Submitting Tournaments for FIDE Rating
by Mark Orr
created August 24, 2012; last updated February 27, 2023

The procedure for rating a domestic Irish tournament with FIDE is a 2-step process.

  1. Register the tournament with FIDE at least one week prior to it's start
  2. Report the results within one week of the end of the tournament

FIDE require both steps to done through the ICU rating officer.

You should be aware of the following points:

  • FIDE charge the ICU a fee of to rate a tournament. For Swiss tournaments with a standard time control, the fee is €1 per player.
  • Registrations or submissions which are late may incur a charge or the tournament may not be rated
  • Tournaments will not be rated unless their chief arbiter is FIDE registered
    • For tournaments that involve norms the arbiter must be at least a FIDE Arbiter (FA)
    • For tournaments that don't involve norms (just for rating) a National Arbiter (NA) is sufficient
  • A tournament must have some players with FIDE ratings to be FIDE rated
    • See section 6 of FIDE's Rating Regulations
    • A tournament with only a small fraction of FIDE rated players may also be unrateable
  • Players from federations other than IRL must already have FIDE IDs
    • Such players may contact their federation (but not FIDE) to get a FIDE ID
    • Otherwise, the players will receive an Irish FIN when the tournament is rated
  • For players who do not have FIDE IDs, you must supply their dates of birth.

Registration

Email the registration information to the ICU rating officer at least 10 days before the tournament starts. For norm tournaments, you send it at least 5 weeks before the tournament starts. Include the following details. If there are multiple sections, each section needs to be registered separately.

  • Name of the tournament
  • Number of rounds
  • Start and end dates
  • Venue (including city or town)
  • Type of tournament (swiss/all-play-all, individual/team, open/women)
  • Organiser's name, contact details and FIN. The organiser's email will be used as the main contact unless you specify otherwise.
  • Arbiter's name, contact details and FIN
  • Website, if any
  • Time control
  • Expected number of players
  • IM/WIM/WGM norms available? These have stricter conditions, see the FIDE International Title Regulations for details.
  • GM norms available? Stricter again.

Reporting

Whether you upload the report or send it by email you should do within one week of the end of the tournament (see section 9.1 of FIDE's Rating Regulations). If the tournament is to be ICU rated as well then earlier if possible would be preferable.

If you're already a reporter, then log in and upload your report as you would for any domestic tournament. If the tournament is to be ICU rated in addition to being FIDE rated (which is normally the case) you only need to upload it once.

If you don't have a login to this site or you do but it isn't authorised to upload reports, then email your report to the rating officer. The format for the report must be one of the supported ones (see the general guidelines).

Include a three-letter federation code (see full list) for all players who do not have ICU IDs. You may optionally include federation for players with ICU IDs but this is not necessary as the information will be in the ICU database.

In addition, for players:

  • who have an ICU ID:
    • whose federation is IRL:
      • include their ICU ID
      • you may optionally include their FIDE ID (if they have one and the report format allows more than one ID)
    • whose federation is not IRL and who have a FIDE ID:
      • include their ICU ID
      • include their FIDE ID (if the report format allows more than one ID)
    • who are not from Ireland and who do not have a FIDE ID:
      • they should be aware that they will be registered as IRL with FIDE
  • who do not have an ICU ID:
    • whose federation is IRL:
      • include their DOB so they can be registered with FIDE
    • whose federation is not IRL and who have a FIDE ID:
      • include their FIDE ID
    • whose federation is not IRL and who do not have a FIDE ID:
      • they should be aware that they will be registered as IRL with FIDE