Zone tournament

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The zone tournaments are a qualification stage introduced by the World Chess Federation FIDE in the determination of the challenger of the world chess champion . It was decided at the FIDE Congress in The Hague in 1947 . The basic idea was to enable the top players from the smaller member federations to qualify for a World Cup match.

The chess federations belonging to the World Chess Federation are divided into so-called zones according to territorial aspects. Within each of these zones, zone tournaments were used to determine which players could qualify for the subsequent interzonal tournament. Originally four zone tournaments were to take place in 1947, but only two were played in the two European zones. The American zone as well as the Soviet Union, which formed a separate zone because of their chess supremacy, nominated their participants for the interzonal tournament. The number of zone tournaments increased later, with only the tournament winner from the weaker zones qualifying, while the very heavily occupied zones were able to send several participants to the interzonal tournament.

Conditions of participation for a zone tournament

The regulations regarding which nation receives how many places have changed several times in the past. According to FIDE, the following regulation has been in effect since 2002 : Each nation receives at least one place in its respective zone group. Other allocations are possible, depending on the number of active grandmasters and active players with a minimum Elo rating (over 2,450 in men, about 2,250 in women).

Current situation

According to the minutes of the 77th FIDE General Assembly (2006), it is up to the individual continental federations whether they determine their starters for the interzonal tournament via zone tournaments or other competitions (e.g. continental championships). According to this text, all continents except Europe prefer the hosting of zone tournaments.

Specific examples

USSR

In the USSR, up to and including 1961, every third national championship was considered a zone tournament, most recently in 1958 in Riga and 1961 in Moscow. For the first time a separate zone tournament was held in 1964: In Moscow qualified Boris Spassky , Leonid Stein and David Bronstein for the Interzonal Amsterdam in 1964 , Vasily Smyslov was already automatically eligible to play in the inter-zonal tournament.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ FIDE Handbook ( Memento of March 13, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
  2. ↑ Minutes of the General Assembly, Section 13.1 there (PDF; 197 kB)

Web links