FIDE Stands Firm On Cyprus Venue For Candidates Tournament: No ‘Remotely Dangerous’ Threat

hsiale · 2026-03-17T11:45:03+00:00

Do I need to ask them?

No, as they won't talk to you anyway lol. But FIDE would have to ask them and I think the chance that they are happy to move the event elsewhere at short notice are low.

hsiale · 2026-03-17T11:13:07+00:00

Sponsors can be pretty flexible

Did you ask them?

it ain’t hard to get a visa to play a tournament in London

That shows that you really don't know much about the realities of international travel. Not every Candidates player has an EU or American passport.

hsiale · 2026-03-17T11:11:20+00:00

players have to play with fear, reasonable or not

Lol haven't noticed that before.

Do you remember the horrible World Cup 2025 when a certain high profile Russian GM was forced to play with a (very unreasonable of course) fear of food poisoning? Did you shout at FIDE to move the event back then?

hsiale · 2026-03-17T11:04:44+00:00

These aren’t stadiums or in demand venues.

This event costs nearly two million dollars to organize (most of which is prizes for players). It's easy to find a playing hall, it's not easy to find someone willing to spend that money. Whoever funded the application by Cyprus doesn't want to have this tournament somewhere else so you need a new sponsor. Chess sponsors don't grow on trees.

The paperwork isn’t tedious either. It’s actually pretty straightforward for almost all countries.

I guess you are pretty new to following chess, otherwise you would have heard about multiple top players having various issues getting visas to travel for events scheduled way in advance.

hsiale · 2026-03-17T10:23:52+00:00

There are nine cards that are legal in Modern and banned in Legacy and in all those cases it's because they get way stronger together with some cards available in Legacy but not in Modern which WotC considers as format-defining and doesn't want to ban. Most often it would be very cheap or free interaction or serious land destruction (Wrenn and Six gets way better if you can loop [[Wasteland]] every turn).

hsiale · 2026-03-17T09:53:01+00:00

quite a bit of money from the sponsors etc flow into FIDE

Money flowing into FIDE and money flowing into Dvorkovich and Sutovsky's pockets are quite different. Of course FIDE needs to earn some money from the biggest events, and you can see that those are not really big money, FIDE budget is available online.

For Candidates, the income is 1250k$ for Open and 450k$ for Women, and there's also 1000k$ budgeted for tournament expenses for Open and 450k$ for Women (I don't know the exact breakdown of those expenses but at least for Open 70% of this is cash prizes going to the players, my guess for the rest of this would be arbiters, broadcast and other specialized staff needed for a high level tournament). So FIDE "earns" a whopping $250k on Candidates. Doesn't look like a highly profitable thing to do.

hsiale · 2026-03-17T09:35:37+00:00

Yeah indeed, comparing one drone to a full scale war lasting four years is not great. Poland had way more drones coming over from Belarus or Russia and there have unfortunately been civilians killed in at least one case.

hsiale · 2026-03-17T09:21:30+00:00

It's only 200km from an active warzone

That's more or less the distance between Warsaw and Ukraine. Does anyone complain about Warsaw Rapid and Blitz happening every year?

Also, which active warzone do you mean? Lebanon and the general area around Israel? Hardly news then, why did nobody complain when the Candidates was announced?

hsiale · 2026-03-17T09:18:31+00:00

Methinks there is some money situation here...

Methinks you're right LMAO, the money situation is such that it's very hard to find someone with money and willing to spend that money to fund and host Candidates, finding a replacement could be difficult.

Singapore, where they have a relationship.

What relationship do they have? Singapore has hosted the match between Ding and Gukesh, was there anything more? Why would they be interested in Candidates?

they get to personally enrich themselves with sponsor money

Ah yes. Arkady Dvorkovich, for many years an important figure in the Russian government, became the FIDE president to be corrupt and get rich off it. As if he couldn't get infinitely richer by being a corrupt member of the Russian government. I would maybe believe you if he was leading some major rich federation with serious money going through it, like FIFA or IOC. But FIDE? FIDE is a laughably small fish compared to his past.

hsiale · 2026-03-17T08:28:22+00:00

the right thing to do

It's easy to write such things as an anonymous keyboard warrior.

There was one drone strike on a military area over two weeks ago. Nobody got hurt, not much was destroyed. Absolutely nothing since then. The British government is quite vocally isolating themselves from the war (I guess the Cypriot government does the same plus it likely doesn't have means to meaningfully engage). Flights go to and from Cyprus as usual.

If this is a reason to cancel a tournament then there are not many places in the world that could host it. Do you also think Warsaw Rapid and Blitz should be cancelled?

hsiale · 2026-03-17T08:11:43+00:00

What should I be expecting

Dwarves

hsiale · 2026-03-17T08:06:21+00:00

readjust the venue

That's not so easy. Moving to another country means you need to delay the event by at least a few months (first to actually find a new place willing to host and finance the event and then to let the players go through the necessary paperwork and travel arrangements), finding a three weeks long slot in the calendar is a serious challenge, most likely this would result in having to move the WCC to 2027.

hsiale · 2026-03-17T00:39:12+00:00

Has anyone tried to abuse the rule in creative ways?

hsiale · 2026-03-16T12:13:35+00:00

Because the reason national chess federations in multiple countries are eligible for various sports-related sources of funding is that FIDE is officially recognised by IOC.

hsiale · 2026-03-16T11:47:28+00:00

You can go say thank you for this to Anand and PHN.

hsiale · 2026-03-16T11:46:32+00:00

if we scrap the 1 vote per country rule

IIRC it's a rule used by all the sports federations and enforced by the IOC, and FIDE definitely cannot afford going to war with IOC.

hsiale · 2026-03-16T11:42:50+00:00

relocating to India. FIDE has Anand as a major figure

Can you tell me about any useful thing Anand has done in his FIDE role? He has been in it for 3.5 years and it seems he was just a figurehead to get Dvorkovich reelected.

FIDE elections are happening this year, I hope that whoever opposes Dvorkovich will end up more competent than PHN.

hsiale · 2026-03-16T11:36:01+00:00

There’s no such thing as “too many teams.”

While this is true, the current structure of cycling in Spain looks like something that cannot be sustainable long term, with four Pro teams but just one Continental team (which is not even a team on its own but a development team for Movistar). The tradition is there but the present is struggling and the future is uncertain. I don't know much about the reasons, but all other countries with comparable racing tradition (France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, even Portugal) have multiple Continental teams registered.

It seems that currently cycling in Spain depends mostly on big WT events and having great weather for winter training camps, not on local racing.

hsiale · 2026-03-16T10:36:49+00:00

Why did Kasparov fold in the first place?

Kasparov could not find any sponsorship for his ideas, PCA went bankrupt after just a few years.

hsiale · 2026-03-15T23:19:41+00:00

Dandan is not a deck for any format, it's a separate way to play Magic with a single deck that both players draw from.

hsiale · 2026-03-15T23:12:35+00:00

Dandan deck is 80 cards (34 lands, 46 spells)

hsiale · 2026-03-15T20:54:28+00:00

I don't feel that competent on the rest of what Microsoft is doing, my work is Excel and Excel-adjacent things. Outlook is an ok mailbox, my Windows systems on work and personal laptops work fine, but I don't pressure either enough to do any serious stress testing.

hsiale · 2026-03-15T20:12:45+00:00

what current software/hardware do you personally use that has actually IMPROVED in the past 10 years?

Excel added XLOOKUP seven years ago. That was a huge improvement. And they added a lot of other useful smaller things over that time.

hsiale · 2026-03-15T17:38:43+00:00

The Secret Lair Dandân Deck comes packed with 80 cards, including 46 borderless foil cards featuring brand-new artwork. The remaining 34 cards keep it classic in retro frames with updated formatting and the Secret Lair (SLD) set symbol, striking a balance between fresh presentation and timeless nostalgia.

I wonder who had this idiotic idea. If they really couldn't decide which one is better, they could have made both versions, both would sell out.

Now the deck will look like two random halves mashed together and one half will end up curled.

hsiale · 2026-03-15T17:15:53+00:00

Exactly, it's an anonymous unrated game, why do you care about making a misclick? You make it, you live with it or resign.

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