Chess Mail logo Friend of ICCF award  
Editor: Dr Tim Harding
   Dr. Tim Harding   J. H. Blackburne     Paul Morphy   Correspondence Chess history book   Captain W. D. Evans

Calendar: FIDE World Seniors now announced for Sicily

For more information about chess for over-50s, please see our Seniors news and Seniors introduction pages.

The long awaited announcement about the venue for the World Senior Individual Championships was finally made yesterday on the FIDE Calendar. It is now definite that this event (previously awarded to Sochi, Russia, and then provisionally to Buenos Aires, Argentina) will be held at a seaside town near Palermo, Italy, at earlier dates than usual.

The workings of the FIDE Events Commission are somewhat opaque so we do not know why the change has been made, but the Buenos Aires decision (made early in April) was said on the FIDE website to be "subject to inspection". Either the Argentinians failed it or withdrew?

The new venue is Terrasini on the island of Sicily, with an arrival date of 24 October and departure on 6 November, about two weeks earlier than the usual dates for these championships. There will be, as normal, 11 rounds with a rest day (and optional excursion) after round 6.

It can be noted (with considerable relief) that the Italian organising company is not the same as the one which ran the 2022 World Seniors and the 2023 European Seniors individual championships.

The World Seniors Team Championship dates are also now known - at Struga on Lake Ohrid in September. Regulations for both these events can be downloaded from this page (see below) or from FIDE.

Please note a new Senior congress in Germany was recently announced for November. There are three sections, including one for players aged 75+, which is most welcome. We should like to see more of these organised and otherwise 65+ events should have 75+ prizes.

Entries are still open for the European Chess Union's senior team championship, to be played mid-July in Poland.

Tournament organisers, please send us your announcements in good time. We know from talking to players at last year's World Seniors that these pages are widely read but we don't have much time to research events.

Newly announced events are added to this page when we find out about them. Please inform us if you know of an international senior tournament that is not mentioned. In our calendar we include only those tournaments which are described as Open and FIDE-rated, and we omit events restricted to players from one country.

For tournaments, such as the British Championships, run on FIDE Senior rules, you do not have to wait for your birthday; you are qualified from 1 January in the year in which you reach the qualifying age.

The qualifying years for the two FIDE age groups in 2023 are 1958 (for 65+ events) and 1973 (for 50+) but some German senior organisers have different rules. Note that the eligibility rules for German-language Senior events vary. It is usually 60+ for men and sometimes 50+ or 55+ for women. Check the particular details for any event that interests you.

The German Senior tournaments calendar now includes tournaments which they list as privately organised (i.e., not by the German federation). Nothing new seems to have been announced there for several weeks, but as this year's regular events are held they are likely to release advance dates for 2024. We also regularly search on chess-results.com and sometimes find a few events (mostly in Austria) which we add below if relevant.

Tournaments are usually removed from our listings once their start dates are reached, or soon after.

** A double asterisk in the list below indicates new or recently updated information.

 

Tournaments upcoming during 2023