WYCC is under way

[Bob Armstrong]

After 5 Rounds, the top Canadians are:

Kelly Wang - 4.5 pts. ( U 8 Girls ) - tied for 2nd

Joseph Bellisimo - 3.5 pts. ( U 8 Open )

Chang He Li - 3 pts. ( U 12 Open )
Lloyd Mai - 3 pts. ( U 16 Open )
Yelizaveta Orlova - 3 pts. ( U 14 Girls )

Bob

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

The playing venue looks great. I found this picture at chessbase.de

It really looks like that chess is treated as sport


P.S. Canadian flag is fifth from left

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

http://2008wycc.blogspot.com has announced that Canada will participate in World Youth Chess Idol too

[Valer Eugen Demian]

...
It really looks like that chess is treated as sport
...

Thanks for this observation! Hope you will pass it along to more chess lovers in this country. Changing a perception has to start with ourselves!...

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

Thanks for this observation! Hope you will pass it along to more chess lovers in this country. Changing a perception has to start with ourselves!...

As I remember, the Turkey venue was not the one where I wish to be as a parent Though, I do not know that parents can come in this, but looks it more convenient for fans (they even can bring computers

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

One of Lithuanian player's parent send me this photo:


It possible to see these pairings from round 5 Section Open 18

27 Teixeira Rafael Goltsman POR - Ertan Can TUR
28 Ye Ling Feng  CAN ½ - ½ Garnelis Julius 	LTU
29 Solo Muzenda  RSA - Getz Nicolai NOR	
30 Poetz Florian AUT- Herath Nishendra 	SRI

[Valer Eugen Demian]

As I remember, the Turkey venue was not the one where I wish to be as a parent Though, I do not know that parents can come in this, but looks it more convenient for fans (they even can bring computers

Well, you should have seen WYCC Belfort 2005 at the extreme negative, or WYCC Greece 2004 at the extreme positive end. However the point is the road of 1,000 miles starts with the first step: recognize chess as a sport. From that critical point on everything would come more or less flawless:
- national federation capable to do something for everyone;
- chess activity all over the country in better venues;
- improve competition and representation.
It is pretty simple really...

[Ellen Nadeau]

This was a great round for Team Canada
14 wins
6 draws
4 losses
Unfortunately our lead player Kelly Wang lost this round but she still has 4.5 out of 6.


They now have a day off to rest and visit the region before round 7.

Ellen Nadeau

[Jonathan Berry]

This is ridiculous. We send a Canadian team to the WYCC and they play each other. I see from other posts that this happens all the time.

I think we should start a campaign to get the rules changed for 2009. At the very least, pairing rules should minimize pairings within a country.

What do say Ellen, shall we throw the full weight of the CFC behind this campaign ?

It might get worse. Our four players in U-16 have similar scores, but they haven't played a mini-RR amongst themselves. Yet. Rd 7 showed no further intra-Canadian pairings there.

FIDE pairing rules tend to be strict. They are obsessed with reproducibility of pairings. And you can kind of understand that because somebody points out that the exact pairing rules were not followed, and then as a domino consequence their precious player received an unfavourable matchup. Changing pairings because of the origin of players is verboten. The penalty could theoretically be maximal: non-rating of the tournament, non-counting of norms. You can't blame the pairing committees for doing what FIDE orders them to do.

Another example of FIDE's policy on this is the World Cup pairings. Frequently they have highly avoidable intra-country pairings in rounds 1 and 2 of that event, but they don't budge.

If you wanted to mandate reproducible rules which prohibit intra-country matchups, it could get complicated. For example, if in a 40-player section, you have 10 Canadians, prohibition would badly skew the pairings. 20 Canadians and you suddenly have a Scheveningen tournament. 22 Canadians and prohibition makes it impossible to pair round 1. Oops, my bad. You give four Canadians byes in each round! A different example: two Canadians are in the lead. Do you never pair them?

Even now, FIDE pairing rules are not comprehensible to a human. They are a wordy flowchart for a computer programmer. That's one reason why some computer programs actually do produce perfect FIDE pairings: the rules are written for computers! Add a new complex schema for avoiding intra-country pairings, and the whole system becomes even less accessible, to humans.

At the 2006 Great Open in Morelia, with 722 players, I let the computer make FIDE pairings for the first six rounds, but then in the last round vetted the pairings so that players from the same state (in Mexico) didn't meet. As it turned out, I needed to change only one pair of pairings (i.e., one switch), and in a section that wasn't going to be FIDE-rated anyway. Given the opportunity (time doesn't always allow), I'd still make minor switches to avoid geographical pairings. Darn the torpedoes!

[Ellen Nadeau]

My WYCC Trip
By Janet Peng U8G

As I got off the Cathay Pacific Airplane, I felt hot and humid. I was finally at Vietnam! We got our bags and went to the shuttle bus. After three hours driving, we arrived at B&T Hotel to get our photo ID picture taken. Then we went to our hotel called Vungtau Intourco resort and had a later dinner. We went to our room and slept right away.

I woke up and saw the beautiful beach right in front of our resort. Then we went to the tournament place. It is very big. As the first round started, I was very nervous and scared. I saw so many people from different countries and so many good chess players as I walked into the room.

After 6 rounds, we had a free day. YEA, FREE DAY! We had a city tour and we went to four places. At the end of the tour, we went shopping at fine art market. I bought lots of things, like a wooden crab for my grandfather and a model motor bike for myself. Now I am ready for the 7th round.

I am so happy for my sister Jackie who is also in the tournament and is winning 3.5 out of 6 games