More chess federations have shared details about the accommodation chaos plaguing the Chess Olympiad in Budapest.
Hungarian Grandmaster Zoltan Almasi commented on our first article: “Unfortunately, as expected, the Chess Olympiad organizing committee is not on top of the situation.”
Kevin Hรถgy, Director of Sports in the German Chess Federation, reported that they were unable to house their entire team in one hotel:
We will ultimately be divided into three hotels: men, women, and FIDE delegate. We chose a hotel for one of our teams ourselves because the prices quoted by the organizers were higher than if we had booked ourselves.
Despite several follow-ups with the organizers and FIDE, we were unfortunately not able to accommodate everyone in one hotel. I think that’s a shame and I can’t even begin to understand why it would be smart to separate delegations.
Fatma Koc from the Turkish Chess Federation stated that some participants had to be removed from the list, and others had to make their own reservations.
She added: In particular, information and replies regarding accommodation were provided very late. I have been working at the federation for 20 years. I have never experienced similar problems in any Olympiad before. We were always able to stay as requested by our group.
Andrew Burnett revealed that “dozens of countries are having serious visa problems,” with anonymous sources indicating that African nations are particularly affected, as organizers are demanding proof of player competence, which is unrealistic for many smaller nations.
Another anonymous source from Africa confirmed the visa issues.
