Also forgot to include the classic 'Do I need a FIDE account/ID before I play in a tournament?'
Conflicting FIDE Answers
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MelvinGarvey wrote:
Malishious a écrit :
Also forgot to include the classic 'Do I need a FIDE account/ID before I play in a tournament?'
If the tournament is labelled "FIDE rated", you can't participate in it without the related licence, which is the License you got from your club.
Well interesting that you point this out, since the Begonia Open is a FIDE rated event, which includes both rated and unrated players, and players with and without FIDE IDs.
First time I've heard of 'Licenses', but that could be down to them existing in France and not in Australia.
The tournament results if you're interested to verify yourself: https://www.ballaratchess.com/begonia/2022/results.html
MelvinGarvey wrote:
Look, I can't promise things will work out in your country in 2022 like it used to work and seem to keep working nowadays in France. But here how it works usually (as above mentioned):
First you ask: or the arbiter of the tournament, or the president of your club. They "know the drill", and will give you the appropriate answer: "Wait until the 1st of next month".
But then you may also call you National Chess Federation, where they will give you such a totally different answer: "Wait until the 1st of next month".
Last but not least, you may also call the FIDE, and get that cryptic reply: "Oh man, why don't you wait until the 1st of next month like just plain everybody else is doing since ever?"
We all have been there and understand your impatience and anxiety, and yes, it happens something gets wrong somewhere, and some tournament results are not recorded. And yes it would be nice to be able to have an access and overview upon the "Work in progress". But there is no such thing, one of the reasons be: no one wants to get anxious phone calls and emails from people while they work on things.
Be brave and wait until you know when
But being anxious and overthinking things is my specialty!
MelvinGarvey wrote:
You can't have an ID before you played at least one rated game.
Well then explain how I, and roughly 20-25 others managed to play in a FIDE rated tournament without an ID?
Confusing contradictions like these are the entire point of this thread btw
MelvinGarvey wrote:
Anyhow, here one thing that is probably worldwide:
If a chess event wants to be FIDE rated, it has to pay a fee to the FIDE.
In most cases, the fee goes "player-club-regional league-National Federation-FIDE".
France being here "most cases", since the rest of the world in inhabited or crowded with zombies and Inuits.
I do agree with you wholeheartedly here, our zombie problem has been unrelenting and we're desperately running out of supplies.
If I gift you a World War Z poster signed by Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, 10 thousand disposable elo and a temporary FM title will you send some much-needed medical supplies to my country?
MelvinGarvey wrote:
MelvinGarvey a écrit :
You can't have an ID before you played at least one rated game.
Means, you can't do other than FIRST enlist and participate into a FIDE rated chess event, BEFORE you get your first ID.
If you elaborated that in your initial statement then it would've made a whole lot more sense. I am struggling to understand the word order in your follow up message but I think I got the general idea, thank you for taking the time to help me out with this btw!
MelvinGarvey wrote:
Look, here a little classical logical problem:
You have to pick A or B. One is the right answer, the other is the wrong answer (but you don't know which).
At first, you've got 50% chances to pick the right letter.
But then, you're given two helpers, who happen to know the right answer.
And so, you may ask ONE question, to ONE of your helpers, knowing that one of them always lies (is a liar), and the other always tells the truth (is truthful), but you don't know which of them is what.
The question is: What question should you ask, so you get 100% chances to pick the right letter?
I'll ask one of them "Will the other helper say that A is the correct letter?"
(Let's say B is the correct letter in this case)
If I ask the liar, he will respond with "Yes", and he's lying because the honest helper will actually say that A isn't the correct letter
If I ask the helper, he will also respond with yes, because he's truthful about the liar telling a fib about A being the correct letter
So basically it won't matter who you asked!
Ask this question, if they say "Yes" then you pick B, and if they say "No" then pick A
I have been caught out on similar types of mistakes before in exams, which slowly chipped away at my final score 
I played in the exact same tournament you did, so I'm happy to answer any questions you have about this.
1. To get a FIDE rating, you need to play at least 5 games against FIDE rated opponents (games against unrated opponents don't count), and your rating needs to be at least 1000. Luckily for you, you've passed these requirements.
2. You'll get your FIDE rating and FIDE ID on the 2nd of April. This is because we live in Australia and there's a time zone delay.
3. Once the time comes, you can simply type your name into google "[First name] [Last name] FIDE" and it will come up with your profile and rating.
4. As far as preparing for a tournament goes, you generally want to check with the club that's organising the tournament. All tournaments are organised by clubs (Ballarat Chess Club organised the Begonia Open, for example), and those clubs should have their own website with all the information there on them. At the minimum, you'll need to know the official FIDE rules (eg. touch move, let it go and it's a move) and how to record moves if you're going to play a FIDE rated tournament.
Let me know what else you'd like to know 
And congrats on your results this tournament!
Thank you so much for the detailed and informative response, Mr Southall! I may or may not have seen you at the event, since I was so caught up in the rounds that I might've completely forgotten
The four outlined points thankfully resolved some of the troublesome questions I had, but I do still have a few remaining (and cheers for allowing me to ask these!)
1. Are there any additional fees or payments I have to make to FIDE to maintain my account? I've heard of an annual fee or something along those lines but I could be wrong
2. How does the ACF system work? I've got no clue about that topic at all to be honest ;-;
3. I signed up for another tournament (the Doeberl Cup in April) and stated that I was unrated, which was true at the time but as you've said I'll get my official rating on the 2nd. Will that affect anything at all?
Those are just the three for now off the top of my head 
Also, are you planning on playing next year's edition? If so it'd be sweet to chat
Congrats on your results as well! You almost went undefeated were it not for that sneaky 1600 in the final round
Malishious wrote:
Thank you so much for the detailed and informative response, Mr Southall! I may or may not have seen you at the event, since I was so caught up in the rounds that I might've completely forgotten
The four outlined points thankfully resolved some of the troublesome questions I had, but I do still have a few remaining (and cheers for allowing me to ask these!)
1. Are there any additional fees or payments I have to make to FIDE to maintain my account? I've heard of an annual fee or something along those lines but I could be wrong
2. How does the ACF system work? I've got no clue about that topic at all to be honest ;-;
3. I signed up for another tournament (the Doeberl Cup in April) and stated that I was unrated, which was true at the time but as you've said I'll get my official rating on the 2nd. Will that affect anything at all?
Those are just the three for now off the top of my head
Also, are you planning on playing next year's edition? If so it'd be sweet to chat
Congrats on your results as well! You almost went undefeated were it not for that sneaky 1600 in the final round
1. Nah there's no annual fee. You'll keep your FIDE and ACF profiles forever. The only annual fee is if you want to stay part of a chess club, but that's totally optional and you won't lose your ratings if you take a few years off.
2. ACF is the national rating system. Some smaller tournaments are only ACF rated, but bigger tournaments tend to be both FIDE and ACF rated. Tbh I wouldn't worry about your ACF rating much at all, since the NM title doesn't exist in Australia, so your ACF rating really has no meaning.
3. Nah it's fine, the tournament organisers will update your rating on the scorecard when your new rating becomes available - they have to update every player in the tournament next month anyway, cause everyone's rating changes each month.
And thank you! I was actually very disappointed with that last game. It happened on my birthday and that loss meant the difference between going home with nothing vs going home with $800.
The tournament as a whole was good fun though, and in a way, it helped me to have a painful loss like that, because I learn the most from games like that. I'll never screw up the black side of the Alapin Sicilian that badly again.
Not sure if I'll be there next year or not, but if I am, I'd be happy to meet you
thats cool, nice FIDE tournament i wish i could go to one event one day
Deranged wrote:
Malishious wrote:
Thank you so much for the detailed and informative response, Mr Southall! I may or may not have seen you at the event, since I was so caught up in the rounds that I might've completely forgotten
The four outlined points thankfully resolved some of the troublesome questions I had, but I do still have a few remaining (and cheers for allowing me to ask these!)
1. Are there any additional fees or payments I have to make to FIDE to maintain my account? I've heard of an annual fee or something along those lines but I could be wrong
2. How does the ACF system work? I've got no clue about that topic at all to be honest ;-;
3. I signed up for another tournament (the Doeberl Cup in April) and stated that I was unrated, which was true at the time but as you've said I'll get my official rating on the 2nd. Will that affect anything at all?
Those are just the three for now off the top of my head
Also, are you planning on playing next year's edition? If so it'd be sweet to chat
Congrats on your results as well! You almost went undefeated were it not for that sneaky 1600 in the final round
1. Nah there's no annual fee. You'll keep your FIDE and ACF profiles forever. The only annual fee is if you want to stay part of a chess club, but that's totally optional and you won't lose your ratings if you take a few years off.
2. ACF is the national rating system. Some smaller tournaments are only ACF rated, but bigger tournaments tend to be both FIDE and ACF rated. Tbh I wouldn't worry about your ACF rating much at all, since the NM title doesn't exist in Australia, so your ACF rating really has no meaning.
3. Nah it's fine, the tournament organisers will update your rating on the scorecard when your new rating becomes available - they have to update every player in the tournament next month anyway, cause everyone's rating changes each month.
And thank you! I was actually very disappointed with that last game. It happened on my birthday and that loss meant the difference between going home with nothing vs going home with $800.
The tournament as a whole was good fun though, and in a way, it helped me to have a painful loss like that, because I learn the most from games like that. I'll never screw up the black side of the Alapin Sicilian that badly again.
Not sure if I'll be there next year or not, but if I am, I'd be happy to meet you
Once again a thousand thanks for taking the effort in replying with such helpful and informative responses! Hopefully in a future event on your birthday, you'll avenge your loss (potentially from the black side of the Alapin, to come full circle in the learning curve 
)
A belated happy 28th birthday from me, hopefully you still had an enjoyable day.
I'll potentially be playing in some upcoming MCC tournaments, so we might cross paths once again there!
After completing my first proper OTB chess tournament in Begonia over the past weekend, where I scored 4.5/7 against an ARO of 1541, I was checking up to see when exactly my Fide ID + account would be created and I would finally be able to see my rating publicly.
I had gotten a range of answers, both in person and online, and the majority pointed to the first of next month, when the ratings will supposedly be updated. I was fairly happy with this information, but was concerned at the absolute lack of proper coherence on this subject.
Neither FIDE, nor any other large presence in the chess world, has concisely and accessibily produced a guide to starting out in tournaments and what to expect and when. Imo this is largely a deterrent to new players looking to switch from online play to their first OTB experience.
Questions such as 'How exactly can I get a FIDE ID?', 'What should I be aware of for my first tournament?', 'How do Zonal tournaments work?' all get answered with wildly different responses, and I was curious as to what the chess.com community thought about the topic. Is FIDE elitism a reality? Am I just crazy and disillusioned? Should there be more resources to educate potential tournament players?