No short draws rule at the ETCC 2007

captains meeting and round 1 pairings

After all teams have settled in the beautiful 5 star Creta Maris Hotel, the captains' meeting took place at 22:00 local in the "Aphrodita" hall. This was the usual procedure of arbiter's introduction, regulations reading, filling forms with board order and Q & A session.

Besides the already announced playing schedule, every day at 11:00 local time (CET+1) the team compositions for the upcoming round will be published online. Pairing for the following rounds will be posted every evening at 23:00.

One of the most interesting rules will be application of new FIDE article that says "prearranged results are not allowed". This means that no match can finish in several minutes,as it has happened at several Olympiads. Yet, it is not as strict as the Sofia rule. Short draws can happen between players.
The rule was first applied at the Club Cup in Kemer a month ago and there were no incidents. The chief arbiter of the ETCC shared that he does not expect any problems either, but the rule is there just in case.

Update: ECU statement

After the meeting last night the ECU issued a note, stating, "If any team will withdraw after the publishing of pairings, the announced pairings will not be changed and the opponents of missing teams are awarded 2 match points and 4 game points without play." The announcement is signed by B. Kutin (ECU President), W. Stubenvoll (ECU Tournament Director), S. Logothetis (ETCC 2007 Tournament Director), and P. Nikolopoulos (ETCC 2007 Chief Arbiter).

Round 1 pairings, men

Russia - Sweden
Bosnia and Herzegovina - Ukraine
Azerbaidjan - Turkey
Romania - Armenia
Bulgaria - Lithuania
FYROM - France
Spain - Norway
Switzerland - Israel
Netherlands - Italy
Montenegro - Poland
Georgia - Iceland
Austria - Hungary
Czech - Estonia
Finland - Serbia
Germany - Belgium
Scotland - England
Greece - Luxembourg
Wales - Croatia
Slovenia - Monaco
Cyprus - Denmark

Round 1 pairings, women

Russia - Israel
Lithuania - Georgia
Ukraine - Azerbaijan
Czech - France
Hungary - Turkey
England - Poland
Germany - Croatia
Switzerland - Netherlands
Serbia - Austria
Sweden - Armenia
Slovenia - Estonia
Montenegro - Romania
Greece 1 - Bosnia and Herzegovina
Finland - Bulgaria
Spain - Greece 2

More on ETCC 2007

ETCC general page

Regulations

More photos from Crete and Creta Maris

Men teams

Women teams

Official website