I wonder why Saudi Arabia's privilege of hosting this competition was not revoked when they decided to prevent players from attending based on their country of origin. This is quite petty and stupid from a government which is attempting to re-brand itself these days.
it shows how out of touch FIDE is as an organization, they're more about marketing and selling the product of chess than being stewards of the game.
FIDEs weakness also shines through by not pulling the tournament from Saudi Arabia. even an awful, corrupt organization like FIFA wouldn't allow say, Qatar to start banning teams from the World Cup.
Ludicrous! Why the world keeps going back to Saudi Arabia for hosting secular events and donning UN leadership positions on it is a mystery. 2018 was supposed to bring us flying cars and AI manufacturing, not a fatwa bleeding into sports!
That is intentional most of the UN bodies are structured around the geographical groups for which each group would elect a member.
Due to how the groups are structured you have effectively only a single group which is for the most part nearly purely democratic and western that is the Western group which includes NA Most of the EU/EEA, Australia and Turkey.
The Eastern region is basically Russia its newly formed vassal states and a few EU countries that got shafted they like Japan also want to move into the Western group.
Then you have Africa which gets its own region.
APAC which is the dominated by the Arab Peninsula, China and India and Pakistan and the Latin American region which shifts constantly from being ok to being quite loony.
The 5 region basically elect representatives to the various UN bodies like the human rights council since the elections are internal it’s basically regional politics and rotation of the crazy for 3 out of the 5 regions.
This is how you get Syria on the Human Rights Council, China as the monitor of press freedom and Saudi Arabia as the champion of Women’s right in the UN.
Israel was not a member of any group as the Arab states blocked its membership to the APAC and the African blocks, in 2013 if finally got to be a member of the western block which meant that it was the first time in 65 years it could send a representative to be elected to a UN position.
In 2015, they received no bids to host the rapid/blitz championship by the bid deadline. They had to extend the deadline, and finally were able to get one bid, from Berlin.
However, Berlin could only host if the date was moved, so FIDE had to accept that. The only date available in Berlin conflicted with the Millionaire Chess Open, which some top rapid/blitz players (such as Nakamura and So) had already committed to.
A similar thing happened with the 2017 Women's World Championship. No bids. FIDE rescheduled and tried again, getting one bid, from Iran. Because of Iran's restrictions on women many players declined to attend, including some who would have been favorites to win if they had attended.
It seems that it is getting harder and harder to find organizers interested in hosting these events.
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To the downvoters: https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-us-canada-38785028
FIDEs weakness also shines through by not pulling the tournament from Saudi Arabia. even an awful, corrupt organization like FIFA wouldn't allow say, Qatar to start banning teams from the World Cup.
We would better improve our own institutions instead of criticizing others.
The Eastern region is basically Russia its newly formed vassal states and a few EU countries that got shafted they like Japan also want to move into the Western group.
Then you have Africa which gets its own region.
APAC which is the dominated by the Arab Peninsula, China and India and Pakistan and the Latin American region which shifts constantly from being ok to being quite loony.
The 5 region basically elect representatives to the various UN bodies like the human rights council since the elections are internal it’s basically regional politics and rotation of the crazy for 3 out of the 5 regions.
This is how you get Syria on the Human Rights Council, China as the monitor of press freedom and Saudi Arabia as the champion of Women’s right in the UN.
Israel was not a member of any group as the Arab states blocked its membership to the APAC and the African blocks, in 2013 if finally got to be a member of the western block which meant that it was the first time in 65 years it could send a representative to be elected to a UN position.
In 2015, they received no bids to host the rapid/blitz championship by the bid deadline. They had to extend the deadline, and finally were able to get one bid, from Berlin.
However, Berlin could only host if the date was moved, so FIDE had to accept that. The only date available in Berlin conflicted with the Millionaire Chess Open, which some top rapid/blitz players (such as Nakamura and So) had already committed to.
A similar thing happened with the 2017 Women's World Championship. No bids. FIDE rescheduled and tried again, getting one bid, from Iran. Because of Iran's restrictions on women many players declined to attend, including some who would have been favorites to win if they had attended.
It seems that it is getting harder and harder to find organizers interested in hosting these events.