What happened to the Rapid ELO lists?

Dear sirs,

With this open letter I would like to express my concern about the current situation in ratings calculation. Putting aside my personal opinion (I strongly believe that the rapid chess competitions should be integrated into the same rating system as the classical chess tournaments) I can not help expressing my disgust that the rapid ratings that were published up to March 2002, have stopped being calculated by now.

After the Russia vs. ROW match I asked FIDE about it and they claimed that it was Willy Iclicki's fault as he was responsible for Rapid ratings calculations. Of course, Iclicki himself claimed that it was FIDE's responsibility when asked the same question. I don't care whose fault it is but I do want the rapid rating lists to continue being published.

Needless to say, precisely since March 2002 I had some strong results in rapid competitions (the tournaments that I played were Monaco, Dubai, Prague, tie-break in Dortmund, Villarrobledo and Russia vs. ROW in Moscow) and, of course, now I would like to see my name where it belongs - somewhere in the top five of the Rapid ratings lists. But none of these tournaments has been calculated until now.

In the afore mentioned tournaments I played all together 49 rapid games against the average opposition of 2654 (counting normal FIDE rating as there is no any other ultimately) and scored 33 points which would be approximately 2782 performance. Of course, there are players that had even better achievements but once again there is the question - why not to take those achievements into account? I kindly ask FIDE and any parties involved to calculate all the important rapid events of 2002 and issue the new rapid rating list.

I still believe that for future it's better to unify the rating system and give, for example two rapid games (always having minimum 10 seconds added per move to avoid losing by time when it's not by game) the same value as one game with classical time control. I sincerely hope that this topic will be discussed during the next Olimpiad in Bled where unfortunately I am not able to be present. But as I said, that is the question for future, for the moment I just urge FIDE to publish the rapid rating lists as the rapid tournaments get more important year by year.

Sincerely

Alexei Shirov 18th September 2002