ICCF Congress 2008
Pleven, Bulgaria
20-26 September 2008
under patronage of Sport`s Minister Mrs. Vessela Lecheva and the Governor of Pleven Mr. Tzvetko Tzvetkov
Chairman of Organization Comitee - Mr. Rumen Petkov

Day 4 24 September 2008
The Final of Olympiad 16 (Post) and 17 (Webserver) will be announced as soon as all the finalists are known (Olympiad 15 is still ongoing). The next cycle of preliminaries will commence on Webserver only at the same time as Final 17 starts.

The Veterans World Cup has proved to be very popular so it was agreed that subsequent tournaments will be started on an annual basis and will possibly be in three stages dependent upon demand.
Champions League: In future seasons, registration of teams will be by Direct Entry only, and players will only be allowed to play for one team in any one season.

Rapid Tournaments: A discussion was held concerning possible Rapid CC (10/20) and Blitz CC (10/10), with the idea that such tournaments will possibly be attractive to some player’s especially younger players. In order to test the demand for these products, trial tournaments will be started next year and these will be unrated. If the tournaments prove successful, the next Congress can re-visit the Ratings issue.

Money Prize Tournaments: Five of the six finished tournaments have been won by players new to ICCF so these tournaments are a success. Some difficulties were found in paying prizes to some players in some Countries that cannot accept incoming payments by paypal . Resolutions will be found to solve this and the DE entry Commissioner is working with the prize winners to enable payments.

Playing Rules Review: A long and fruitful discussion was held with regard to the perennial problem of excessive retained reflection time, resulting in the over-prolonging of games by a minority of players. It was felt that the ICCF simply cannot allow this problem to go on for another year and has to do something positive in this regard. An initial proposal by the Norwegian Federation to double the reflection time after 14 days of reflection, was passed by a very narrow majority. However, because the vote was so close, further discussion took place and it was agreed that reflection time would be doubled after 20 days of reflection – this was passed by a substantial majority and will take effect from 1/1/09. This mirrors the Rule that we used to have in Postal events where reflection time was doubled after 12 days – this postal rule was reinstated.

Playing Rule 2c will be slightly amended to reflect the fact that it is the player’s responsibility to monitor his time on the Webserver, and it is not acceptable for a player to use, as an excuse, that he didn’t receive an e-mail from the Webserver.

Team Tournament Rules: Once the team has been announced and is on the Webserver, changes to team members before the start of play will count against the number of changes allowed.

Webserver Fees: With effect from 2009, Zone 2 (CADAP) will have to pay fees for Webserver tournaments exactly the same as Zones 1 and 3. Zone 4 (Africa/Asia) will continue to be free.

The next ICCF Congress will be held in Leeds, England between September 12 & 18th, 2009.
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This material is taken from: The ICCF Website