Game on!

Winter is coming, and together with it, exciting times in the chess season.

First of all, the FIDE General Assembly elected Timur Turlov as FIDE’s new president. We wish Timur all success in his role and we are eager to move chess foward together. Together with this election, also various other roles are changing in FIDE’s structure, including participation in various commissions. From the RBCF board, we are actively working on taking up one or multiple roles according to priorities and interests.

In terms of board meetings, you can find our latest meeting reports on the meeting minutes page.

The National Interclub competition kicked of two weeks ago. As I’m writing this article, round 2 is in progress. Our Interclub Manager got a big update. Not only to comply with the updated tournament regulation, but also to integratie with our new Player Manager. We are still looking for referees to assist during one or more rounds of this national competition. In case of intesterest, please reach out to Gaston.

Our General Assembly meeting takes place Saturday December 5th, 2026. Invitation and required documents will follow according to the timeline set out in our articles of association.

I’m focussing the remainder of this post on the IT side of the RBCF, as the many changes happening require attention to keep up. In yesterday’s Board Meeting, Jorian demonstrated the many topics he has worked on for the RBCF (and others). The results are no less then mindblowing.

• The National ELO archive I reported on earlier already.
• The FIDE tournament registration form is a replacement of the Excel file previously used. No more downloading, filling in and resending. A single form, linked directly to the FIDE database for organizer and arbiter details. Kept up-to-date with the last player details.
• The G-license system allows for easy entry of non-affiliated players to be known in our player database.
• A dataplatform for RBCF administrators. This is internal only, offering tremendous help in both time-consuming administration topics, as in keeping our players and tournament database up-to-date and in synchronisation with FIDE. Some of the features include:
  • Automated publication of our player database files (*.sqlite) whenever changes are done in the Player Manager. We went from a single weekly update (manually) to an automated system that synchronises mostly instantaneous and at worst every 4 hours.
  • Automated synchronisation with FIDE database. Includes notifications for data anomalies (missing FIDE IDs, missing birth dates, incorrect FIDE federations, misspelled names)
  • Automated tournament registration. Based on the FIDE tournament registration form, directly on the FIDE website. With follow-up emails for late registration, and notification emails in case of late report submission.
  • Automated FIDE ID creation, based on new players in our Player Manager. New players get registered typically in their second week of membership.

But Jorian is not done yet. A sneak peak of features currently being worked on:

• A player registration system for tournaments. A selected number of tournament organizers used the system present on our ancient website. As this system is shut down, Jorian worked on a replacement system. The system allows organizers to create and manage tournaments, and allows players to enroll themselves. No manual keeping track of attendees, the resulting player list can be imported in the most common tournament managers.
• A new Interclub interface. Basically an interface like offered by Martijn Maddens currently, but managed and hosted by the RBCF. I’m sharing the link here, mentioning it’s still in development. Jorian is very open to feedback, so your remarks to make it better are highly appreciated.

As we at the RBCF board are all volunteers, these system have already proven to save lots of time for the FIDE delegate, responsible affiliations and rating officer. I hereby like to explicitly thank Jorian for his contributions during his first months as RBCF administrator. Thank you Jorian!

Open pairings

Next to his role at RBCF, Jorian (apparently) has some more time to spare. His spare time Jorian dedicates to developping open source code for the chess community. Meet Open Pairings, a new and open-source tournament management system:

• A new pairings engine, Ainalrami, developped according to the latest FIDE 2026 regulations
• Browser based, with local run mode for organizers that don’t want to rely on an active internet connection
• Open for everyone after simple registration

Questions or remarks can be directed to myself, or directly to our IT manager, Jorian Burssens.