"Being on time?¢‚Ǩ?
Imagine you ate an energy bar beforehand, did a walk, smoked a last cigarette, took a cold shower... whatsoever you do to be 100% fit for such an event. And then you wait an hour for your opponent to arrive or not arrive.

Perhaps there should be a short timeframe of perhaps 5 minutes, but the idea behind this rule is absolutley necessary.

"I wonder if this has any effect on players who beforehand agreed to a draw."
Of course not, but how many draws are prearranged? It's the absolute minority...

But for the rest of the games this rule is very interesting. Imagine players got to a drawn position after 20-25 moves and there are still 10-20 half-moves to come by force! Everything can happen. Of course - if IMs/GMs agree a draw, it's likely to BE an equal position. But they are no computers: Tactical errors, positional inaccuracies, risky ideas, etc. And perhaps we will see a fight for the full point.

That's right, showing up late is unprofessional behavior and some kind of penalty (for example a fine or a reduction of time on the clock) is in order. But if they want to organize it like an other team sport event, they will have to allow players who are late to be substituted. If Van der Sar is late for the game against France tomorrow, the orange machine won't have to play without a goal keeper. In any event, losing a game by forfeit because of being a few minutes late is an excessively harsh penalty.

Yes, but as I said in my post yesterday, with a start time of 3PM per round, then this shouldn't be a problem. You'd hope so anyway.

At first I thought that the comparison with "other sports" was a bit nonsensical. But what FIDE probably means is that, like in other sports, chessers ought to behave professionally and actually front up at the appointed time.

- TCG

Good to see that match points will be more important than game points, since it reduces the influence of (un)lucky last round pairings. But it looks like most of the other extra rules are unnecessary and only cause problems.

-Registering the players before a fixed date sounds nice in order to not give anyone a preparation advantage, but there will always be excuses to change a squad anyway. Or isn't it even allowed to subsitute an ill player? In any event, two months is a very long period in which a lot can happen, so this rule does not seem very practical to me.

-If two opponents both want a draw, it will be a draw. They will just play some extra useless moves until the 30th. And why worry about short draws in a tournament that has hundreds of top players? There will always be enough interesting games, no matter what. (By the way, I assume that a draw by perpetual check is still possible before the 30th?!)

-Losing time on the clock when being late seems like enough punishment to me. The other players can start regardless, unlike in "real" team sports, so why make a problem out of it?

Die nieuwe regel ivm te laat komen vind ik een goede en eenvoudig om te begrijpen. Om schaken aantrekkelijker te maken voor de televisie, lijkt het mij niet meer dan logisch dat iedereen op tijd aan zijn bord verschijnt. Het zou nogal dwaas overkomen als de partijen live worden uitgezonden en op het moment dat de klokken officieel worden ingedrukt, er nog geen enkele of maar 1 speler aan zijn bord zit. Voor de televisie is dat onaanvaardbaar lijkt me.

Well that might sound like a good idea, but I doubt they really thougt it over. There will be approximately 1000 players in male & female competition, I hope they have large doors and no security controls as they had in Calvia or more recently in Baku.

I really do hope they won't include this rule in FIDE laws of chess.

@ Peter: het is een teamsport, maar wel van vier losse partijen. Je benadeelt alleen je eigen partij met te laat komen, niet die van je teamgenoten. Je hebt teamsporten en teamsporten.....
Oplossing: we gaan doorgeefschaak spelen op de Olympiade, dan heb je echt een teamsport!

"Being on time"
I agree with Claude that this may cause organisationial problems for big events.
And what about reserve players or officials blocking the entry as soon as their team mates got in?

"No draw before move 30"
I wonder if this has any effect on players who beforehand agreed to a draw.

I guess these rules are applied to promote sportmanship"
But doesn't unsporty behaviour bounces back on players in that players with a bad reputation are less welcome at tournaments?

@ Michel: bij de Olympiade is het toch een teamsport?

@Peter: That's what I meant: the teams start with nine against nine players, and as soon as the two Dutchies would arrive, the two Italians would also enter the court. Just like an Olympiad match that starts with two games, and after ten minutes the other two games also start because two players arrived late. The comparison was made to make clear that an outsider who wants to learn more about chess, simply doesn't understand why such a match doesn't start at the appropriate time.

I also don't like the too late-measure. Why is it necessary? Losing time is a penalty on itself. And a good one. If they want this more severe, they can take half an hour of the clock when somebody isn't in time. But I think one shouldn't change the rule that exists: after an hour you lose. Perfect rule.

"Imagine you ate an energy bar beforehand, did a walk, smoked a last cigarette, took a cold shower?¢‚Ǩ¬¶ whatsoever you do to be 100% fit for such an event. And then you wait an hour for your opponent to arrive or not arrive."

Imagine you do that and you are 5 minutes late and you lose the game. That's much worse. By the way: this doens't change one thing: if the player does not come, he will also lose the game and your prep. isn't usefull anyway. I think this point doens't make sense at all.

Oh yes, a little PS:

If you make the comparison with football correct, then Holland should start the game without the 2 players. In chess the game starts, even when the opponent isn't there. But the comparison in a whole is nog very suitable as you write yourself :-)

I haven't seen such a nonsense in months. Chess is a sport, a professional sport, so we have to pay attention to the crowd, to the organizers and to the sponsors, but everyone had forgotten the fact that chess is a kind of a science and and art in the same time. We should respect the top players.

Ik kan me niet vinden in de maatregelen, vooral het verlies bij te laat komen is vreemd. Nogal betuttelend. Als iemand zonodig een half uur wil komen, mag hij dat van mij. Een half uur winst op de klok! Dat iemand een paar minuten later komt om de drukte bij de start van de ronde mis te lopen vind ik prima. De regel dat je maximaal een uur te laat mag komen kan dus in de prullenbak.

De vergelijking met voetbal is wel heel krom. Ook in teamverband blijft schaken een individuele sport bij uitstek. Er worden vier volledig los van elkaar staande partijen gespeeld, die geen invloed op elkaar hebben (zelf niet MOGEN hebben). Hoe anders is het bij een teamsport.

Next rule will be that you have to make a move within 5 minutes, otherwise the audience might become bored.
And the next rule will be that you [i]have[/i] to win, otherwise you will be beheaded for a encouraging crowd.
How far will chess players continue bending over backwards to please an audience?

What if there is a major traffic smash?Micro-gridlock v micro management of players' behaviour. Not a good change. Late without blame met by inflexible and draconian rulings. This sounds like a belated over-reaction ot he Short-Cheparinov, a Chaplinesque film with touches of Samule Beckett type absurdity: "Waiting for Ivan".

FIDE likes to make these analogies with other sports but the whole thing is a nonsense because the Olympiad is really just an amateur event these days. If chessplayers were paid what footballers received for appearing in Euro 2008, my guess is that they would be happy to be sitting at the board about a week before the game started...

Could anyone tell me what the rules are about nationality as I understand from some quarters that one can represent another country without neccessarily being a national of that country; in effect citizenship not being a requirement.