Rule for foreign country flags

This forum is to discuss for the WCL and CWC tournaments the rule for foreign country flags and eventually update it for the next season . The actual rule is:

" Every big team (more than 90 members) should play each match with at least 4/5 of the players with city flag, medium teams (50-90 members) with at least 3/4 of the players with city flag and smaller teams with at least 2/3. In all cases a foreign country flag can not be more than 1 in the first 10 tables and more than 3 in the first 25 tables and not more than 5 in all tables. If more flags, all of extra flags matches will be declared as not played if the player won them and lost if he lost or draw. In case though the opponent is on timeout the opponent does not get any winning points."

All admins are invented to this discussion

International flag is foreign flag?

Actually yes.

Obviously, as rikldn commented on the other forum, to fulfill simultaneously both requirements (a: proportional depending on the size of the team and b: by tables with 5 as maximum) make no sense. It should be decided which criteria is more important in order to simplify the redaction of the rule, right now it can get confused.

I can understand the original objective of this rule, to avoid the "stars" foreign players who maybe don't represent a city and the competition can be distorted. Anyway I think now it's really strict and that situation didn't occur yet. Perhaps we can do ELO constraint, for example no more than 1 player over than 2000. I don't know.

According to "the max. players by tables" criteria, I personally suggest following:

a) 1 foreign flag for the 3 or 5 first boards.

b) 2 foreigns for 10 first boards.

c) 4 foreigns for 20 first boards.

d) 5-6 (or even more) foreigns as maximum.

Anyway I will discuss with my group to get more opinions about and to make a common proposal.

It is a tricky conundrum as the national flag has very little to do with the city.

For example a player in the London team flying the UK flag could actually be anywhere within the UK and no-one would know. This could very well be the case in any city.

Whereas if more than 6 French nationals living in London decide to play the sixth one is currently penalised / prevented.

[London is the 6th biggest French city apparently due to very large numbers of French nationals living there]

The current rule is good, but can be simplified. I suggested 1 non-national per each 10 boards.

There are much more nonsence and ugly issues in the rules, some of them:

1) Exception for timeouted games when speaking about adjustments closed accounts. 

2) Tiebreak system: rules "<3 points difference = drawn" and "nb wins on 1st 10 boards".

3) Too many divisions. 

Hello everybody,

This is a competition between cities. It is not fair for a city to play in this competition with players from more cites or the entire country. The different flag players can play in the non.official games.

I vote for no different flag. No different flag  than the flag of the country should have the players that play in this official competition.

Second of all...another subject should be disscused. ALtough all have the same flag there are a lot of players that are not from the city that play in the competition and they aree from different cities from that country. It is not fair that a city that is fair and have just players from that city to play against a country.

There should be no exception. If there are exception the competition is not fair. It should be called World countries league or international countries league.

All country that propose more flags have players that are not from that city and they want to win this competition unfair.

 A lot of city teams has players that also love their city but they have no conection with that city. Maybe they visited once the city and that's it. I am not against for that group should have members out of their city. But those members out of their city should play in the non-official games.

I agree with Marignon. There is nonosense in the rules when more flags are in the match.  If a city ignore the warnings and sign more different flags, all games of the extra flags should be declared lost by them and should be declared winning points for the fair team. It is not correct that that matches to be canceled because i cand bring 10 members with different flags with 2000 plus rating and cancel the games of the first 10 best players of the fair team.

Boby, I say that there are rules that are noncence, such as this one:

            "In case though the opponent is on timeout the opponent does not get any winning points"

            It makes recalculation more complicated and in general is focused against a fair player who might time out knowing that he plays vs a cheat and wishing to delay the game for as long as possible. I suggest that  this sentence should be removed in all three occasions.

If you agree with this, it is good. 

As for the flags rule, it works, it saves the cities league from becoming something like the Champions' League, where everyone is disappointed with the fairness and the situation WILL get worse and worse from one year to next.

It is good as it is, but it can be simpler, i.e.  easier to apply and follow.

However, what you suggest is too harsh and will disencourage too many players and teams from participating. Please, stop demanding that your opponents remove players with proper flags, but with a different city indicated like you did in your match with Minsk. Your action is against the rules.

@Bobi - there are already leagues for Country specific teams, there is no need for us to replicate here. Check out http://www.chess.com/groups/home/world-league

@all - is this flag rule actually guarding against a danger that does not exist? Do we actually have an example of a team fielding players with many non-national flags?

We have an example of a whole league http://www.chess.com/groups/home/champions-league stuffed with teams that were supposed to group football club fans, but to win matches they started recruiting anyone.  

In Cities League in division 2 last season Team Tabriz did not know about the rule and fielded players with many different flags and could not qualify from the group because of penalties.

I want to just notice that with the actual rule a team can play with 3 foreign flags in the first 12 tables!

@anastasakis - Thats why its so confusing, a simple 25% would cover almost all of these variants

25% is the same as:

no more than 1 in top 4 tables

2 in 8

3 in 12 tables

4 in 16 and 5 in 20

the question is how you control and check it... It's hard to pretend to be very complicated but you are trying very hard... let's take it easy

national flag is more or less wise solution to cover unfair play

if London is mega city with many french people they can choose english flag as the one they are living in, but if they feel they have more connection with the city they born in, for example Marseille they remain with french flag

I can note that there are two main opinions. The one is to keep the actual rule with minor changes and simplify it and and the other is to make the rule softer and allow more foreign flags.

It is true that it is difficult to control the city origin of the players so let' s focus on the % of the foreign flags (international flag can count for 1/2 flag so 2 international flags can count for 1 foreign flag).

I think that - for the WCL - we can siplify like this: "1 non-national flag for the 10 first tables and no more than 2 for each 10 following tables."

We can make CWC more intresting by this rule: "2 non-national flags per each 10 boards".

My proposition is in the middle and I please all admins to consider it seriously,

Do you think we can appply this update rule from 2015 since we are in the beggining of both tournaments?

I agree with Anastasakis. I vote yes for the rule from WCL.

I vote no for the propostition for CWC, and i vote for maintaining the same rule for CWC as WCL:  1-non-national flag for the first 10 table and no more than 2 for each 10 folowing tables.

Kind regards,

Proportions based on proposal in post 17:

                     Boards                                                         Foreign Flags   

The rule is OK.

But this one is more important

           "In case though the opponent is on timeout the opponent does not get any winning points" 

            It makes recalculation more complicated and in general is focused against a fair player who might time out knowing that he plays vs a cheat and wishing to delay the game for as long as possible. I suggest that  this sentence should be removed in all three occasions.

Why nobody cares?

i agree with you. Why a fair player that looses his games on time out should not receive the points from  the games that he played with a extra flag(from team that broke the rules)? it is not fair.

Here the ones who are fair loose and the one that are not fair have more rights and chances to win.

Please Anastasakis, change this rules.

and more.

''If more flags, all of extra flags matches will be declared as not played if the player won them and lost if he lost or draw. In case though the opponent is on timeout the opponent does not get any winning points."

According to the rule above all of extra flag matches will be declared as not played if the extra flag won the macth. It is not fair. if there are extra flags in the match( more than the rules) the matches of the extra flag, either he loose or either he won, the points should be given to the fair team that does not have more extra flag according to the rules.

I can get a lot of  powerfull players with extra flags and i can cancel those games of the fair team. it is not fair. if a team ignores the warnings that he has extra flags than the rules states, and if the match starts with more extra flags, that team should loose the points from the games of that extra flags. This is fair and will encourage the other team not to break the rule. Now they break the rules because they now that the worse can happends is that that games, to not count at the final calculation.

I can play unfair by your rules. I can sign 10 players 2000 plus extra flag and although they will win, i know that nobody will get the points from the first 10 tables of the most powerful players of the other team also. And by that i can have advantage of rating of the tables below that ten with people from my city.

I hope you will reconsider the rules regarding the points from the matches of the extra flags(more than the rule says).