ICU Easter Open

The last time an international Open was held in Dublin was 1991: the Telecom Eireann sponsored tournament principally organised by John Gibson, so I think it is not overdue to run another one, if the money and support is available.

I certainly hope it would be well supported by irish players of all strengths. Already over 40 people have expressed an interest on the ICU website and the range of ratings shows that accelerated pairings would be desirable for the first two (or three?) rounds to maximise opportunities for norm-seekers.

On the question of the ratings published on the ICU site, the players' current ICU ratings get displayed automatically. To change that to FIDE ratings would require human intervention on a daily basis as new names come in. If the tournament is actually going ahead, then a chess-results page can be generated by the ICU which would display the FIDE ratings of entrants, even months in advance, as the Reykjavik open usually does. Or it can just be done on an ordinary web page as Isle of Man and Gibraltar do it.

The proposed dates of 17-22 April (9 rounds in 6 days) look good, and fit in well with Reykjavik which will be running 8-16 April, so there is a prospect of attracting quite a few players who might fly directly to Dublin from Iceland, but to take advantage of this opportunity (as no doubt the ICU executive are aware) the sooner the plans can be firmed up the better.

Realistically it might possibly be too ambitious to set up an event where GM norms are realistically possible, as the financial outlay for conditions to GMs would make the budget much bigger.
Of course some GMs who often play in Ireland would perhaps be invited if they are not too expensive, but in an Open you would need a lot of GMs to give players a reasonable chance of meeting three, which makes a round-robin event (either alongside or at a separate time) the better option for a GM norm event.
Realistically we have two players at present looking for GM norms (Alex Lopez and David Fitzsimons) so they would probably need to be consulted privately about their preferences. Some assistance to send them abroad to, for example, Reykjavik or Gibraltar, would make more sense, I think.

So what we are trying to achieve - apart from generally raising interest and the profile of chess - is international experience for a fairly large pool of improving young players and of course IM norms for several candidates. Also we have at least two players in the hunt for WIM norms (Ioana Miller and Diana Mirza) who should not be forgotten. (Though I think Diana may be doing the Leaving next year and so an Easter event would not be at the right time for her?)

Clearly an entry fee scale related to titles, current FIDE rating and age (concessions for young juniors and 65+ senior) is necessary, and tournaments like Reykjavik can be looked at for that. Also for rating prize bands, junior and women's prizes. There does need to be some incentive for the lower rated players.

I think an €100 entry fee for a player who has an FM title is probably too high. FMs are trying to obtain an IM norm but they also do contribute to the pool of titled players which an IM-norm seeker requires. (For example, somebody trying to get an IM norm in a 9-round tournament needs to meet five titled players of whom three must be IM or GM; the other two can be FM or WIM or even I think WFM. They also cannot afford to meet low-rated opponents, though the lowest can be raised to 2050 for purposes of calculating their norm.)

Declaring an interest: personally I would not be playing but would be an assistant arbiter, having got my NA license recently and now working towards FIDE Arbiter. A tournament like this would be a norm towards it, and there are a couple of other newly-qualified NAs who are probably in the same position. As Ireland does not have many active arbiters, the ICU might have to budget for expenses for a couple of arbiters from abroad, if only to have some languages covered. A lot would depend on the size of entry.