09c) League Reports - NOCL

[Christopher Mallon]

Northern Ontario Chess League reports to be posted below

[Rob Clark]

Shawn has asked me to post this:

Northern Ontario Chess League report

This last year has been a great success for Northern Ontario. In Thunder Bay chess has been gaining momentum and the strength of players that are coming out to play in tournaments is increasing. Ed Rohanchuk has recently completed the chess club on his property. On this property we have a new chess library with books ranging from the 70`s to more contemporary ones, a brand-new Coca-Cola machine, seating for 20 people and a DGT chess set. This year I personally have had more chess students then I have had the last 10 years; with new chess students showing up monthly. I am now up to 14 students here in Thunder Bay. If these trends continue I will be able to convert all of Thunder Bay into chess players.

My YouTube account has been getting great numbers of people viewing how to play chess.
Since I was getting large numbers of viewers, the chess Federation of Canada asked me to run their YouTube account. I have been placing one video per week, so that I can attract more people to the subscriptions. Some of my personal subscribers also switched over to subscribing to the Chess Federation of Canada channel. In the beginning I was pulling in around 32 views, but by the end I was doing around 10 views.

Thunder Bay just recently held the Ontario Open championship and it was a great success; except for the noise level. 16 players came in total, some coming from all across Ontario. came to play in this event. It started off very slow in the beginning, but started to gain intensity during the middle as some of the stronger players began to play each other. By the end my heart was in my stomach. Three people were fighting for the chance to call themselves the Ontario Open champion. Only one person was able to do that, and that was Ron Fournier. I want to say congratulations to Ron Fournier on becoming the Ontario Open champion and getting his rating up to 2144.

Sincerely
Shawn
Pres. of the Northern Ontario chess league