The Catalan Circus: How I Got Fined for Not Using My Phone in a FIDE-Rated Game

Guess who’s back? Apologies for the hiatus. It’s already April and this is my first blog post of the year, so let me explain what has been going on:

• My last blog was about what a great experience it was to play chess in Cyprus, and I told myself that would be my final post before the Candidates. All right, I admit it; that is not a very good excuse.
• Andorra has selected its players for the 2026 Chess Olympiad, and for the first time, I have made the national team. Naturally, my main focus this year is preparing for that event. Unfortunately, that means less blogging for now, but on the bright side, I will hopefully have plenty to write about this experience once it is over.
• During the first part of 2026, I have also been playing for and managing GEVA-CEA, the Andorran team competing in the Catalan leagues, including a team in the top division. As usual, the experience has been intense, draining, and exhausting; which brings me to the main topic of this blog.

So, get ready for a session of hate, beef, and drama; or, to put it more kindly, a personal therapy session; as I walk you through all the anomalies I have had to deal with during the 2026 season.

While writing this blog, I kept thinking about a theory by Xavier Sala i Martín. Wait, do you not know Professor Sala i Martín? As a Barcelona supporter, I feel obliged to include as many Barça references as possible. Xavier Sala i Martín was a board member during Laporta’s early years and is also a professor of economics at Columbia University. At the end of this blog, I will explain the theory I had in mind while writing this, and why. Yes, that is another bit of bait to keep you reading.

That was already quite a long introduction, so let’s get into the story of all my 2026 chess traumas, courtesy of the Catalan League.

Table of contents

1. Survival Mission or Beautiful Suicide?

2. How to Get Fined for Not Using Your Phone in a FIDE-Rated Game

3. Play Through the Blizzard or Get Relegated

4. A Government Alert, an Ostrich Federation, and a Forfeit

5. Same Nonsense, Different Fine

6. The PGN Farce: More Work, More Threats, Less Care

7. Bad Luck, Surely. Just Extremely Mathematical Bad Luck.

8. The Circus Finale

Closing Thoughts: Here Comes the Monke

1. Survival Mission or Beautiful Suicide?

Before getting into the season itself, it is worth setting the scene and explaining what the team’s expectations actually were.

GEVA-CEA has somehow managed to survive in the top division every season since 2022, after being promoted when the 2020 season was cut short by COVID. Since then, every year has brought a different kind of challenge:

• 2022: GEVA-CEA struggled, as did many teams still dealing with the effects of COVID restrictions, but survived after an extraordinary relegation play-off caused by the transitional format.
• 2023: Our most comfortable season ever in the top division. We secured survival with rounds to spare and, for once, avoided unnecessary suffering.
• 2024: GEVA-CEA stayed up despite losing GM Lance Henderson, who had lost interest in playing this tournament; and honestly, I cannot blame him. Survival was far from easy, especially with the Catalan Federation trying to cheat us, as I explained in previous blogs.
• 2025: GEVA-CEA stayed up again despite losing IM Jordi Fluvià, who had lost interest in playing this tournament; and honestly, I cannot blame him. Survival was far from easy, especially with the Catalan Federation trying to cheat us, as I explained in previous blogs... AGAIN?

Then came 2026. This season, GEVA-CEA lost two key players who had been regulars on boards three and four, and that brought the elephant in the room straight onto the table: should we request direct relegation, or should we try the impossible?

Personally, I thought playing in the top division this year was close to suicidal. But the players were willing to take on the challenge, so… here we go.

You may be wondering why I was even considering direct relegation in the first place. The answer is simple: the top division comes with a set of extra complications that do not exist in the rest of the league.

• 11 rounds instead of 9, which means more weekends committed, with matches played on Saturday afternoons.
• You must register 17 players for 9 boards (aka "X players"), which means finding enough people willing to commit to at least six weekends of chess. Board 10 is free.
• Away matches are especially brutal for Andorran teams, because every away trip means roughly 400 kilometres of travel in a single day.
• And, of course, being from Andorra comes with its own “special treatment”, as the Catalan Federation somehow always manages to produce a calendar that gives us extra away matches. This year we had 6 away matches out of 11. Amazingly, that is still an improvement on last year’s 6 out of 9.
• If you cannot field 9 "X players" in a round, you must leave a board blank — which, in practice, means naming a player who will not actually show up. Any team can do this three times in a season; a fourth time means automatic relegation. A shocking system, I know.

None of these conditions applies in the second division, which is exactly why I was tempted to skip the suffering and go straight there.

And then there is the Andorran financial handicap.

Most clubs register all of their players for the league because doing so also gets them their FIDE licence. For Andorran players, however, that licence is already covered. So when we enter the tournament, we are effectively paying for a duplicate FIDE licence we do not need.

What does the Catalan Federation do with the money they collect from us for a licence we already have? I do not know. I do have a theory, but my lawyer has advised me not to include it in this blog.

2. How to Get Fined for Not Using Your Phone in a FIDE-Rated Game

Now it is time to explain the title of this blog; the bit of bait that might lure readers in, especially chess arbiters, and convince them to sit through this therapy session. It all started in round one. Only ten rounds left after that; depressing, I know.

We were facing Tres Peons, who had travelled to Andorra. They are a strong, established top-division team, and I was making my debut on board four, the highest board I had ever played at that point. I had a long game with the black pieces against IM Miguel Ruiz Buendía. After spending hours defending an uncomfortable position, my resistance finally broke, and he managed to convert in one of the longest games of the match.

After the match, I did exactly what any delegate or captain is supposed to do: I signed the scoresheet and uploaded the match result to the website as soon as the round was over. Everything seemed perfectly normal. Or so I thought. A few days later, I was informed that I was going to be fined for failing to report the result in real time. Yes, really.

The Catalan Federation requires captains to report results immediately as soon as each individual game finishes. At first glance, you might think this is for the arbiter’s benefit. It is not. The arbiter does not need/use this information. The real purpose is to keep the live broadcast updated; in other words, to feed a Google Drive spreadsheet with the scores of the day.

So, in practice, the Federation expects me, while playing a FIDE-rated game, to pick up my phone, send a WhatsApp message, and then return to the board as if that were a perfectly reasonable thing to demand from a player.

Years ago, we found a way around this absurd system because reporting by email was still accepted. We had a laptop in the playing hall that also worked as a match scoreboard, allowing players to enter their results directly. That way, everyone in the room could follow the match score without any fair play concerns, and every update automatically triggered an email to the broadcaster. It was actually a sensible solution.

Unfortunately, the Catalan Federation lost access to that email account years ago and informed us of the issue for the first time in 2026 season. That is why, in previous seasons, this had stopped being a problem: we were still sending emails, but effectively sending them into the void.

You can probably imagine my reaction, especially considering that I am a FIDE Arbiter myself. Since this issue clearly touched on fair play, I brought it to the Fair Play Committee, who advised me on how to appeal the sanction locally and also guided me on how to escalate the matter if the appeal failed. Fortunately, the fine was overturned at local level. Even so, the whole episode was exhausting. It is exactly the kind of unnecessary drama that drains your energy when your attention should be on preparing for the next round, not defending yourself against nonsense.

3. Play Through the Blizzard or Get Relegated

Round 2 brought even more drama, this time around an issue that would resurface in later rounds. We faced Barcelona in Andorra; our second home match in a row. A rare luxury, so make a wish.

If you are into skiing, you probably noticed how good this season has been in the Pyrenees. Compared with previous years, there has been much more snow, which was great news for winter sports lovers. Of course, snow is only magical the first few times. After that, it tends to lose its charm; especially when you have to drive through it.

Barcelona’s delegation split into two groups. One group decided to turn the trip into a weekend in Andorra and do a bit of tourism. The second group chose the classic day trip: come up, play the match, and drive back the same day. In other words, exactly the sort of trip Andorran players are expected to make all the time. Unfortunately for them, that second group discovered just how unforgiving mountain weather can be when you are not prepared for it.

That same day, a snowstorm hit parts of Catalonia. In Andorra, that kind of situation is manageable: you throw salt on the roads, send out the snowploughs, and carry on. In Catalonia, they are not quite so used to dealing with those conditions, and the result was that several Barcelona players ended up stuck on the road.

Given the circumstances, Barcelona’s captain contacted me immediately, clearly worried. And with good reason. There was no official alert and no government recommendation against travelling, which meant they were still expected to show up. On top of that, the Catalan League has one of its usual charming rules: if your team fails to appear, you do not just lose the match; you are automatically relegated.

Under those circumstances, there was not much I could do to help. The only solution I could offer was simple: if they managed to arrive eventually, no matter how late, we would wait for them and then pretend to the Federation that the match had started on time. Fortunately, it did not come to that. They arrived with just enough time, and no theatrical performance was needed to save them from an absurd administrative disaster.

4. A Government Alert, an Ostrich Federation, and a Forfeit

Rounds 3 and 4, thankfully, came without any major drama. We travelled to Platja d’Aro and then hosted Sant Andreu. For once, chess was just chess. Round 5 was supposed to be an away match against Barberà, one of the strongest teams in the division. I say supposed to be because the real story started a few days earlier.

That week, strong winds were already causing serious disruption along the Spanish Mediterranean coast. How serious? By Wednesday, the government had issued an alert advising people to avoid or at least reduce all unnecessary travel. Schools were closing, trains were being cancelled, and the authorities were already warning that Saturday could bring the same kind of situation.

So, in a normal federation, the sensible response would have been obvious: cancel the Saturday matches and work on rescheduling them with the affected clubs. That is exactly what the Valencian Federation did. Yes, the Valencian Federation. The Catalan Federation, by contrast, ignored everything and buried its head in the sand like an ostrich, convinced that invisibility is a crisis-management strategy. So what happened on Saturday?

We still had to prepare as if the match were going ahead, which meant leaving Andorra at 11:00 a.m. Then, at 9:30 a.m., we received the official Catalan government alert advising people to avoid travelling in the Pyrenees region. At that point, I immediately contacted the Catalan Federation to ask for instructions. I sent emails, I made phone calls to the league contact number, and I tried repeatedly to get some kind of answer.

The response? Absolute radio silence. By 11:00 a.m., departure time had arrived and we still had no guidance despite multiple attempts to reach them. So it was time for a simple go / no-go decision. I decided not to put my players at risk. If anything had happened on the road, we would have been the ones held responsible for ignoring an official government alert, Only around 12:30 p.m. did the Catalan Federation finally publish a note cancelling the match.

And even then, they managed to make the situation worse. In that note, they did not even acknowledge the Catalan government alert. Instead, they claimed the cancellation was due to the warning issued by the Andorran authorities. It was a perfect example of how not to manage an emergency. Fortunately, the only thing damaged that day was a chess round.

What happened next was somehow even more ridiculous. That same day, I spoke with Barberà’s captain, and he was perfectly happy to reschedule the match for the Sunday after round 7, two weeks later. We were due to travel that weekend to Badia del Vallès, which is practically next door to Barberà; you could almost walk from one club to the other. It was clearly the most practical solution for everyone involved.

Naturally, the Catalan Federation blocked it. Instead, they ordered us to play the rescheduled match after round 6 at 4:30 p.m. In practice, that meant playing on Saturday afternoon in Andorra, then travelling across Catalonia to play again on Sunday afternoon, and then going back to work on Monday morning; because, unfortunately, we are not full-time professional chess players living off tournament prizes.

In the end, we had to accept a miserable forfeit. The Federation justified its decision by claiming that, because the first phase of the league is a seven-round round robin, allowing the game to be played later might create opportunities for result manipulation. I would be genuinely curious to know how they would have handled that principle if the weather alert had happened two weeks later instead.

5. Same Nonsense, Different Fine

As I already spoiled earlier, round 6 brought GEVA-CEA vs Cerdanyola, and with it our first half-point of the league after a 5–5 draw. Just like in round 1, I had a long game with the black pieces. This time, however, I managed to hold the position and secure a draw.

Having learned my lesson from round 1, I made sure to send a WhatsApp message with the 5-5 result to the broadcaster the moment my game ended. That, apparently, was enough to avoid being fined for that particular issue.

Then came the usual ritual. After the match, I did exactly what any delegate or captain is supposed to do: I signed the scoresheet and uploaded the match result to the website as soon as the round was over. Everything seemed perfectly normal. Or so I thought. A few days later, I was informed that I was going to be fined again. Yes, really. At this point I could almost just copy and paste what I wrote after round 1.

So what was the accusation this time? According to the Catalan Federation, I had uploaded the match result on the website on Sunday lunchtime, around 13 hours late. Which would have been quite impressive, considering I had actually uploaded it immediately after the match on Saturday, and it was in fact the first result of the round to appear on the website. In other words, yet another piece of nonsense.

Fortunately, this time I had enough evidence on the club’s computer to prove that the accusation was false, and the appeal was successful. What I still do not know, however, is where this accusation even came from. I asked the Federation for an explanation, and their response was essentially: “You won the appeal, what else do you want?”

By now, I hope it is becoming clear just how frustrating it is to be both a player and a delegate in this league. Playing the games is exhausting enough. Constantly having to defend yourself from absurd administrative accusations makes it even worse.

6. The PGN Farce: More Work, More Threats, Less Care

As if managing a team in the top division was not already enough, there is yet another delightful responsibility: providing PGNs for every home match.

The Catalan League wants to promote its games, so whenever your team plays at home, the delegate is required to convert all the games into PGN format and send them to the Federation within five days. Otherwise; and by now you already know the punchline; there is another fine waiting for you.

This is the first time I have ever seen a tournament where players or captains are required to produce PGNs under threat of sanction. At this rate, I half expect that at the next Olympiad an arbiter will walk up to Vladimir Kramnik; who was Uzbekistan’s captain in 2024; and say: “Excuse me, Vladimir, but if you do not send us all Uzbekistan’s PGNs by Tuesday, you are getting fined.”

To be fair, this is one task I always complete on time. I usually do it on the same night as the match, or at the latest on Sunday, and send everything straight to the Federation. Once the workweek starts, there is simply no time left for this kind of extra administrative labour. So no, this time there was no fine. The real problem lies elsewhere.

The Federation’s role, apparently, is limited to merging the PGN files and publishing them without even the most basic review. As a result, the formats are often inconsistent, the metadata is unreliable, and sometimes the games themselves are plainly wrong. I wanted to mention this because I know how painful bad PGN data can be for people like Mark Crowther, who does so much to make the weekly chess world accessible and enjoyable for chess fans everywhere.

And to show the level of care involved, here is an example from my game in round 8, when we travelled to Olot:

So, according to the Catalan Federation’s published PGN, what you have just seen is a game between an Andorran patzer and an International Master.

My guess is that Olot used some kind of AI tool to generate the PGN and that it simply failed in this case. Honestly, I cannot even blame them too much, because I know perfectly well how annoying and time-consuming this task can be; especially when it is a task that should really belong to the organiser in the first place.

That is the truly frustrating part. It is not just that the Catalan Federation delegates this work to the clubs. It is that, once the work is done, they do not even seem to care about the quality of what is being produced.

7. Bad Luck, Surely. Just Extremely Mathematical Bad Luck.

Round 9 was the only match I missed all season. Why? Because committing to that many weekends of chess is simply too demanding, especially when you are not a professional player. At some point, I needed a break. So yes, for one weekend, I felt a bit like Dennis Rodman and decided to step away on vacation. To support the team as much as possible, I chose at least one round in which we were playing at home.

The match ended in a draw against Terrassa. Unfortunately, that result relegated both teams. With that, GEVA-CEA’s five-season run in the top division came to an end, and we had played our last home match at that level. And that brings me to a statistic that says a lot.

As I mentioned earlier, the league has an official broadcast that covers two matches per round. So here is the question: how many times was a match played in Andorra broadcast during those five seasons in the top division? Zero. Not once. Not even this season, when I explicitly asked several times for at least one broadcast, since we were trying to promote chess in Andorra.

Just to show the numbers:

• 2022: 6 home matches in Andorra. 20% chance of getting a home broadcast (20 teams).
• 2023: 5 home matches in Andorra. 25% chance (16 teams).
• 2024: 4 home matches in Andorra. 25% chance (16 teams).
• 2025: 3 home matches in Andorra. 22% chance (18 teams).
• 2026: 5 home matches in Andorra. 25% chance (16 teams).

Put all that together, and if the selection system were genuinely neutral, the probability of Andorra getting zero home broadcasts across those five seasons would be less than 1%. In fact, that is the kind of number with a silly amount of zeroes.

You could say that Andorrans are simply cursed with terrible luck. Or, if you are of a more suspicious mindset, you might think the Catalan Federation suffers from a condition whose name happens to rhyme with xylophone (although that may be too strong, and discrimination would probably be the more accurate word if only I could find something that rhymes with it. Suggestions in the comments are welcome for future occasions).

8. The Circus Finale

So the party is not over just yet. There is still one round left to play, against Foment, a team that will be fighting to avoid joining GEVA-CEA and Terrassa in relegation. And where will this decisive GEVA-CEA vs Foment match be played? Of course, in Manresa, around 150 kilometres away from the home club. Because clearly, we could not leave this competition without one final act of generosity from the Catalan Federation.

Once again, they will claim this is all being done to promote chess. But I already explained in a previous blog how this very venue became ground zero for one of the most shameful days in Catalan chess history. Last year, the same venue was turned into a live concert of sorts, in a space that was obviously nowhere near suitable for proper playing conditions. So naturally, one has to wonder what surprises this year’s edition will have in store.

Do you know what actually helps promote chess? Reporting on your tournament properly and doing it on time. 

So when does the Catalan Federation usually publish its round reports? Typically on Thursday or Friday, about five days after everything has already happened.

And the funniest part is not even the delay; it is guessing which mistakes the article will contain this time: wrong results, photos assigned to the wrong club, and the usual collection of avoidable errors.

Another brilliant way not to promote chess is to schedule this grand circus finale on the exact same day as Open Menorca Chess, one of the biggest and most attractive tournaments in Europe. A perfect clash, really. Menorca is just a 30-minute flight from Barcelona, which makes it an obvious magnet for strong Catalan players who do not want to miss one of the best chess festivals around.

A good moment, by the way, to remember that I already wrote about the previous edition.

So if I had to choose which of the two events to follow that day, trust me; I would be looking towards the Balearic Islands. I mean, Menorca will have Gukesh, the f*cking World Champion is there!

Closing Thoughts: Here Comes the Monkey

Maybe you are still reading because I teased a connection to FC Barcelona and Xavier Sala i Martín. So here comes the theory.

Xavier Sala i Martín often refers to the “investment monkey theory” to illustrate how success in investing can sometimes be more about luck than skill. If enough investors; or even monkeys randomly picking stocks; take part, some of them will inevitably outperform the market purely by chance. We then tend to focus on those apparent winners while ignoring the far larger number of failures, a classic case of survivorship bias. The idea also connects neatly with the efficient market hypothesis: consistently beating the market is extremely difficult, so short-term success should not automatically be mistaken for genuine expertise.

So why was I thinking about this while writing about the Catalan League?

Because perhaps chess in Catalonia continues to thrive not thanks to the people running the system, but despite them. Maybe the underlying chess culture is strong enough to survive poor management, weak organisation, and a general lack of leadership. At this point, I would genuinely be curious to test whether replacing the current system with a monkey making random decisions would actually produce worse results; or perhaps, unexpectedly, better ones.

That is what the Catalan League increasingly feels like to me: not a properly run competition, but a kind of fantasy league. Captains are forced to spend more and more energy building line-ups, managing administrative traps, and hoping their chosen players deliver the right points on the right weekend. At the end of the season, it starts to feel less like a sporting competition and more like a fantasy football table, where the real game matters less than whether you guessed the right squad on the right day.

And that, to me, is the saddest part. Because chess should be decided on the 64 squares; not by bureaucracy, logistics, arbitrary rules, and who happens to navigate the circus best.