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International Correspondence Chess Federation

International Correspondence Chess Federation
Abbreviation	ICCF
Formation	26 March 1951; 75 years ago (1951-03-26)
Type	International organization
Headquarters	Tannenbuel 12, CH-9230 Flawil, Switzerland [1]
President	Éric Ruch
General Secretary	Michael Millstone
Rules Director	Dennis M. Doren
World Tournament Director	Uwe Staroske
Affiliations	53 member federations, along with FIDE [2][3]
Website	www.iccf.com
Formerly called	IFSB (Internationaler Fernschachbund, 1928-1939), ICCA (International Correspondence Chess Association, 1945-1951)[4]

The International Correspondence Chess Federation (ICCF) is an international correspondence chess organization. It was founded on 26 March 1951 as a new appearance of the International Correspondence Chess Association (ICCA), which was founded in 1945, as successor of the Internationaler Fernschachbund (IFSB), founded on 2 December 1928.

The current president is Éric Ruch, while the first president was Jean-Louis Ormond.^[5]

History

Current membership

ICCF, the present successor of the IFSB, is a federation of national member organizations. At this moment there are worldwide 56 ICCF national member federations.

Presidents

1. Jean Louis Ormond [de] (1951–1955)^[7]
2. Anders Elgesem (1955–1959)
3. Hans Werner von Massow [de] (1959–1987)^[8]
4. Hendrik Mostert [nl] (1988–1996)
5. Alan Borwell [de] (1997–2003)
6. Josef Mrkvicka (2003–2004)
7. Max Zavanelli (2005, acting)
8. Mohamed Samraoui (2005–2009)
9. Éric Ruch (2009–Now)

Tournaments

Using its own language-independent chess notation, ICCF organizes all kind of tournaments: individual and team championships, title norm tournaments and promotion tournaments (from Open Class until Master Class) – in postal and the ICCF correspondence server versions. Starting from 2011 ICCF organizes chess960 events.

ICCF is closely co-operating with the leading world chess organization FIDE. All ICCF titles, championships and ratings are recognised by FIDE.^{[citation needed]}

Titles

The correspondence chess title International Correspondence Chess Grandmaster is a title that is rewarded by ICCF when a candidate meets the one of following qualifications:

1. That player who places 1–3 in the World Championship final,(§1.5.2.2.a)
2. They are highest scoring player on board 1 in the final of the CC Olympiad after all scheduled tiebreaking rules are applied, but only with a positive score,(§1.5.2.2.b)
3. They gain at least two grandmaster norms in international title tournaments with a total of at least 24 games. (This number of games may be reduced if the player overscores sufficiently to achieve the standard norm requirements over 24 games).(§1.5.2.2.c)
4. The national federation representing the candidate makes an appropriately qualified application. For this, a two-third majority vote of Congress must be obtained.(§1.5.2.2.d)

Other ICCF correspondence chess titles include:^[9][10]

• SIM: Correspondence Chess Senior International Master
• IM: Correspondence Chess International Master
• CCM: Correspondence Chess Master
• CCE: Correspondence Chess Expert

Legacy titles (No longer awarded):

• LGM: Lady Grandmaster (equivalent to CCM)
• LIM: Lady International Master (equivalent to CCE)

See also

• FIDE—Fédération Internationale des Échecs
• FIDE titles
• Chess title
• ICCF national member federations—Short articles about the federations
• ICCF numeric notation
• World Correspondence Chess Championship
• Correspondence Chess Olympiad

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Correspondence chess players.

• Official website