below we also give the list of the winners for 2021:
Rustam Kasimdzhanov (UZB) wins the Mikhail Botvinnik Award for the best achievement in Open Section competitions.
Ni Hua (CHN) receives the Vakhtang Karseladze Award for the best achievement by a trainer in women’s and/or girls’ competitions
Sergey Zagrebelny (RUS) has been chosen by the judges for the Mark Dvoretsky Award for the best achievement by a trainer in junior events.
Yakov Geller (RUS) is the winner of the Samuel Reshevsky Award for the best achievement by a junior prodigy (U-14).
Xie Jun (CHN) wins the Yuri Razuvaev Award for her special contribution to grassroots education, and the social impact of her work.
Ye Jiangchuan (CHN) gets the Tigran Petrosian Award for his special contribution to trainer education.
The FIDE Asia Chess Academy in Amman, run by Sami Khader (JOR), gets the Vasily Smyslov Award for the best chess academy.
Melikset Khachiyan wins the Liu Wenzhe Award, a recognition to the figure of the “first coach”, as endorsed by one or more leading chess players.
Berik Akkozov (KAZ), of the ABChess Academy, is the winner of the Online Chess Training Award, for delivery or innovation in online chess training.
The awards for books will be announced on 21 July, with the short list having been expanded to eight books at the request of the judges due to the exceptional high quality of the entries and is published here: https://www.fide.com/news/1153
“After long deliberation, the judges have now narrowed their choices to eight books that you will find below:
Leading in number is Quality Chess, with all its three nominations: Decision Making in Major Piece Endings by Boris Gelfand, The Italian Renaissance – I: Move Orders, Tricks and Alternatives & The Italian Renaissance – II: The Main Lines by Martyn Kravtsiv and Think Like a Machine by Noam Manella and Zeev Zohar making the cut.
New in Chess follows closely with two author titled books: Timman’s Triumphs: My 100 Best Games by Jan Timman and Zlotnik’s Middlegame Manual: Typical Structures and Strategic Manoeuvres by Boris Zlotnik.
The shortlist also includes Elk & Ruby’s Masterpieces and Dramas of the Soviet Championships: Volume I (1920-1937) by Sergey Voronkov, Russell Enterprises’ The Life & Games of Vasily Smyslov. The Early Years: 1921-1948 by Andrey Terekhov, and Thinkers Publishing’s Your Jungle Guide to Chess Tactics: Sharpen Your Tactical Skills by Peter Prohaszka.”
3. ONGOING ACTIVITES & PRIORITIES
FIDE TRAINER SEMINARS
At the start of 2021 we planned for most trainer seminars to be held in the second half of the year, primarily for underserved countries, with as many as eight agreed together with the Asian Chess Federation and the African Chess Confederation, in English, Arabic, Russian, French, and Portuguese.
| Asia | |||
| 1 | August | Indian Sub-Continent | English |
| 2 | September | CIS Countries | Russian |
| 3 | October | Arabic | Arabic |
| 4 | November | East Asia & Oceania | English |
| Africa | |||
| 5 | 3-5 Dec | English Africa | English |
| 6 | 6-9 Dec | French Africa | French |
| 7 | 6-9 Dec | Portuguese Africa | Portuguese |
| 8 | 9-11 Dec | Arabic Africa | Arabic |
CCA and ECU have not asked for any FIDE funding for seminars in 2021, their priority perhaps being Chess in Schools, and so TRG will directly organise.
In Americas, we had one record breaking success in Spanish held in 2-4 April and we will have a second in 1-3 October. We are also planning three more, in English, for North America and the Caribbean regions.
Europe has already seen two seminars held in Russia thanks to sponsorship from CFR and one more organised by at Tier 1 FIDE Academy in German held 9-11 July.
Result is over 100 new trainers this quarter (see our application for FIDE Council approval: TRG – New Titles – FC Q2 2021).
The next seminars planned is one by another Tier 1 FIDE Academy in July together with the Arab Chess Federation, and then mainly directly by TRG, starting with England (UK and surrounding European countries) 3-5 September, and then likely Scandinavia.
TITLE AND LICENCING
We are very happy to report that IT has largely managed to resolve the issues raised and we now have a trainer database.
Reporting functions are however still very rudimentary and we hope that resources will be made available in the coming quarter to take away the dependency of IT having to manually do this, with all understandable limitations.
Our hope is to soon have a full picture of the real trainer title and licence status.
License certificates are now being issued and have been well received – by those who find them useful in some way – but they need to be more universally accepted and we are still far away from developing benefits to our trainers beyond awarding a title and offering a form of accreditation, but at the minimum it has to be tangible help to do their work better. To progress, this is a key area TRG will have to look into.
TRG has started to receive requests from FSTs to be given lifelong licences providing proof under “free for 25 years of work as trainer” regulation change and some with title and having left the system have also expressed interest to reactivate their licence under this category.
From August we will have a program to engage all FST title holders to see if they qualify and to invite all former world champions to become FST.
ACADEMIES
We have 40 FIDE Endorsed Academies but unfortunately not all are in compliance but TRG has of course been very sympathetic when they have difficult times.
The good news is we are beginning to see some recovery with some.
From September we plan to communicate with all (and any new approved by the FIDE Council) to determine their category aspirations for 2022 membership, to agree a timeline to qualify for their desired “Tier” and in doing so have full understanding of rights and obligations.
We have also, after getting a lot of feedback, have broad agreement to a fee structure that is proposed to be added to regulations as in Annex 1.
List of FIDE Endorsed Academies at 12 July 2021
| NO. | TITLE | COUNTRY | DIRECTOR |
| 001 | Asean Chess Academy | Singapore | Leong Ignatius |
| 002 | German Chess Academy | Germany | Marcus Fenner |
| 003 | American Chess University | USA | Khodarkovsky Michael |
| 004 | Russian Chess Academy | Russia | Alexander V. Tkachev |
| 005 | Asian Chess Federation Academy | UAE | Al Taher Hisham |
| 006 | Grivas Chess International Academy | Greece | Grivas Efstratios |
| 007 | Chess Excellence Academy | South Africa | Van Der Nat Nicholas |
| 008 | Susan Polgar Institute of Chess Excellence | USA | Polgar Susan |
| 009 | Bahrain Chess Academy | Bahrain | Tissir Mohamed |
| 010 | Belarus FIDE Chess Academy | Belarus | Maria Tamkovich |
| 011 | Mongolian International Chess Academy | Mongolia | Baasanjav Mijid |
| 012 | Kwazulu Natal Chess Academy | South Africa | Takawira Erick |
| 013 | Tbilisi International Chess Academy | Georgia | Milorava Marina |
| 014 | Sabah Chess Academy | Malaysia | Chi Yin Phin |
| 015 | Dubai Chess Academy | UAE | Mohamed Elhusseiny |
| 016 | Culture Echecs | France | Konopka Jeremiasz |
| 017 | Academia Brazileira de Xadrez | Brazil | Lima Darcy |
| 018 | Schachzwerge Magdeburg e.V. | Germany | Zeuner Michael |
| 019 | Academia Internacional “Martha Fierro” | Ecuador | Fierro Martha |
| 020 | Asia Chess Academy | Jordan | Khader Sami |
| 021 | Mastermind FIDE Chess Academy of Pakistan | Pakistan | Wasif Zenobia |
| 022 | Young Chess Masters | Zimbabwe | Mawire Admire |
| 023 | Wadi Degla Chess Academy | Egypt | Bassem Amin |
| 024 | Myanmar Chess Academy | Myanmar | Maung Maung Lwin |
| 025 | Project Chess Zambia | Zambia | Andrew Kayonde |
| 026 | Let’s Learn Together | Cyprus | Mark Bryan |
| 027 | World of Chess – Kazakhstan – Anton Flilipov | Kazakhstan | Anton Filipov |
| 028 | Jussupow Schachschule | Germany | Artur Yusupov |
| 029 | Chess Queen Academy | Georgia | Maya Chiburdanidze |
| 030 | Philippine Academy for Chess Excellence | Philippines | Jayson Gonzales |
| 031 | FIDE International Academy Bulchess | Bulgaria | Zhivko Zhekov |
| 032 | Mechanics Institute | USA | Talamantez, Abel |
| 033 | Vugar Gashimov Chess Academy | Azerbaijan | Sarkhan Hashimov |
| 034 | Elite Brain Academy | Mongolia | Enkhtuul Altan-Ulzii |
| 035 | GoforChess Academy | South Africa | Clyde Wolpe |
| 036 | iChess Academy | South Korea | Song Hae |
| 037 | African Chess Lounge | South Africa | Salimu Reuben |
| 038 | Bouhjar Chess Academy | Tunisia | Wajdi Chouari |
| 039 | Adly Chess Academy | Egypt | Adly Ahmed |
| 040 | Mauritanian International Chess Academy | Mauritania | Tajedine Sidi Mohamed |
COURSES FOR TEACHING CHESS TO THE DISABLED
We have agreed to take the lead, to support the work of DIS, by developing courses to teach chess to the disabled.
In two months, two groups of passionate volunteers, from Africa, Americas, Asia and Europe, all who have a great deal of expertise and experience, have generously shared their own teaching materials and are weekly meeting to develop best practices.
This is also planned to be used to also support FIDE social initiatives, and so our first course will be for those with learning disabilities. From the progress, we are optimistic to have this in ready and tested in the next few months.
RESOURCE LIBRARY/VIDEO TRAINING COURSE
TRG has now over a hundred hours of usable video content of from our seminars from 2020 and we are also collecting the same from FIDE Chessable Academy, with lecturers’ agreement we can use for promotional and non-commercial educational and training purposes.
We will need to invest in editing and compilation to make into lessons for structured courses that we can offer both trainers and young talents in developing countries
Ideally, we work with select FIDE Endorsed Academies and this can be possible in 2022 with Tier 1 and select Tier 2 & Tier 3.
This work is also a priority for TRG in the second half of 2021.
Mikhail Kobalia
TRG Chairman
12 July 2021
