The U.S. Championships Will Take Place in October - Online
All five U.S. Championships (the main event, the women's event, the seniors, the juniors', and the girls') are slated to take place in October, and the USCF has given in to the inevitable and decided to hold them online. (More on this here, including dates and line-ups. HT: Dan Parmet.)
I half wonder how long it will be until FIDE does the same thing and concludes the Candidates online, but there's at least one important difference there: time zones. The U.S. is a large country by almost any standard, but even so, unless someone's in Hawaii or Alaska the biggest time difference will be three hours. That may be an issue for players in the four specialized events, if they're working or in school, but it shouldn't pose much trouble for the main event's participants. But the Candidates features both Americans and Chinese players, to focus for the moment on participants who live on opposite sides of the globe. Either they'll have to enter a sort of "bubble" (like the NBA) where they can still play online, but supervised and in the same time zone (even the same facility), or else FIDE will probably have to wait until the crisis has (mostly?) passed. One extra bonus of the "bubble" idea is that the internet connection won't be a problem; this has been a major problem in online events, including the online Olympiad.
Maybe some of you have some better ideas? Let's see 'em.
Reader Comments (1)
Dennis, do you know why in the last years Kamsky doesn't play? I mean, by rating he should clearly could, right?
[DM: I haven't checked in this particular case, but for many years there was a eligibility requirement that players had to contest a certain number of USCF-rated games in the past year. Kamsky's USCF rating has moved a bit, according to the Federation's webpage, but it looks like they're all overseas events. Also, and probably relatedly, I think Kamsky is mostly in Russia these days.]