WCL 2022: rules

I can see some sense in both points of view.

I think that one relavant point to consider, in order to solve this dispute, may be that "Team Tabriz" itself flies the flag of the "Republic of Azerbaijan", not only a portion of its players.

The city of Tabriz, however, happens to be located within the borders of another state: the Republic of Iran. 

I am reasonably sure that that flag (indeed very beautiful) is not meant to represent the Azerbaijani cultural identity, but only the state of Azerbaijan.

Now Tabriz, the modern city, is not a part of that state.

I think that this fact may risk to be perceived as a 'political' agenda (for ex. by Iranians).

But entering into such kind of disputes as which flag admins of club decided to have would be political discussion - something that has to be avoided here.

If other participants of WCL feel offended by some choice of 1 club from their public profile (description, flag, amblem etc.) they can simply ask organizers to review that internally and privately ask that club to revise that to prevent any further discussion. Because as much as any club has right to choose whatever as their symbol - to participate in a league they must respect other participants as well and not cause problems, IMO.

However, what was presented here is different to that - asking about players flags. not team flag (by the way now that I checked profile of Tabriz club, it is not Azerbaijan flag there, but the location - which also maybe is a problem for other Iranian clubs from WCL and team can be asked to update that info if necessary)

I know that was not the point that was made originally, iksni [...and by the way also I noticed that the flag of the club has been changed in the meantime, which looks like a positive outcome ]

However, someone acutely commented that the issue sounded political.

So, I think one goal should be not to make it look or turn out in any way as political.

Both ways I mean, not only against those who challenge some status quo.

As for the exception, I do feel that given the terms that have been described, maybe many more exceptions could be legitimately requested.

However, there may also be no obstacle to allow them, so it would be abstract to discuss this, if no new case is at hand.

This law is a big lie in our opinion because it bears no resemblance to the name of this league.
(Combination of cities and countries !!!!) Looks like a joke !!

We will not enter this league next year because this is not like cities league

I believe that the credibility and respect of the people of a country is much more important than the League of Cities !!

If you mean justice! You should not be afraid to vote because I'm sure no team will welcome this ridiculous rule.
(Do you want to bet with me?)

Use the vote and respect the users!
Chess.com is my favorite role model and they use their power and management principles but with respect .
Even in my profile I wrote " Im proud of the rules of Chess.com " because I believe them and I saw with my own eyes that they have the most beautiful and powerful rules. I also suggest to the cities league as a subset of chess.com use more of the beauties of the rules of the site

You should not forget the 90 million Iranians. As one of the representatives of Iran , Im requesting a vote

This is my last advice = vote

Cheers with dubel Heineken

Do you think alireza firouzja should be allowed to wear a French flag and play for a french city ? (just kidding..)

I want to express my support to @Rainpiper and @iksnicamod because the rule, and the spirit of the rule seem good to me. This is made to prevent city club from recruiting anywhere in the world not to make politics.

I think this is not the place to talk about politic, we are just here to play chess

Personally, I must say I don't agree with this way of erm... putting things Kiavash.

I say this only because I commented previously about the topic.

First of all, Rainpiper (I think) has explained the ratio behind the foreign rule flag; and secondly cities are not nations.

The flag rule is not really all that important, here, it's just a tool to prevent totally incoherent teams ( also as per @felinferoce 's comment) and this is not the case with Tabriz, I think as iksni and others have shown.

Also consider that admins from chess.com teams can't force anyone to play for them and even if members of that team have two different sets of flags, I am sure that doesn't mean all that much and in any case it will always be those players who choose to play for Tabrizand nobody will be forcing them.

The spirit of this League is - I believe - the same as the spirit of the World League, and all the other Leagues on chess.com: just getting chess players from different parts of the world together, and, in this specific case, also putting cities of the world on an imaginary map of the chess world, that's all.

About the flag, if you think your team deserves an exception, then you should go ahead and ask for an exception also for your team, that's all...

No need for 'shouting' really

@Kiavash21, What vote do you want? To exclude Team Tabriz from the Ligua? To exclude all its Aserbaijan's players? I vote No and No. Don't decide for another team.

We Iranians value the prestige and history of our country
 In chess.com everyone knows me as an honest person because I speak without fear.

What is your problem with voting?


When the City League is not able to respond to the comment after a week, my voice and that of everyone else will be raised and it's really normal

Iran is indeed a beautiful country, with a fascinating history, as well as being one of the cradles of chess.

But It IS a game! 

Im never interested in using another country because competing like fighting requires manhood and sacrifice. Without sacrifice there will be no victory

We will all see the future of the Tabriz team !

Next year we want to leave the cities league and we don't have problem with anybody because I think this rule it's like super funny joke

Good luck

Oh dear friend . No, this is not a game because you do not know anything about the history of Iran and Azerbaijan. Tabriz is one of the cities of Iran, but always when they have a problem with Iran, they talk about separation, for example, the Catalans

This is not a game at all, I hope you understand

Exactly, chess is a game and chess.com rules don't allow us to discuss politics... so, at least now every team concerned has the correct flag and nobody will be misled about geography

Why next season, not now? Don't make a problem in a place where there is no such one.

There is really not need for voting (at least not the public one) if admins of this league are already doing great job. If someone doesn't like the rule they can protest here and ask for the change - if admins see that as possible and good, they will update the rule going forward. If so many teams are not happy with the current rule they would complain here more, which is clear enough sign that it needs to be changed. You do not need to bother so many participating teams to review and vote on something that they don't really have a big opinion (and don't want to think more about something that is already working fine)

It is really enough to prove here why the current rule of giving exceptions is not good and admins will work on changing it, there is no need to have longer talk about that including all teams.

Finally, organizers must decide on some rules even if they have better idea on how to resolve it (example is multiplayers rule) simply because it is much easier for them to do it that way, not because that is definitely the best solution. Goal is for sure not to stop playing WCL because 1 or 2 minor rules are not perfect.

So when you are asking organizers to overturn the exception for team Tabriz, your are really asking them to enter the political debate of two sides with different opinion - I completely understand why they don't want to do that, because it will lose lot of their time, start the political talk that should not have place on chess.com and WCL forum and put them in position to penalize team that already reported a need for exception if it gets overturned (so entering the same debate after start of each round if their opponents complain about breaking of flags rule). So that is why you or me or anyone else should really not put that kind of pressure on organizer and using popular voting as a reason for making changes - because even if (which is tough to believe) too many clubs decide to leave WCL because they have different opinion on this matter, WCL organizers would have easier job to continue that way instead of making changes but doing that entering political debates and loosing too much time on time.

If the easiest solution was that simple (add exception for another flag for Tabriz) and it is working fine for several seasons already without any complaints so far, I really don't see any reason to review that position now.

Speakin of chess.com and their rules, they have been doing similar things in the past, allowing for different flags to be selected even if country or region is not officially recognized worldwide - with the same reasoning, they don't want to get into the political disputes because this is not the place for that. If people are requesting different flag - give them that flag to use, end of story.

Hello everyone: Friends, I know I need to mention a topic
The rules in this league are strictly enforced and everyone obeys them

When our team "Team Pasargadae" won the championship in the last few seasons
Many of our opponents protested and said that we do not have a city called Pasargad
If Team Pasargadae is the old name of Fars or Shiraz
But the league officials opposed the presence of the Team Pasargadae and we accepted and did not protest anymore
It should be noted that the Team Pasargadae team won the championship twice after two years in the league, but was opposed to his participation in the city league.

But in this particular case, the Team Tabriz is present in this league with another national flag as the name of Tabriz. Many of the players of this club are not from Tabriz. More than half of the active and strong players of this team are from Azerbaijan.

It is clear that this team can not represent Tabriz

Of course, this is true for many other teams in the cities of this league

This is definitely important and needs to be addressed

I can not accept that a team from another country can be recruited just because they speak the same language or border.

This is not a reasonable justification and the name of the city league cannot be attributed to it

As I mentioned before, I am very happy that the Team Tabriz is in this league
Many of the players on this team are close friends of mine

I ask the relevant authorities to take the necessary care of this important and sensitive issue

Thanks

Did I talking with you ? No
So please ... !

We are not looking for war and if my opinion had been answered last week, such problems would not have occurred. However, it is very normal that we have problems with some rules

We object to some rules and you have to explain in full because you are the managers of this league!
I represent Iran in the World League live and daily. We disagreed with them, but they solved all the problems with proper management, and we did everything we had to do.

I ask you to review this law calmly, because in my opinion, if the name of the World League is cities, it should belong only to cities and not to countries.

Exactly the World League of Cities only for cities . Also we have the world league and they didn't use cities because that is only for counrties . Please please good listen to me ! That is not beautiful some countries they use world league and cities league and this is not fair !!!!!! Is not fair because this is cities league and this a special points only for some cities and that is reallllllly bad

Best regards
Kia

The current rule:

"The number of foreign flag players is limited to 1 in each cumulative (...) block of 4 players...

(...) For a number of teams additional flags are recognised as home flags. These teams and the additional home flags are listed in Appendix C."

My proposal for modifying the rule, based on the fact that some criticism has emerged, would be to allow limited exception for any additional flag.

The ratio would be to aknowledge the special status of some cities and, at the same time, to avoid having city clubs which may become - over time - completely fuzzy erm... flagwise, because of an excesivelly loose exception.

Only to provide an example the modified paragraph could be:

"For a number of teams additional flags are recognised. For these teams the number of additional flags is limited to 1 in a block of 4 players (plus the default foreign flag)."

In our opinion, always making exceptions and giving special conditions causes big problems .
How much more beautiful it is if several teams participate less but all teams use equal conditions

We do not intend to dare or insult, but this law is very very ridiculous in our opinion and is a kind of insult to other teams

Is not fair because Tabriz is big city and it's like a country but they used of more than 70% from Azerbaijan . Kish island is small island in middle east and that team is new team but that is more than strong of Team Tabriz . Also we didn't use another countries and we don't want use countries because we want be winner with real power not fake power

Cheers

Lol.

I don't have much to say about this comment.

I only get the feeling that - deep inside you - you probably prefer the current rule to stand.

May I ask you - just out of curiosity - if there is some special reason for you typing in bold ?