New Year’s greetings of Vladimir Langin, president of the International Draughts Federation (IDF)
Dear friends!
On behalf of the International Draughts Federation (IDF) and me personally I congratulate draughts players, coaches, organizers, officials and all fans of draughts on the New Year!
Before the New Year, we always remember the work done and our achievements, as well as share our plans for the future.
I’ll start with some good news.
At the end of 2020, a number of players were awarded international titles performed in previous years.
List of players who have been awarded international titles
Congratulations to players with well-deserved titles!
In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we were unfortunately forced to cancel or reschedule all offline competitions of our calendar. Health is the most valuable and most important thing in the life of every person. We take care of our athletes from the youngest to the veterans. We hope that in 2021 the situation will improve and we will meet you at our competitions.
The major competitions were postponed to 2021:
1. International competitions in the framework of the VII TAFISA World Sports Games.
The competition will be held in Lisbon (Portugal) from 18 to 24 June. To optimize the costs of the participants, the competitions will held to short programs in three types of draughts and will have the status of World Championships.
2. The European Championship among men and women will be held in Jõgeva (Estonia) on a new date from 4 to 13 June. The prize fund of the championship will be over $ 25,000.
The World Youth Championship, the World Team Championship and the World Veteran Championship are traditionally scheduled in Bulgaria in August 2021. The reporting IDF General Assembly is also scheduled there. General Assembly did not take place in 2020 due to covid-19.
The European Youth Championship will most likely take place in late June and early July.
The stages of the World Cup are planned in Bulgaria, France, Portugal. The venue for the World Cup Final will be determined additionally depending on the situation.
New events and projects for the development of draughts in the world are under discussion.
In August 2020, we once again turned to the FMJD with a proposal to sit down at the negotiating table and establish cooperation between the two federations for the benefit of draughts.
The essence of the proposal is to work together within the framework of a union of two federations or under the umbrella of the FMJD, in which:
IDF will develop draughts on a 64-square board (Russian, Brazilian, pool checkers, Portuguese and others).
FMJD will continue to develop draughts 100, checkers, Turkish draughts, etc.
Thus, there will be a unification of the two world draughts federations with the separation of powers within one structure, which will be positively received by the entire draughts community, bring peace to draughts and give a new impetus to the promotion and development of all types of draughts in the world.
However, the IDF proposal did not meet with a response from the FMJD.
At the same time, the activities of Section-64 FMJD are still extremely unsatisfactory: fake countries, tournaments and participants are not interesting to anyone.
The disruption of such an important event as the Match for the title of world champion Tansykkuzhina-Sadovskaya (draughts-100) in Russia in December 2020 dealt a big blow to the image of FMJD and draughts in general.
We hope that in 2021 the planned competitions of the IDF calendar will be completed in full. All competitions will be held with good conditions, prize funds and with the participation of a large number of countries.
The difficult year 2020 has given rise to new forms of communication and competitions.
IDF tested online platforms and held a number of tournaments at various platforms (playok, gambler). Pool checkers have been added to the gambler platform at our request and online competitions will begin in the near future.
The following major online competitions were held:
– 9 and 10 May 2020: Online Victory Cup in draughts-64 dedicated to the 75th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War among men, women, boys, girls, in which 540 participants from 24 countries took part!
– 9 and 16 August 2020: Online draughts-64 tournaments in the London Mind Sports Olympiad (MSO), which has been held since 1997. More than 550 players from 34 countries took part in the competition!
Participation of draughts-64 in such a significant and famous Olympiad of intellectual games is very prestigious and will become another step in the promotion of draughts-64 in the world.
– November 28 and 29, 2020 – Draughts Men and Women Championships in the 1st African Universities Mind Sports Championship (pool checkers) with the definition of team standings among universities.
– The online African championship and the African open championship dedicated to the fight against covid-19 were held with the support of IDF.
We thank the countries for supporting our initiatives and our competitions!
Major online tournaments will continue in 2021. Based on the experience of conducting online competitions in 2020, the issue of combating cheating and the introduction of technical means to control the game is now being worked out.
In all offline tournaments under the auspices of the IDF norms for international titles will be established and tournaments will be included in the rating calculation.
I invite all interested persons, new countries and federations to cooperation with IDF! I look forward to new proposals and ideas for the development of draughts-64 in the world. Together we will bring our sport to a new high level!
I wish everyone in 2021 health, prosperity, success and new achievements, prosperity to our favorite sport!
Vladimir Langin
President IDF
