National Juniors to Masters Program

The Chess Federation of Canada is very excited to announce the National Youth Training Program where Juniors to Masters (JtM) will provide elite training for youth players to ultimately bring out their utmost potential and achieve their best result.


Juniors to Masters’ Background
The JtM program was founded by GM Gergely Szabo and Victoria Doknjas. GM Gergely Szabo has been Team Canada’s Head Coach at WYCC, WCCC, World U16 Youth Olympiad, and the Women’s Olympiad. Victoria Doknjas has been Team Canada’s Head of Delegation at multiple WYCCs and NAYCCs.


Juniors to Masters Mission Statement:
To discover talented individuals, who are willing to work hard and to learn, and through a partnership with them and their supportive parents, we want to help them by teaching, guiding, and encouraging them to reach for their potential and chess goals through the Juniors to Masters Program.

The Juniors to Masters Program and Structure for the Elite Student (rating 2000+):
There are 3 terms per year and each term consists of 8 training sessions. The Master Lecture is taught by GM Gergely Szabo and is approximately an hour and a half. An hour-long training game will follow immediately afterwards. Students will play both black and white from a specific position of the lecture to reinforce what has been taught.


CFC will sponsor 20 players into the JtM Program. Each player will receive $250 sponsorship to be used
towards the registration into the JtM Program in a CFC yearly chess cycle.


CFC Criteria for Eligible Sponsored Players:
• Who has at least a 2000+ rating for males and 1800+ for females
• Who will commit to play in at least one international tournament supported and/or recognized by CFC in 2020
• Who is seeking a chess norm and/or a title

Winter Term: January – March 2020
Spring Term: April - June 2020

CFC recognizes the following students who accomplished outstanding achievements in their chess career.
Congratulations to following players on receiving the $250 sponsorship towards their JtM Program registrations.
- FM Eugene Hua
- WGM Maïli-Jade Ouellet
- WIM Svitlana Demchenko
- NCM Neil Doknjas
- CM Anthony Atanasov

There are 15 spots open for players to apply. Deadline date for the application is Feb 1st, 2020.


Application process:
Apply to Chess Youth Coordinator, Christina Tao at cfcyouthchess@gmail.com with the player’s name, CFC ID, FIDE ID, brief chess background and participation summary of major tournaments. In addition, include a list of international tournaments that the player is intended to participate in 2020.

JtM Program details : https://juniorstomasters.site123.me/

Training session dates and times can be found on the JtM website:
Winter Term : https://juniorstomasters.site123.me/...on-winter-term
Spring Term : https://juniorstomasters.site123.me/...on-spring-term
JtM Facebook page link: https://www.facebook.com/juniorstomasters/



Christina Tao
CFC Youth Coordinator

Back in the late 1980s, the Ontario Chess Association organized a number of 6-player round-robin tournaments in Scarborough, consisting of 4 master level (adult) players together with 2 promising junior players (I played as one of the masters, a couple of times).

Canadian junior level chess has come a long way since then.

I sat in on most of the classes in the past term which dealt with imbalances. The approach of the class is not unlike the approach that we used for a decade in Windsor with our Friday chess club. The difference is that the lecturer is grandmaster Gergely Szabo who is a very knowledgeable chess coach and trainer as opposed to myself and the other local national masters who preside over Windsor Friday chess.

Each week the topic was a different type of imbalance such as Queen vs. two pieces, Queen vs. two rooks, Queen vs. Bishop and Rook, Rook vs Bishop and so on. There were usually about five examples of each type of position and the lecture portion seemed to go about two hours. Typically grandmaster Szabo would present a position and as for an evaluation or perhaps for candidate moves or plans for one side or the other. At the end you play a game based on the theme for the class where you play the same position as white and then as black or vice versa. The positions are usually somewhat equal with one side being easier to play even if the engines say that the evaluation is 0.00.

Let me just say that I am 61 years of age and with occasionally problematic health. My rating in Canada and the U.S. is in the low 2000s. I have been over 2200 in both Canada and the U.S. My last tournament game was about 16 months ago and I decided to make the leap and play in Detroit at an American Thanksgiving weekend event, the Motor City Open this past month. To make a long story short I had one stinker of a game against a FIDE master which is to be expected after such a long layoff but my other four games went as well as could be hoped for and I managed to tie for 2nd place with three other FIDE masters including my student Rohan Talukdar who is pushing 2400 FIDE and 2460 CFC. I beat two higher rated players including a FIDE master and held serve against two younger players who both had pretty good tournaments. I had a half point bye in the second round because I had a class to teach on the Friday night. I do look at chess every day but a lot of it is reviewing games of players who have ratings of 400 to 1000 so not really something that would necessarily translate into good tournament prep against masters and experts.

I am familiar with Gergely Szabo because he has been a coach for Canadian players at various world events including U16 Olympiad, WYCC, WCCC and the Women's Olympiad and also because he came to Windsor when we had the CYCC/Canadian Open and NAYCC and he ran a chess camp for the Windsor kids. He is very good natured and knowledgeable. He has always received praise and accolades from Canadian players and I have seen him work with kids very effectively. He works very well with adults as well apparently judging from my result. He offers very high level instruction with thoughtful examples which illustrate the theme he is trying to teach to his students in any particular lesson.

Congratulation!!


It is my greatest pleasure to announce the following young talented chess players who will receive CFC sponsorship toward their JtM Spring program.

Section	Name	City, Province
U12G	Michelle Hua	Waterdown, ON
	Gillian Mok	Vancouver, BC
U14G	Kate Jiang	Vancouver, BC
U16G	Tian Shi (Sherry) Yuan	Vancouver, BC
U12O	Johnathan Han	kanata, ON
	Kevin Zhong	Pierrefonds, QC
	Eric Ning	Markham, ON
U14O	Youhe Huang	Toront, On
	James Windram	Edmonton, AB
U16O	Jeffrey Renfei Zhao	Toronto, ON
	Harrison Liu	Oakville, ON
	David Craciun	QC
U18O	Benito Surya	Toronto, ON
	Henry Zhang	Windsor, ON
	Patrick Angelo Tolentino	Calgary, AB

Again, congratulation to all of you and we wish all the best to your chess endeavor!


Attachment 426
Christina
CFC Youth Coordinator