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View Full Version : 7. Closing Comments by Chair



Vladimir Drkulec
12-21-2015, 02:40 AM
We had a well attended meeting in part no doubt due to the competing bids for the Canadian Open, CYCC and NAYCC. I want to thank the voting members for their participation in this meeting and for entrusting the Windsor group with our flagship tournaments. I think we will aim to have these tournaments awarded two to three years out. In selling these tournaments to the local communities we just have to be open and explain what they are and what our chess community is like and why we want to put on these tournaments. There is much less resistance to helping us put on these tournaments than I expected. Thank you for your vote of confidence in the Windsor team which seems to be pulling together already to make these tournaments an enjoyable experience for Canadian and international competitors alike. We will also do our best to make sure everyone is a CFC member who is required to be and that the memberships are recorded and reported to the CFC office. I know this should be a given but we have had some problems the last few years with this which have really hurt the office and eaten into the executive directors time though not last year. We had about twenty people helping at the greeting desk to make sure that everyone had an up to date membership. We will do the same this year.

We have pockets of chess strength in Canada. Alberta never ceases to amaze us with its ability to put on showcase events. Look for even more great announcements and tournaments. The FQE is another source of strength and stability. Greater Toronto has so many clubs and so many players it seems you could play twenty rated games in a month without even playing in a weekend tournament. I envy them that. British Columbia also seems to have a thriving junior and adult chess scene putting on showcase events like the Keres Memorial with regularity and class. BC has also been a great source of ideas for the betterment of chess. Look forward to some fruits of this creativity in the months and years ahead.

In Windsor we are getting back to group classes again very soon which hasn't happened for a while now. The loss of Sobeys as a venue was a sad day that we haven't fully recovered from but chess and chessplayers adapt and we now have an above average number of adult players and also a huge number of junior players which we will add to in the coming year and months. We will have many more tournaments, some of them FIDE rated. We have been experimenting with paying the difference in cost between a tournament membership and a CFC membership to upgrade people (mostly Michigan players but also some Canadian players) to a full year CFC membership.

The letter from the Canadian Olympic Committee came as a shock to me. Garland Best indicates that this is old news. I wish someone would have shared that with the rest of us earlier. This is quite significant and holds a key to making chess more mainstream. There will always be naysayers and negative voices but we can dismiss them. Chess continues to captivate millions of people in Canada mostly online.


We will go ahead with Premium Chess and their server along with FIDE and a number of member federations. We have been talking about something like this for several years at least and recently at the last two meetings prior to this one and it is time that we tried to do something with it. Windsor has picked up a few new adult members (mostly young adults and university students) who never played tournament chess before in their life but honed their skills online before deciding that they wanted something more and wanted to try over the board chess. Online chess is great but it does not compare to the thrill of looking your opponent in the eyes, shaking hands and battling over a real board with real pieces and going over the game with him or her afterwards. In that regard the online experience is only a shadow of the tournament chess we all enjoy.

There are parts of the country where getting to a tournament is almost impossible or at least very expensive. Online chess can fill a void there and hopefully connect these players to the Canadian chess scene in a tangible way. I think that we will probably start with team competitions and some online individual tournaments until we get the hang of it and eventually find a way to link to our real world tournaments. That latter part of the equation is probably at least a year away but we have to start down the road and see where it can take us. I think this could lead to new streams of revenue that can supplement our memberships and rating fees.

Those that commented on the initial proposal from the FQE for continuation of the agreement seemed to be in support of the idea that we come to some agreement for the new year involving the FQE providing some services to the CFC. We should have details of an agreement for 2017 available at the next meeting in less than two months.

The handbook discussion didn't get off of the ground but hopefully it will at the next meeting which will probably be in mid February, February 14th to 21st.

The other business discussion was wide and varied and generated some good ideas that will be pursued.

I want to thank you for your participation in this meeting as voting members and with that the meeting will be closed. I will monitor the public and private forums for any additional discussion. Thank you and good night.