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Thread: 2. Opening Comments of the Chair

  1. #1
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    Default 2. Opening Comments of the Chair

    Here we greet our outgoing president Vlad Drkulec

  2. #2
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    I would like to welcome the voting members to this outgoing annual general meeting. Some of you will be continuing as voting members in for 2016 to 2017 and will also be participating in the incoming meeting. Some will be stepping back after this outgoing meeting. For both groups I would like to thank you for your service to the CFC and chess in Canada. We had a busy year with many events and milestones. We are sending or have sent teams to the Under 16 Olympiad, WYCC and WCCC.


    IM Razvan Preotu recently received his third GM norm and now only has to raise his rating to obtain the GM title. Congratulations to Razvan whose many years of hard work are about to pay off with the grandmaster title. There is no better ambassador for chess in Canada.


    Michael Song has become Canada's newest international master and Maili-Jade Ouellett has become a woman international master by virtue of winning their respective under 18 sections of the North American Youth Chess Championship held in Windsor a few weeks ago. It was a very gratifying feeling for me as the organizer of the tournament to see that the two ultimate titles available were won by Canadians.


    Qiyu Zhou has been very active in Europe even scoring an IM norm as well as a WGM norm or two. Our young people are distinguishing themselves in chess competition.


    Organizing the NAYCC along with the CYCC and Canadian Open was a very challenging process for me and at times was overwhelming especially alongside my duties as CFC president and chairman of the CFC board of directors. It was especially challenging in June and July before the tournaments started when it wasn't clear that the tournaments would be successful and I was getting a barrage of emails from all directions. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I will probably try to avoid having to do three such tournaments at once again unless necessitated by a lack of alternatives but the main take away is that it was possible to organize three tournaments in some six or seven months and have them all conclude successfully. The Canadian Open finished by breaking even financially. I even managed to organize a chess camp with grandmaster Gergely Szabo a few days before CYCC which also broke even. My thanks to the Windsor team including Christina Tao, Mayuri Talukdar, Victoria Doknjas, Isabella Hui and many, many more. Chau Diep was in charge of the fun committee. Arbiters for the Caesars Windsor Summer of Chess included Aris Marghetis (chief arbiter CYCC and NAYCC and assistant arbiter at the Canadian Open), Hal Bond (chief arbiter Canadian Open and Chairperson of the Appeals Committee at NAYCC) Brian Clarke, Dr Ed Mandell, Andrew Peredun, Roman Peredun, Michael Egorov, Zoltan Kiraly, Minya Bai, Joshua Myers, Manny Kocela, Herb Alice and quite a few others.


    None of this would have been possible without the contributions of the Caesars Windsor staff including Tina Wakeford the Manager of Resort & Convention Sales - Associations and Sue Heath Convention Services Manager. Thank you to all the Caesars Windsor staff for hosting our three tournaments in one of the best venues I have ever seen for a chess tournament. We had two arbiters who have worked at world chess championships, chess olympiads and major major world chess events who remarked that the facilities were second to none and equal to the best that they had ever seen.


    We are about to embark upon a chess olympiad in Baku, Azerbaijan shortly after the conclusion of this meeting. Captain Victor Plotkin will lead the men's team with grandmasters Evgeny Bareev, Alexander Kovalyov, Eric Hansen, Alexander LeSiege and Canadian Champion international master Tomas Krnan. International master Aman Hambleton captains a women's team which includes WIM Qiyu Zhou, WIM Yuanling Yuan, WFM Alexandra Botez, WIM Maili-Jade Ouellett and Lali Agbabishvili for one of the strongest and youngest Canadian women's teams in recent years.


    Let us now call the meeting to order. Don't forget to check in to the meeting by answering the question in the check in thread.

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