In the May bulletin we carried an article about the ICCF Congress to be held in the city of Villa La Angostura, Neuqu�n Province, from 29th October until 5th November 2005. Unfortunately the photo of the Convention Center where the meeting will be held was omitted in the printed verion. We are publishing it now:

The outline of the programme is given below:

29.10 Sat	Arrival of delegates, accommodation, Meeting of Executive Board, Welcome party
30.10 Sun	Opening of Congress, speeches followed by a short cultural programme, Congress, Opening Banquet
31.10 Mon	Congress, Ladies programme, Special Chess Event
01.11 Tue	Congress, Ladies programme, Special Chess Event
02.11 Wed	Congress, Free evening for Executive Board and other meetings
03.11 Thu	Tour to San Carlos de Bariloche, ICCF Blitz Tournament
04.11 Fri	Many optional excursions to be informed, Closing Banquet with entertainment
05.11 Sat	Departure of delegates, Optional Tour to Chile

This Congress is certainly going to be a remarkable one. We will have a new President elected, the future directions for the ICCF Webserver will be a priority discussion as also allowing Postal, Email and Webserver players to compete against each other in the World Championship.

Here is what Franklin Campbell asked on the Correspondence Chess Message Board (TCCMB)

ANY PREDICTIONS FOR ICCF CONGRESS??

Name: Franklin Campbell
Date Posted: Jul 15, 05 - 4:18 AM
Website: http://correspondencechess.com/campbell/
Message: It's a little more than 3 months till the next ICCF Congress in Argentina. Does anyone care to make any predictions? This could be a very interesting Congress with two major EB offices to be filled by election. We're all aware there has been some disagreement about the future direction of ICCF. The new server is breaking new ground at an amazing pace. But the server requires a professional level of support unprecedented in ICCF history. The cost of the server is making large demands on the ICCF treasury. What will the future bring?

Can anyone offer some "fortune telling" to predict major outcomes from the Congress? Will we get lower tier tournaments at a faster time rate, such as 40/10? Will the accumulation of huge amounts of time be recognized as a problem � will an effort to be made to try to solve the problem? Will the server rules be fixed to deal with ambiguities concerning the requirement of players to claim wins (ETL40 days)? Will some of the old traditions based on the requirements of postal play start to be discarded (such as requiring players to claim a server win after an opponent oversteps the time limit)?

Who will gain control of ICCF? Will we have a new president who works to restore the traditional direction of ICCF? Or will we have a vote to continue the changes currently underway? What about Direct Entry? Will we see small incremental changes in ICCF or giant far-reaching innovations? Will we finally see Dave's doubling cube in ICCF play?

Come on, there must be some national delegates out there willing to list their priorities for the upcoming Congress. This is a democratic organization � there's no need to keep important issues secret. What's in the wind? What can we expect? Will we see people blowing their tops, or will we see Amici Sumus rule the day? Inquiring minds want to know.

A lot of people are talking about the phenomenon of �accumulated time�. Consider a situation where a player having 60 days for 10 moves consumes only 5 days for the first 20 moves. He now has 115 accumulated days! Though each move must be made within 40 days (reminders are issued after 14 and 28 days) he can now drag the game making only 3 moves over almost 4 months: very exasperating to a player in a won position. So, some players are asking for a rule revision which will not allow accumulated time to go beyond a decided value. The other side of the argument is that we have lived with accumulated time in postal (and email), what�s new with the webserver? If anything, there�s less bother with the server itself issuing reminders and awarding the game automatically on ETL or 40 days silence.

In my opinion the new President (and the EB) will have to take steps in the following directions, in addition to what is discussed above:

1. The ICCF website is a mess. We can hardly find basic information we are looking for, and old, outdated information is left on the web page causing confusion. We need a team of dedicated people to man the web site in a coordinated way, not uploads by different persons without integration.
2. The Webserver development is going on at a reasonable pace but has been expensive. What is required is to appoint dedicated people to administer the webserver. This administration should not be done by the programmers.
3. The Tournament Office is the most important part of ICCF. We need more people here.

ICCF LATE BREAKING NEWS There are two nominations for the post of ICCF President: Med Samraoui (ALG) and Claudio Javier Goncalves (ARG). For World Tournaments Director, there are no nominations and the Executive Board will have to consider a suitable appointment.

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