KARLOVICH: Dear ladies and gentlemen, let me welcome the guests of our first press conference of today: the chairman of the Technical Administrative Panel Ashot Vardapetian and the member of TAP Werner Stubenvoll. We are all interested in many questions concerning the work of the TAP. Our first question is what the TAP main responsibilities are. What is new in the work of TAP in this Olympiad? How pairings are done? And how the final ranking will be calculated?

VARDAPETYAN: The Technical Administrative Panel was created instead of the Pairings Committee which existed before in FIDE. The main tasks and responsibilities of the TAP are to control the technical side of a competition, ie team composition registration, which is done now online. It takes now much less time than before to make the pairings for the next rounds. It is very convenient not only for the players and coaches but for the arbiters as well.

Also, we prepare all documentation after a competition is over to send to FIDE for title awards. At the same time we give all information to the Organizing Committee in order to enable them to do the necessary technical work for the next round.

This is first time when the program is used in a team competition. I am sure this is a start of a new area in the team online registration at the chess competitions. I also hope that the organizers of the next Olympiad in Tromso will take Turkish experience in consideration.

STUBENVOL: The novelty we are introducing now is the new online registration program which was worked out by the Turkish Chess Federation. The main point of that program is that now the captains can provide us with their team composition for the next round online starting from 10 in the evening after the round till 10 in the morning.

At 10 in the morning we have already the team compositions and pairings done electronically. The system is very simple and convenient. We received only two phone calls after the first round, people asked us how to work with it. Starting from the second round we had no complains at all.

Let me use a chance to congratulate and thank Turkish Federation for the great job they have done. We have all our work now done much quicker. As for the pairing system, it is the one that we started to use in Khanty Mansiysk Olympiad. It is a Swiss manager program. The pairings are done according to the FIDE rules. I am sure everyone knows it but should any team as any questions how it works, please come up to us and we would be happy to explain everything.

VARDAPETYAN: The final ranking will be calculated according to: first - match points, second - the Berger system and third – game points. The system is not complicated as it might seem to many participants. But this is a fair system.

It was created two years before the previous Olympiad in Khanty and I would like to say once again that no one should worry: the fairness is the first consideration in this program.