Cuban National Team Climbs in World Ranking with Chess Olympiads Nearing
Cuba’s highest ranked GM, Leinier Domínguez, did not report any games in the last two months and his ELO was unchanged at 2,716. The fifth and final team member is GM Holden Hernández (2,563).
In the world ranking by country, Cuba climbed from 21 to 18 with a team average ELO of 2,589 among its ten top players. The top three ranked national teams are Russia (2,729), the Ukraine (2,695) and France (2,653).
The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in two-player games such as chess. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-born American physics professor. The Elo system was invented as an improved chess rating system, but today it is also used in many other games.
For top players, the most important rating is their FIDE rating. Since July 2009, FIDE issues a ratings list once every two months. FIDE classifies tournaments into categories according to the average rating of the players. Each category is 25 rating points wide. Category 1 is for an average rating of 2251 to 2275, category 2 is 2276 to 2300, etc. The highest rated tournaments have been Category 21, with an average from 2751 to 2775. The top categories are in the table.
The Chess Olympiad is a biennial chess tournament in which teams from all over the world compete against each other. The event is organised by FIDE, which selects the host nation.
FIDE organized the first Official Olympiad in 1927 which took place in London. The Olympiads were occasionally held annually and at irregular intervals until World War II; since 1950 they have been held regularly every two years.
As a member of the International Olympic Committee, FIDE adheres to its rules, including controversially having doping tests. The prospects of chess becoming an Olympic sporting event at some future date remain unclear. The naming of FIDE's team championship as the "Chess Olympiad" is of historical origin and implies no connection between this event and the Olympic Games.
Each FIDE recognized chess association can enter a team into the Olympiad (for the UK one team for each of the four countries plus Guernsey and Jersey can enter a team separately). Each team is made of up to six players, four regular players and two reserves (changed to four regular and one alternate in Dresden 2008. Initially each team played all other teams but as the event grew over the years this became impossible. At first team seeding took place before the competition. Later certain drawbacks were recognized with seeding and in 1976 a Swiss tournament system was adopted.
The trophy for winning the men's team is the Hamilton-Russell Cup, which was offered by the English magnate Frederick Hamilton-Russell as a prize for the 1st Olympiad (London 1927). The cup is kept by the winning team until the next event, when it will be consigned to the next winner. The trophy for the winning women's team is known as the Vera Menchik Cup the first Women's World Chess Champion.
The 2008 Olympiad was held in Dresden, Germany. The 2010 Olympiad is going to be held in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, and the 2012 Olympiad in Istanbul, Turkey.
Russia’s Siberian city of Khanty-Mansiisk is prepared to host the 39th World Chess Olympics which is expected to draw almost 1,400 participants from 158 countries.
Along with the Olympics, Khanty-Mansiisk will play host to the Assembly and the 81st Congress of FIDE, the World Chess Federation, to elect its President and other executive bodies. These two events will be held in the city’s Chess Academy.
English translation based on the original in Spanish by Luis López Viera
