• SportAccord (ex GAISF)

The International Go Federation was granted full membership of SportAccord (ex GAISF) on 7th April 2006 at the 40th General Assembly in Seoul, Korea (certificate, press release), a step which should help IGF members in seeking membership of their respective NOC or national sports authority. Provisional membership had been gained on 20th May 2004.

• Founder member of the International Mind Sports Association (IMSA)

The International Go Federation is a founding member of the International Mind Sports Association (IMSA), with Chess, Bridge and Draughts federations.
The life of the IMSA started on Tuesday 19th April 2005, when a document was signed in Berlin.
This was at SportAccord 2005, just before the GAISF General Assembly.
This was a declaration concerning the founding of the World Mind Sports Confederation.
The international organisations for Bridge, Chess (Echecs), Draughts (Dames or Checkers) and Go (Baduk or Weiqi) were founding members.

The signatories for the founders were:

– WBF – Mr J. Damiani (President)

– FIDE – Mr G. Makropoulos (Deputy President)

– FMJD – Mr W. van Beek (Vice-President)

– IGF – Mr Erik Puyt (Vice-President)

Also signing were

– GAISF – Mr Hein Verbruggen (acting President of GAISF but also a Vice-President of the IOC and chairman of the IOC Beijing Committee)

– AISF – Ms C. Dominguez (Director General)

The declaration stated:

“The World Mind Sports Confederation is an association of international mind sport federations and organisations contributing to sport and specifically mind sports, on educationally, scientific or technical level, which meets regularly and within each member retains its autonomy and independence.
The goal of the World Mind Sports Confederation is to gather together the different mind sports federations to pursue common aims and interests, to organise the “World Mind Sport Games” (WMSG) – or any other name to be decided on – under the aegis of GAISF and further realise the inclusion of the mind sports in the Olympic Movement.”

The minutes of the constitutive meeting and the statutes of the fledgling body were also agreed, subject to final approval by the founding federations.
When preparing the official statutes, the IGF and FMJD considered that a better name for the body was “International Mind Sports Association” (IMSA).
This name and the statutes were formally agreed at the next meeting of the body in October 2005 in Portugal.

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Executive Committee of the IMSA (as of June 2014)

– President – Kirsan Ilyumzhinov (FIDE President)

– Founding President – José Damiani

– Vice-President – Harry Otten (FMJD President)

– General Secretary – Thomas Hsiang (IGF Vice-President)

– Treasurer – Marc de Pauw (WBF Treasurer)

– WBF Representative – Gianarrigo Rona (WBF President)

– Honorary Treasurer – David Jarrett

– Honorary Secretary – Jean-Claude Schupp

– Executive Director – Geoffrey Borg

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Contacts

Headquarter – Maison du Sport International 54, Rue de Rhodanie1007, Lausanne, Switzerland

Main Office – c/o WBF, 40 rue Francois 1er, 75008 Paris, France

Email: contact@imsaworld.com

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The following press release was issued on 20th June 2005.

“Fitness For the Mind” is a flyer about IMSA.