ChessBase 17 - Megapaket - Edition 2024
ChessBase ist die persönliche Schach-Datenbank, die weltweit zum Standard geworden ist. Und zwar für alle, die Spaß am Schach haben und auch in Zukunft erfolgreich mitspielen wollen. Das gilt für den Weltmeister ebenso wie für den Vereinsspieler oder den Schachfreund von nebenan
Where did our money go?
This is a story about the disappearance of money.
During the European Chess Championship in Dresden I stayed at the IBIS hotel. The European Chess Union had done the participants an offer: Full board in a single room in the IBIS hotel during 14 nights for 98 Euros a night. Payment could not be done directly to the hotel. National federations had to transfer the money to the bank account of the European Chess Union (ECU). They would then pay IBIS. This is an important point in order to understand what happened. Many players made use of this arrangement, of my federation alone they were: GM Tiviakov, GM Smeets GM Werle and myself.
Lunch and dinner in the hotel were extremely poor. Both in terms of quality and quantity. Our complaints to the waiters did not have any effect. After some seven days I spoke to the cook. He told me he couldn’t change the situation since he had been ordered to prepare meals for the players for value of five euros. And indeed five euros average seems like a good indication for what we got, although it could also have been less.
Now comes the time for some calculation. We paid 98 Euros. The normal rate for a single room including breakfast (Which could, for example, be found on a billboard next to the entrance) is 70,50 euros. 98-70,50 = 27,50 euros left for lunch and dinner. Lunch and dinner together had a value of ten euros so 27,50 -10= 17,50 euros per person per day disappeared! That is 245 euros per person for the whole stay. By now we had grown very curious, how much ECU had actually paid IBIS.
The manager of IBIS refused to tell us, saying this was something between the players and the organizers. Then I spoke with the organizer in charge of these matters, Mr. Verleger. He also refused to tell me. One gets the impression there was something to hide. I think that national federations, whose players stayed in the IBIS, should claim a decent refund from ECU. Furthermore, in the future, national federations should transfer money directly to hotels and not through ECU, or any other organisation. And if they must, they should ask for written guarantees / specifications where the money will go.
Otherwise history may well repeat itself, for example during the 2008 Olympiad in Dresden…
GM Erik van den Doel
Leiden
Holland
