Where In The World?

ONE of the questions I am most frequently asked is along the lines of: "How do you find out about the tournaments you go to?"

For English events, the answer is simple - the English Chess Federation calendar at EC.

For events on mainland Europe, and elsewhere for that matter, the answer is not so straightforward.

If you Google "chess calendar" the top result will probably be a site billed as World's Biggest Chess Calendar.

Unfortunately the size of WC is its biggest drawback - events appear multiple times, many of which are restricted to, for example, members of a particular club, and I have been unable to discover an efficient way of filtering.

That is why my first port of call is the calendar of the world chess federation, Fide, at FC.

Apart from tournaments billed as World Events, the Fide calendar is sorted by continent and can be searched by month, making it easy to navigate.

The only problem is many of the links do not work. For example, anyone interested in the the 2nd Festival di Giugno, to be held in Treviso, near Venice, is invited to click on the "Official website," which is listed as  www.grandiscacchi.com.

Unfortunately this takes you to https://www.fide.com/www.grandiscacchi.com, which is a blank Fide page.

However, you can get the correct address by deleting the symbols before the second set of "www."

Not everyone lists their tournaments at Fide - presumably there is a fee.

One of the non-listers is the German organisation, chess.org, which runs tournaments, mainly in Germany, but also as far afield as Portugal and Malta.

Much is still up in the air post-lockdowns, but the site can be consulted at GC.

The CzechTour, which runs tournaments across Czechia and also at Sunny Beach on the Black Sea, does list at Fide, but I prefer going directly to the group's site at CT.

Finally, I sometimes check the weekly list of Forthcoming Events at The Week In Chess - TC - but generally this is a much reduced sample of Fide-listed tournaments.