Commission on Women's Chess Meeting

Hi to all friends of Women's Chess!

Right now I'm in Halkidiki, taking part in the 80th FIDE Congress. On October 12, 2009 I had a meeting of the Commission on Women's Chess. We discussed many things and all agreed that the chess world is in need for many more women's chess enthusiasts, not only players, but also arbiters, trainers and women officials. So everyone's help is needed and in the next year I'm planning to form a team that will work on the development of women's chess in the world. So if any of you have some experience in the chess field and are ready to help women's chess I will be more than happy to consider your applications to become members of the Commission on Women's Chess. You can send your applications to my email.

Meanwhile, I'm attaching below the Minutes of the meeting of the Commission on Women's Chess:

Report of the Commission on Women’s Chess

Meeting of October 12, 2009

by co-chairman Alexandra Kosteniuk

Present: A. Kosteniuk (RUS), F. Dapiran (ITA), M. Murphy (ISV), N. Freeman (BER) - Treasurer, I. Leong (SIN) - General Secretary, L. Mazouz (GER), A. Mongiello (ISV), T. Ameyar (ALG), A. Herbert (BAR), B. Assanov (KAZ), R. Haring (USA).

The following issues have been discussed and the following steps have been approved:

1. Predictable Tournaments Calendar

Decided:

- Events commision, commission on women’s chess and all other commissions that are working on the chess calendar have to work together in order to avoid unfortunate clashes of big women’s chess events.

2. Creating a special women’s chess web-site on the FIDE.com portal

Decided:

- To create and launch a special page dedicated to women’s chess on the FIDE web-portal - womenchess.fide.com, where one can find the history of Women's Chess, women’s chess tournaments and events calendar, up-to-date news about women’s events, statistics on women’s chess, articles and discussion on important topics related to women’s chess, all the info contacts of WIM and WGM so any organizer can send an invitation or proposal to any of these players for a chess tournament.

3. Women's World Blitz and Rapid Championships

Decided:

- To create regulations of these events and post them on the FIDE web-site for bidding procedure.

4. Creating the CAISSA Award

This award proposal has been proposed to the Presidential Board for approval.

5. Creating a GOLD ORGANIZER award

This award proposal has been proposed to the Presidential Board for approval

Mr. Ignatius Leong proposed to discuss during the Executive Board the possibility to organize an award-dinner for the nominates for the awards of all chess commissions during the chess olympiads.

6. Increasing Women's Prizes in Open Tournaments

Decided:

- Ask the presidential board to propose to the organizers of the FIDE rated events to have the top women’s prize not less than 30% of the first overall prize of a tournament (if there is certain number of women participating and if they take not less than 40% of the points).

7. Working on increasing women’s representatives in all the commissions and federations

All the people attending the meeting agreed that many countries are very far behind in developing women’s chess. FIDE and the chess world is desperately in need of more chess women arbiters, women trainers, women officials. For this purpose it was decided:

- To work together with trainers, arbiters and all other commissions in order to increase the number of women represantatives.

- To prepare a special letter to all the commissions with the proposal to have at least 1 woman representative in the Council of every commission.

8. Good-will chess visits program

Current and former women’s world chess champions will visit chess federations around the world in order to popularize women’s chess and to attract attention of the media and the government of these countries to this issue.

Decided:

- To collaborate with the Devlopment CACDEC Commision, the Continental Presidents, national federations about this project and work out the calendar of such events for 2010.

- To create a special list of the countries who are in need for women’s chess development and were not represented by women’s team in the Chess Olympiad in Dresden and write to these countries in order to help them to develop women’s chess.

9. To publish a special book from FIDE women’s commission about benefits of chess for girls and women’s and with the history of the women’s chess and with the stars of women’s chess past and current. This book can be distributed for the women’s chess commissions of the FIDE federations especially in the countries where are no women’s chess teams.

Decided:

-To wait until the agreement with Chess Lane will be decided since Chess Lane might have some rights for this kind of work.

10. Support young girls stars, to create a FIDE Grant, that will help a continental champion or anybody who will somehow win this grant to travel to the world chess youth championship.

Decided:

- Talk to the Development commission since they are also trying to create the same grant for young chess players and colloborate with this commission.

11. Organize special only girls FIDE approved trainings (maybe together with the trainers committee) on the base of the FIDE chess academies.

Decided:

- To contact the trainers commission so these training sessions are organized during the trainers seminars.

12. Considering all of the above the commission on women’s chess should develop and propose the budget for 2010 to the Treasurer.

Written by Alexandra Kosteniuk

Women's World Chess Champion

www.chessblog.com