4. Executive / Officer Reports

[Victor Plotkin]

B. World Senior Team Championship

I started this project more than a year ago and I am very happy with the results. Our Team (Cummings - Plotkin - Findlay - Barron) finished 6th out of 67 teams in Dresden. I would like to share some information and ideas about this tournament.

1. From the very beginning, I told to all potential Canadian players that I want team of 4 and not team of 5. Being a player and a captain for the team of 5 is a clear conflict of interest; at the same time it's absolutely fine with team of 4. Canadian players often play 2 game/day and should have no problem with a comfortable 9 games/9 days schedule. Some risk that somebody gets sick or can not play for another reason definitely exists, but this risk is not too high with reliable players.

2. 4 teams in this tournament were much stronger than others (USA, 2 from Germany and England), we played with 3 of them and lost all 3 matches. We won all 6 matches against other teams including 3-1 victory over higher rated Germany-2 (almost 200 points total rating advantage) and 4-0 over team called "Ulm", with similar rating. 6 wins in 9 matches allow us to share 6th place, our tie-break was very strong, so we finished 6th overall.

I have some funny story about Ulm. It's a very historical place, Napoleon defeated Austrians there in 1805. This Ulm battle was one of the best even for Napoleon and probably his "cleanest" victory. Napoleon lost about 500 soldiers, Austrians lost almost 30.000. Napoleon would have been proud of us.

3. Every player from our team gained rating points. We gained more than 80 points overall. Rating points will be donated to Canadian underrated juniors in the nearest future.

4. I.Findlay had the best performance in our team with 6.5/9. He missed an IM norm by just half a point.

5. M.Barron and myself won team blitz tournament (each team included just 2 players) with 7 wins and 2 draws in 9 rounds. First prize was 250 EUROs, but the satisfaction was much more important.

6. The organization was at very high level, Germans were well-prepared and thought about every possible detail.

7. According to the FIDE calendar, the next World Senior Team Championship will be in May 2019 in Crete, Greece.

Conclusion: a very good event. As far as I know, all Canadian players enjoyed this chess vacation. I would be happy to see more Canadians participating in this championship