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| | Page: [Previous] [Next] 1 2 | | (1) Posted by Juraj Lörinc [Monday, Oct 6, 2008 23:15]; edited by Juraj Lörinc [08-10-06] | 8th WCCT - article
As most people already know, Slovakia has finished at the 2nd place in the 8th WCCT. Among those not present in Jurmala, maybe some Mat Plus readers have already read in The Problemist there was unsuccessful protest by Slovakia against illegal zero marks in studies section. I have just finished my own description of the events before and in Jurmala:
http://jurajlorinc.tripod.com/chess/slo8wcct.htm
The raison d'etre of the article is to inform and explain. I would be happy to discuss it.
Edit: spelling.
| | | (2) Posted by Georgy Evseev [Tuesday, Oct 7, 2008 11:04] |
As a member of the opposing side in this conflict, I want to add some comments. First, I do not want to criticize Slovakian opinion, but has to point at two moments.
First, there is some kind of narrow-mindness in Slovakian position. Their "all or nothing" approach used simply had not given our team much space for maneuvering. So we used the arguments we had at our disposal (I had been taking part in the discussion) and they were strong enough for the PCCC to accept current results.
Second, Juraj is using quite strong expressions in his article, creating impression that his statements are indisputable. It starts from the article’s title and continues with the contents. From my point of view this is not so. Almost any point can be argued upon (and was during the Jurmala discussion). So it is really a question of opinion – if the overall results were really “damaged” or not. I do not think that some kind of "lazyness" in decision was involved.
And now I am passing on to the part of this message which I really wanted to write. The situation with 8 WCCT was in fact prepared beforehand with the current state of WCCT Rules. My personal experience with rules and laws shows that anything which is not provided for will shoot you back and earlier than expected. In this case Slovakia looks like a victim, but any other team could have been in its place. The discussion was so hot, because we were speaking about a winner, but it is quite probable that order of some other places could also have been put under doubt.
The problems with current rules are mainly coming from the fact that they were written with two source points in mind. The first idea was to demonstrate the trust in judges, giving them absolute freedom and accepting their results without doubt. The second idea on the contrary tries to fully regulate the judges’ decisions prescribing how the marks should be given. Of course, all kinds of clashes and conflicts appear, allowing any dissatisfied team to select ones which will help it to reach better place.
The most important fact is that all main inherent drawbacks from current judging system were already known after 7th WCCT. But no changes were accepted and so now we have what we have. This includes extreme sensitivity to minimal changes in marks. For example, this is the citation Juraj’s article: “…by giving these studies non-zero marks (even 0.5 points) as the Belarus score, our study would jump up a few places in the award and we should gain enough points to overtake Russia (that is 3 or more points – G.E.) in the overall result”. Does anybody think that this is a good judging system?
So, the idea of this message to discuss changes in WCCT rules which are necessary – or similar conflict will appear again and again. I have prepared a suggestion with changes which distributed at Jurmala between WCCT Subcommittee members. There are two main statements which I (and Russian team) consider most significant.
1. Points marks for compositions should be used directly, without their recalculation into places.
2. Highest and lowest marks should be discarded and not taken into account.
These two statements keep the judges’ freedom, but limit the effect of “very strange” decisions. Still these and all other suggestions are the matter for discussion. The full suggestion (Word document, in English) is available at http://depositfiles.com/files/8545984. In includes the list of drawbacks in current system. Everyone is free to use it in any way. If someone will make it available as part of Web-page, I’ll be only grateful.
_____
(Added by Administrator):
see http://www.milanvel.net/doc/New_WCCT_rules.pdf (133KB)
| | | (3) Posted by Miodrag Mladenović [Tuesday, Oct 7, 2008 12:59] |
Juraj,
First congratulation on 2nd place!
I think that key point from your article is this sentence:
QUOTE
- awarding zero points to problems was against written rules stating that only problems which are incorrect, anticipated or clearly unpublishable (due to extremely low quality) should be awarded 0 points.
Clearly unpublishable is very unusual statement. What if Belarus team thought that the problem they awarded 0 point is clearly unpublishable. This could be due to two reasons. It's possible that they know some endgames that are anticipation of the problem (in their opinion). Sometimes two different composers will give you two different opinions about if problem is anticipated or not. How many times you saw problem published in magazine that you thought it should not be published at all? I am sure it happened to everyone several times. At the same time the author of the problem and editor of the coloumn in the magazine thought for sure that it's publishable. So definition of publishable/unpublishable is not clear at all.
I remember that I had a very good threemover participating at the Olympic Ty. that did not get even commend. Then it won 2nd prize at some other tournament. It's clearly that judges had completely different taste for problems. Also, I know that I did not put in the award some problems that were winning prizes later on at some other tournaments.
So, are we sure that the problems ware awarded 0 points due to mistake by Belarus team or they intentionally gave 0 points. The rule stated above does allow 0 points to be awarded so it's not clear to me why do you think that it's against the rules. Unfortunately there are no exact methods to mark quality of problem.
| | | (4) Posted by Sergiy Didukh [Tuesday, Oct 7, 2008 20:54] |
My sympathies to Slovakia. I am very disappointed in those 16 delegates who voted for the confirmation of the WCCT results. The matter should be investigated further.
Here are three questions and three possible answers to each of them. Note that option c) is rather a joke.
1. Which one of these statements is true?
a) Belarus thought the four ‘zero studies’ were incorrect.
b) Belarus intentionally made the others think that they considered the four ‘zero studies’ incorrect.
c) These studies indeed deserve zero.
2. Who was bribed?
a) Belarus.
b) The tourney director.
c) ‘Cookers’.
3. Why PCCC didn’t correct this dreadful mistake?
a) PCCC never admit their blunders.
b) PCCC don’t make mistakes.
c) PCCC is a mistake.
| | | (5) Posted by Vlaicu Crisan [Tuesday, Oct 7, 2008 23:55] |
There are some interesting points in Juraj's article, which raise some questions about general principles:
1. When is a tourney director entitled to change a judge's decision?
2. More specific, according to WCCCT-8 rules posted here (http://www.sci.fi/~stniekat/pccc/8rules.htm), which rule(s) is it claimed the WCCT Director did not respect?
3. Where in the WCCT-8 rules is there any mention about handling 0 points in a section?
I feel real empathy for Slovakian delicate situation. They were defeated this time by a seemingly unfair situation, not properly reglemented by rules, which turned to act against them! So, we discovered during this WCCT that these rules do not cover all situations. However the solution is not to change the rules during the game (this means chaos), but to improve them only after the game is finished.
In this respect I totally agree with WCCT Director attitude - Hans is surely not to be blamed for the consequences of the final results. Moreover, I must also respect the decision of Belarus judge, even though one Romanian endgame study also received a 0 mark. You can protest once you can demonstrate there was a violation of the rules. As Misha stated above, judging is, after all, a matter of taste!
Georgy's proposal for future WCCTs seems to be interesting in this respect and deserves further consideration. The idea of removing best and worst marks, as well as replacing the current place system with total points are more than welcome. Similar systems are used in other disciplines (figure skating and gymnastics to name just two).
Equally interesting seems to be the second proposal to assess judgment quality. I wonder whether such assessments could be done for past FIDE Albums and what would be the results in this case. Another potential dangerous issue is what kind of penalties can be applied to judges that fail to fall within the proposed accepted threshold.
| | | (6) Posted by Sarah Hornecker [Wednesday, Oct 8, 2008 02:43] |
Without contributing to the actual issue, I'd like to suggest a few things:
1. As I proposed somewhere else, there should be a special court for WCCTs with seven "rule judges" that must decide upon things like this. I think, it's too much just for one judge (tourney director). If they can prove that the judging by the problem judges was not within normal boundaries, it can be eliminated and possibly replaced by a neutral nation's judges. Of course, the problem judges, the composers of the problems and the team captains must be heard to evaluate the truth.
2. Judges ruled out like this should get a penalty that applies to all official FIDE and PCCC tourneys like no judging for two or five or whatever seems correct years. Also, upon repeat, a life long ban should be given at the third ban. After each ban (or at least the first two), a special training course must be attended by the banned judge.
Note that this is for official FIDE/PCCC tourneys only. Non-official magazines etc. are of course free to choose the judge without penalty. However, here also an appeal is possible to a PCCC court with three or five judges, depending on the tourney. If an intended misjudgement can be proven, another judge must be named for that tourney. However, in dubio pro reo must apply.
| | | (7) Posted by Harry Fougiaxis [Wednesday, Oct 8, 2008 02:54] |
It seems that there is some (understandable) confusion about what rules were followed during the judging process in this WCCT. It is true that the official rules do not foresee any interference of the director to the judges' work. However, it was stated during the WCCT subcommittee's sessions by the director and agreed by the subcommittee that there will be a second round for adjustments, as and if necessary. We all understand now that this should have been made clear in the announcement. Pity it was not done. Even so, the director made clear in a circular after the (first) marks were received that there will be a second round and gave detailed guidelines to be followed. No country had an objection at that point (Ukraine expressed their disagreement, but quite later after that) and, in fact, adjustments were made. The director also underlined that if no agreeable response is received (by the judging country), he would not hesitate to eliminate the "unexplained extreme score" after discussing these cases with the PCCC Presidium.
This is exactly what the Slovakian protest was about. Why the zero points by Belarus to D13 were accepted? We do not know, and I think that an answer was not given during the PCCC sessions. In the beginning, it was debatable whether Belarus were made aware of the answers to the claims that the study had duals and was cooked. Eventually it came out that Belarus had noticed the answers to the claims, but they gave zero points because they considered it as an EGTB by-product. In any case, they had not explained this during the second round, as they should.
| | | (8) Posted by Peter Gvozdjak [Wednesday, Oct 8, 2008 15:46] |
not to discuss something "invisible", i am adding below the complete slovak protest as it was emailed on august 25:
dear hans,
just a few moments ago i have read your circular letter about ukrainian complaints. i hope not to cause you a nightmare by sending a slovakian protest. i would like to emphasize the following two facts:
(i.) this protest is completely independent and has no connection with the ukrainian one. (we have decided here more than a week ago that it shall be written.)
(ii.) it does not affect your great work as a director of this competition. (the subject of it one small but important point in the judging process.)
best,
peter
----------
8TH WCCT RESULTS - PROTEST BY SLOVAKIA
(Peter Gvozdjak, peter.gvozdjak@gmail.com, 25.8.2008)
This is an official protest by Slovakia against the Draft of the Award Booklet of the 8th WCCT that was sent to the team captains in the pdf form. In our opinion, the results were not completed in accordance to the rules.
1. WHAT IS STRANGE AND WHAT IS IN CONTRADICTION TO THE RULES
What looks strange
(a) In all the 35 awards, in all 7 sections of the 8th WCCT, among the awarded compositions, the score 0.0 (zero) points appeared only four times. All these four lowest scores were given in the section D (endgame studies). All of them were given by the only judge – Belarus.
(b) Looking into the results table of the section D, some other facts are interesting. When omitting the mentioned „zero“ scores, the Belarussian judges did not give low scores at all. Their scores cover the scale from 4.0 (highest) to 2.5 (lowest), with very high average (more than 3.0 points!).
(c) That all makes an impression that the Belarussian judges (in the cases of giving 0 points) simply ignored the reclaims by the author countries.
What is completely in contradiction to the WCCT rules
(d) The endgame study D13 has got following scores from the judging countries: BY: 0.0, FIN: 3.0, GE: 1.5, ISR: 2.5, RO: 3.0
(e) The verbal description from „The Judging System“ says absolutely clearly, without any possible doubts: „0 points: Unsound or non-thematic entry, or below publication standard“. Was the entry unsound? Surely not, if the four other judging countries gave high scores. Was it non-thematic? Clearly not, if it was not excluded by other countries. Was it under the publication standard? Definintely not, if the average of other four judges is as high as 2.5 points.
(f) Then, if none of the conditions for giving 0 points was fulfilled, it means that the mentioned problem was not judged in accordance to the general rules.
(g) Moreover, in the final phase of judging process, the director, in his email „Concerning: 8th WCCT, Final Adjustments of Scores“, said the following: „Differences between scores of more than 2.0 points should be eliminated. I briefly describe the respective critical cases separately for each section. If your country´s score is among the extreme scores, please either give an explanation (e.g. a cook found) or try to adjust your score. If no agreeable response is received, I would not hesitate to eliminate the „unexplained extreme scores“ after discussing these cases with PCCC President Uri Avner or (if an Israeli composition or judgement is involved) one of the Vice-Presidents.“
(h) The differences in scores given to D13 were 3.0 points (lowest 0.0, highest 3.0).
(i) In our opinion, this situation means that the D13 endgame study was judged completely in contradiction to the WCCT rules. Which is why we consider the judging process irregular and the Draft of the Award of the 8th WCCT invalid.
2. WHAT WE PROTEST AGAINST
(j) We protest against the score 0 points given to the D13 by Belarus.
It is surely not an „artistic freedom of judging“.
It is nothing but disqualifying the problem without any reason.
3. WHAT WE ASK
(k) The only thing we ask is to finish the competition in accordance to its rules:
(l) We ask the Director of the 8th WCCT to eliminate the mentioned score 0 points for D13 by Belarus as a „non-agreeable unexplained extreme score“ according to the described judging process.
(m) We ask the PCCC not to confirm the Results of the 8th WCCT in the form that was sent in the „Draft of the Award Booklet“.
Peter Gvozdjak
Team Captain of Slovakia
P.S.: This statement was reached at the annual meeting of 37 Slovak composers, solvers and judges, among them with the PCCC authority Bedrich Formanek, The Honourable President of PCCC.
P.P.S.: This protest is being sent via email to the Director the 8th WCCT as well as to the President and three Vice-Presidents of PCCC.
| | | (9) Posted by Vlaicu Crisan [Thursday, Oct 9, 2008 18:28] |
Harry, thank you very much for the "internal kitchen" details. Now Slovak protest makes a lot of sense, indeed! The WCCT subcommittee should have made public all this procedure and make it transparent for everybody.
I don't feel quite comfortable with the elimination of "unexplained extreme score". I am afraid such a stipulation leaves the door open for abuses. Let's think about 4+4+0 problems from FIDE Albums, where all the scores are extreme. What should the director do in such a case?
Moreover, there should be a general agreement on whether the EGTB-based endgames are accepted in WCCT or not. I believe a rule stating this general agreement will avoid (or discourage) discretionary / abusive interpretations in the future. This won't give Slovak team the gold medal for 8th WCCT, but at least it will prevent another occurrence of a similar incident.
Siegfried, to my knowledge judges are generally NOT rewarded for their voluntary work in WCCT or FIDE Albums - and banning them is perhaps not the best solution. Would you accept to act as a judge in WCCT / FIDE Album if invited (knowing the risk to get banned)?!
| | | (10) Posted by Sarah Hornecker [Thursday, Oct 9, 2008 20:20]; edited by Sarah Hornecker [08-10-09] |
Vlaicu, I said "In dubio pro reo" must apply. This means, a ban only can be spoken out if it is proven that the judge acted abusive. It's better to have 100 judges incorrectly not banned than one incorrectly banned!
PS: Of course, all parties involved must be heard as witnesses. In the actual case, it would have to be proven that the judge knew about the 2007 change in the rules that regards EGTB studies as normal studies AND that the only reason for zero points still was the study being an EGTB study. If either one of these both points can not be proven without any doubt, no ban could be applied. However, if the second point (EGTB means zero points) is proven, the judge must rethink his decision.
Best,
Siegfried
| | | (11) Posted by Valery Gurov [Friday, Oct 10, 2008 10:38] |
I would like to restore justice! At the congress in Thessaloniki I had not told exactly the words Juraj Lorinc attributes to me. At the final banquet I was discussing 7 WCCT results with the Ukrainian colleagues and as a joke (!!!) had declared that "while I am alive and participate in WCCT, Ukraine will always be below Russia in this tournament". As you can see, this statement has been proved this time, irrespectively of Slovakian team results or Belarus judgment!
But I am sincerely happy that loose transfer of this phrase (it is interesting, by the way, who translated it?) has served as such powerful catalyst for qualitative progress, at least from the sporting point of view, for Slovakian team!
2 Diduh: You have not asked the most interesting question: and WHO has bribed a command of Belarus or WCCT director?
| | | (12) Posted by Frank Richter [Friday, Oct 10, 2008 11:16] |
Dear Valery,
please discuss the results of the current WCCT with some german problemists in future ...
In generally the whole story is very unhappily and the truth will be somewhere in the middle of both points of view. But I think, for the future withdrawals and boycotts will not help to make it better (please have a look at B*lga*ia, makes it sense to create own rules and not to judge international tourneys furthermore?).
Congratulations do not help too, but I like to say, that both Russia and Slovakia gave a really very good performance in this tourney. Respect!
| | | (13) Posted by Harry Fougiaxis [Friday, Oct 10, 2008 11:18] |
@ Vlaicu : Regarding the endgame table bases, I know that there is a lot of debate on this issue and opinions may differ among the study experts, but the official position of the PCCC is available at the site and should be known to all judges.
http://www.saunalahti.fi/~stniekat/pccc/fainstr.htm
According to decisions at Rhodes 2007, (a) judges in the study section are requested to give points to the studies as if they had been composed in the traditional manner before the advent of the computer into compositional chess; (b) studies are not regarded as anticipated by any position appearing in a computer-generated database.
Therefore, the very last-minute explanation of Belarus, given in Jurmala after a lot of pressure and effort, that they gave zero points because the four studies in question (and D13, in particular) were EGTB by-products is very poor and not acceptable, in my humble opinion.
| | | (14) Posted by Harry Fougiaxis [Friday, Oct 10, 2008 11:46] |
Frank wrote:
QUOTE
...and the truth will be somewhere in the middle of both points of view.
I have not quite understood which two points of view you are referring to. Could you please clarify?
| | | (15) Posted by Frank Richter [Friday, Oct 10, 2008 12:16] |
The PCCC decision is correct.
The PCCC decision is not correct.
| | | (16) Posted by Hauke Reddmann [Friday, Oct 10, 2008 14:02] |
@Frank: Mu.
(SCNR - Hofstadter or Zen Koan friends will understand).
In fact, unasking the question is a serious option -
I translated an article by Gerhard Josten (I think
it appeared in e.g. - already forgot) bemoaning the overflow
of awards and the unwanted sideeffects thereof. He didn't
have 8th WCCT in mind, since the article was already written
then, but it can serve as prime choice example.
(Forgive me my unknowingness, but aren't WCCT problems
originals and thus could be judged "blind" like in any
informal tourney? This would eliminate such incidents.)
Hauke
| | | (17) Posted by Juraj Lörinc [Friday, Oct 10, 2008 22:21] |
Many thanks to all thread contributors so far. As I have clearly indicated, the view given in my article was mine, so probably subjective and biased in some respects. Nevertheless, I am quite satisfied with the fact that there were no claims of substantial errors so far. Any other view allows the uninterested reader to form his own opinion.
I will try to address important points appearing in the responses.
Georgy Evseev has written:
> First, there is some kind of narrow-mindness in Slovakian position.
> Their "all or nothing" approach used simply had not given our team
> much space for maneuvering. So we used the arguments we had at our
> disposal (I had been taking part in the discussion) and they were strong
> enough for the PCCC to accept current results.
As I have already remarked in the article, I fully understand the approach of the Russian representatives and the fact they were defending the preliminary results. As far as I know, they have done nothing wrong in WCCT and naturally wanted to be winners. It was not their fault that Belarus have given some zeros to some studies and also the publication of preliminary results with all names is not their fault.
The protest was about preliminary results confirmation - you cannot have preliminary results both confirmed and rejected.
> The problems with current rules are mainly coming from the fact that
> they were written with two source points in mind. The first idea was
> to demonstrate the trust in judges, giving them absolute freedom and
> accepting their results without doubt. The second idea on the contrary
> tries to fully regulate the judges’ decisions prescribing how the marks
> should be given. Of course, all kinds of clashes and conflicts appear,
> allowing any dissatisfied team to select ones which will help it to
> reach better place.
But in the end the approach selected was "absolute freedom". Probably no marks were eliminated by tourney director, rather judging countries after his call to reconsider either reconsidered some of them or have written explanation of scores differing more from average. It means judging freedom was nto interfered with.
Zero scores are however something special. There is clear description: "0 points: Unsound or non-thematic entry, or below publication standard." As argued in out protest, none of these was satisfied.
> The most important fact is that all main inherent drawbacks from current
> judging system were already known after 7th WCCT. But no changes were accepted
> and so now we have what we have. This includes extreme sensitivity to
> minimal changes in marks. For example, this is the citation Juraj’s article:
> “…by giving these studies non-zero marks (even 0.5 points) as the Belarus
> score, our study would jump up a few places in the award and we should gain
> enough points to overtake Russia (that is 3 or more points – G.E.) in the
> overall result”. Does anybody think that this is a good judging system?
There are two points to make here.
Firstly, I fully agree with Georgy that the current way of judging and aggregating individual judgements is far from ideal. There are some flaws that might be removed by wiser system.
Secondly, however, as is well known from the theory of social choice, it is difficult to construct the system of aggregation of individual preferences that would not meet some reasonable criteria and in most settings it is even impossible, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow's_impossibility_theorem
Therefore we can strive for better system and it is surely possible to make it. I already had a look at the suggested system and I think it could be still improved. Hopefully I will be able to come up with the improvement and submit it for discussion.
However the issue with the result of a particular problem may appear in any such system, if the problem is ranked as one of the cloud of the similarly ranked problems . Small improvement of one mark may mean jumping up a few places.
Still, this issue is marginal as regards the 8th WCCT result and PCCC decision on the protest of Slovakia. Therefore I would rather not pursue it in this topic, if necessary it can be discussed in the topic of its own.
| | | (18) Posted by Juraj Lörinc [Friday, Oct 10, 2008 23:05] |
As is clear from the precise text of Slovak protest provided by Peter, the rules are stating "below publication standard", not "clearly unpublishable". In my view this does not change much as I have already remarked in my article that the explanation of zeros in the course of discussion has changed a few times.
The issue of studies using some positions from EGTB was discussed by studies subcommission in the past and as far as I know the spokesman of the subcommission has expressed the prevailing view at the PCCC session. Consequently, giving zero points based on the fact that the study could have been composed using EGTB is against rules. What about composers who do not use EGTB, yet some of their studies end with very few units on the board?
The article by Gerhard Josten on judgements in general appeared in the issue 43/2008 of StrateGems.
Finally, it would be great if more Jurmala delegates could express their view in this discussion, besides Harry Fougiaxis. After all, I was not the direct participant in the crucial moments and my description still might be unprecise or incomplete, as was already shown in some unimportant points.
| | | (19) Posted by Peter Gvozdjak [Saturday, Oct 11, 2008 23:18] |
several comments were made on the "zero-points" D13 study and the egtb.
for your information i am putting it on the show.
D13 - Ladislav Salai Jr, Lubos Kekely
19.-21. Place 8. WCCT 2005-08
 (= 6+6 )
= (6+6)
1.c8=Q Be3+ 2.Kb8 Rb6+ 3.Qb7 R×b7+ 4.K×b7 Bf3+ 5.Bd5 Ra2! (theme) 6.Bh6! (theme) B×d5+ 7.R×d5 B×h6 8.Rh5 Be3 9.Rh1+ Kc2 10.Rh2+ Kb3 11.R×a2 K×a2 12.Kc6 Kb3 13.Kd5 Kc3 14.Ke4 Kd2 15.Kf3 =.
the egtb position (six units on the board) is reached after W11 move.
that is, however, long after both thematic situations (B5 and W6 moves) appeared.
would anybody explain to me (far from being an endgame expert) how this study could be given and accepted "zero" because of the egtb, please?
| | | (20) Posted by Sarah Hornecker [Sunday, Oct 12, 2008 00:14]; edited by Sarah Hornecker [08-10-12] |
Pardon, I need explanation.
Is 6.Bxf3 Rxa5 7.Bf8! Rf5 8.Ba3+ Kd2 9.Be4 won for black? I think, it's a draw, thus the study has a dual and zero points would be correct (but it needs in-depth analysis which I don't like to perform now). The same goes for 6.Rc5+ Bxc5 7.Bh6+! Kc2 8.Bxf3.
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