Dear friends,

The Arbiters' Commission has the pleasure to publish the 2013 Arbiters’ Manual.

This Manual is a team work, in which some of the most experienced Arbiters, such as Geurt Gijssen, Werner Stubenvoll, Ashot Vardapetian, Franca Dapiran, Dirk De Ridder and Takis Nikolopoulos, participated, writing its part.

The Manual includes everything necessary for an Arbiter to know. It includes the Laws of Chess with necessary interpretations, the Tournament Rules, the Swiss system and the pairings regulations with examples, the title regulations with example of calculating norms, the rating regulations with example of calculating the ratings, the Arbiters’ title regulations, etc.

We hope that this Manual will be an important help to the Arbiters all over the world, in order to exercise their duties in the best way.

The Manual will be updated whenever it is necessary.

The 2013 Arbiters' Manual does not include the changes of the Laws of Chess that were approved in 2013 Tallinn FIDE Congress, as they will be in effect from 1 July 2014.

The Arbiters' Commission members are already working in order to include in the Manual all the changes.

The 2014 Arbiters' Manual will be published in June 2014 in order to prepare the Arbiters for the new laws.

After FIDE approval, the Arbiters' Commission intends this version of 2014 Arbiters’ Manual to be published in books and to be distributed to all Federations during the Tromso Olympiad, in August 2014.

You are welcomed to send your comments, opinions, proposals regarding the Arbiters' Manual to the Arbiters' Commission ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ).

Your help in our effort will be valuable.

Takis Nikolopoulos
Chairman
FIDE Arbiters' Commission

http://arbiters.fide.com/