An interview of Josef Mrkvička, ICCF president
From left to right : Éric Ruch (French ICCF delegate and AJEC vice-president), Josef Mrkvička (ICCF president) and Olivier Bouverot (AJEC president)
Can you give us in a few words an overview of your career, both as a chess player and as a person in charge in the ICCF and other correspondence chess sorganizations ?
At my age of 10, I learned chess from my father who was my first over-the-board opponent. However, he stopped playing with me as soon as started winning our games - and it was quite early! Later on, I played chess in a chess circle at school. I moved to Prague in 1964 at my age of 13 and two years later, I was almost "compelled" by my friends to join my first chess club.
I guess that I played my first CC game as early as in 1965 - just for curiosity how it would go without a "live" opponent on the board. However, like to most young people at this low age, the correspondence play seemed me to be boring and unattractive.
Foreign languages were always my big hobby. I remember to see an advertisement in the Czechoslovak chess magazine "Československý šach" sometimes in 1967-8, inviting players to enter the international ICCF class tournaments. I saw that as a good opportunity to practice my command of languages at least in writing, so I started my first ICCF second Class tournament in 1968. It took almost 30 years till I promoted from the second class to the master class tournaments and reached my Senior International Master title at Congress 2002 in Seixal.
In 1983, I was invited to join "Chess in Friendship", a private international correspondence chess club with its seat in Hamburg. Because of the iron curtain existing, it was hardly possible for a man from East, for obvious reasons, to be involved more than a player. But the things changed dramatically after 1989. After the big crisis in CiF in 1994-5, I was invited to the CiF Executive Board and offered the position of the Deputy President, as somebody with "fresh blood" who should get CiF out of the mess. Short thereafter, the CiF President retired because of his poor health, and according to the CiF Statutes, I was obliged to take on the lead. In 1996, I was elected for the CiF President for my first four-year period and re-elected in 2000 for the second one. My CiF career finished in 2003, after my election for ICCF President.
As the ICCF official, I got started in ICCF as a non-playing team captain of the Czech ladies' team in the Ladies' Correspondence Chess Olympiad Final V. Then, some positions of the playing team captain followed in some friendly team matches. In autumn 1999, the Czech ICCF delegate Jaromir Canibal offered me to join him at the ICCF Congress in Thun. I came there as a real ICCF greenhorn, but left as a designated Central Tournament Leader of the ICCF World Cup XII! I started my preparatory work just after Congress in Thun as I had never administrated such a big tournament before. However, still before this World Cup had started in September 2000, the previous ICCF President, Alan Borwell addressed me with a quite unexpected proposal: to be the first ever ICCF Title Tournaments Commissioner. I was very honoured and accepted it immediately. My appointment was approved by the ICCF Congress in Daytona Beach, effective from 1.1.2001. I believe that you already know the rest ...
What are your views about the future of correspondence chess (and also ICCF) ? How can the ICCF differentiate from other correspondence chess organizations ?
Should we still really call our hobby "correspondence chess"? The times when players only exchanged moves by classical or even by electronic mail have already gone. Using the play by webserver, the players are sitting at a virtual chessboard on the computer screen and performing their moves by mouse clicks or typing them on the keyboard. In fact, their moves are played in real time, with one player sitting in Paris and the other, say, in Buenos Aires. They are able to start and finish their game in one day, in half an hour, in five or less minutes. Thanks to these modern communication technologies, the correspondence chess - characterised by long waiting times for opponent's move - converted into a "virtual chess" with games played by distant opponents in more or less real time on a virtual chessboard. Still twenty years ago, nobody could imagine such a development of our beloved hobby.
However, despite of the dramatic changes in technology, the chess game remains the same as hundreds of years ago. Just in 2004, we start our games with 16 white or black chessmen and try to checkmate the opponent's king, as did Ruy Lopez, Philidor, Staunton or Morphy. There is no special postal, email or webserver chess: there are chess games played normally by post, by email or by webserver.
Since the eighties of the past century, ICCF has lost its monopolist position in the correspondence (let's still use this traditional name until some clever head discovers a better one) chess world. Now, there are many correspondence chess clubs offering their tournaments worldwide. Nobody can be banned to create a new international CC club and start recruiting players for its tournaments, equally no player can be tied down to play his / her games in as many CC clubs as he / she wishes.
The quality of service offered to players is what matters here. In comparison with its competitors, ICCF still has some advantages: only the ICCF international titles are acknowledged by FIDE, as the unique official international OTB organization. Furthermore, ICCF still offers postal tournaments to those who, for whatever reasons, prefer this classical way of transmission of moves or are unable to use the more modern ways. At ICCF Congress in Ostrava, I clearly said that the postal play would exist as long as there would be players willing to participate in postal tournaments.
What will be the future of the national federations within the ICCF? Do you share the views Nol exposed during the last congress?
Undoubtedly, the future development of national federations depends on themselves ! Just recall what ICCF Statutes says, in other words : ICCF was grounded by the national CC federations who are the "owners" of ICCF and delegate some rights and duties to the ICCF officials and / or bodies. The delegates from the national federations decide the future ICCF steps and development at the yearly Congresses and are entitled to vote down proposals which, in their opinions, don't meet their requirements, as well as to suspend ICCF officials who don't fulfil their duties. This is the overall basic principle which won't be changed, at least in the next few years - otherwise, we would have to dismiss ICCF and to create another, a quite different organisation.
As per Nol's visions presented in Ostrava, I think that most of them are quite realistic. The President's Commission accepted his paper as a base for its proposals which should be presented to the Executive Board and to Congress 2004 in Mumbai.
One of the big projects this year (2004) is ICCF Webserver. Can you tell us more about the progress made and the schedule ?
Those who regularly attend to ICCF Congresses know that just in 2001, Congress in Rimini decided about a creation of the ICCF dedicated playing webserver. Unfortunately, ICCF lost one full year, because of some wrong arrangements and appointments. This is the reason why we now must hurry up to gain back the lost ground and try to overcome our competitors who made use of our vacillation.
In Ostrava, Congress confirmed its previous approval for the development of an ICCF dedicated Webserver and entrusted the Steering Group to its implementation, according to time schedule and budget in the project plan. Furthermore, Congress approved the establishment of a Development Fund, to be used solely for designated projects.
National Federations and players are informed about the progress of the work of the Steering Group by regular announcements, published on the ICCF website and distributed to national delegates and contacts. Consequently, you just know that the particular items of the project are fulfilled in line with the project and budget. For the time being, a selected test team composed of experienced players and International Arbiters has started testing of the particular administrative and playing functions, with the principal aim to make sure that there are no more "bugs" in the system before the webserver is launched for public use.
Provided that everything goes well, the first webserver tournaments could be ready for start short after the summer holidays period, or even sooner. The structure and sequence of the tournaments is now being discussed in the Steering Group.
