6. Officer and Committee Reports

[Lyle Craver]

This section is reserved for the reports of non-Executive CFC Officers and CFC Committees.

Please enter each report as a separate message in this thread.

[Paul Leblanc]

Last month I was called upon to investigate a complaint that several tournaments played on one of the internet chess servers were submitted to the CFC and had been rated. One of the players involved in all of the tournaments gained hundreds of rating points.
A search of the CFC Handbook did not reveal any policy regarding internet chess.
It was determined that there was no continuous supervision of the players by an independent TD/Arbiter/Witness.
I recommended to the CFC President that the events be annulled and he accepted my recommendation.
Two analogies came to mind - postal chess, which does not qualify for CFC rating and matches, which generally do not involve a TD but which are accepted for rating with certain conditions.
I propose to create a policy on rating internet events for the CFC Handbook and am seeking input from the governors.

[Paul Leblanc]

Most of my work since the last report has involved working on a new bonus point formula and chasing down incorrectly submitted Junior events.
I have no update on the overall health of the rating system as I have not yet received the quarterly update to the database from the CFC office.
With help from Roger Patterson and Fred McKim, we have modelled several more options to replace the existing “Stockhausen” bonus formula but I am not ready to table a recommendation. The work at this point is leading me towards a slightly modified version of the “old” bonus point system where rating points gained above a certain level (used to be 26 points for a six round event) count double. We’re running models to see if 26 is the optimum number. Also, it is my intention to “tilt” either the bonus point formula or the basic rating formula towards addressing the issue of under-rated juniors.
On the issue of under-rated juniors, the biggest challenge has been to identify which players are juniors. The database is very incomplete regarding players’ ages therefore any formula that targets junior ratings by using CFC age data will produce incomplete results. As a substitute for age, I tried targeting players who have played a small-ish number of games but found too many adult players swept up in the net. I am currently investigating the use of a low rating floor such as 1000 as a proxy for juniors but of course most of the juniors who play serious events are above that floor.
I have spent many hours chasing down incorrectly rated Junior events. Despite an extensive advertising campaign and direct contact with virtually every Junior event organizer, some events with 30 minute time controls were submitted for Regular rating. In some cases this was done intentionally as a sort of challenge to the CFC rules. Some organizers have adapted their Junior events so that the stronger players use a 60 minute per player time control in order to qualify for Regular rating and the less experienced players use a 30 minute per player time control to qualify for Active rating. I commend this practice.
The incorrectly submitted events have caused considerable work to undo. Due to the exigencies of the CFC office contract there is no quality control of events submitted for rating. Errors that I have pointed out and corrected have incurred “overtime” expenses. Finally, the time control information is missing in most events submitted for rating so the CFC office accepts all events submitted for Regular rating without any ability or mandate to cross-reference the time controls.

[Kevin Pacey]

Shortly after the October 2011 Online Governors Meeting I asked Executive Director Gerry Litchfield (through President von Keitz) if he would be able to send the new membership drive committee a list of names and email addresses of ex-CFC members that the CFC had email addresses for, and about a week later each committee member had such a list.

There are 2167 ex-CFC members and their email addresses on the list that Gerry made for us. After receiving the list, I asked each committee member if they would volunteer to email about a third of the people on the list, with a personally addressed request for them to consider rejoining the CFC, and both of the other committee members (Vladimir Drkulec and Rob Clark) along with myself agreed to this. I gave the goal of emailing all the ex-CFC members listed by 1 July 2012, i.e. before the 2012 AGM. Each committee member was to choose the wording of his own share of email requests to the ex-CFC members.

Based on the last emails I received from my committee members in December, we have emailed to a total of at least 1300 of the email addresses of ex-CFC members on the list. So far, about a third of my own emails to these ex-CFC members have bounced, and another committee member mentioned to me that he had experienced a similar email failure rate.

The email requests sent by committee members told ex-CFC members on our list to contact Gerry if they wished to rejoin the CFC, though some ex-CFC members replied to committee members anyway. So far, as far as I presently know from other committee members emails to me, 6 such replies were positive, with about the same number of negative responses (which were mostly polite). Early in December, in trying to prepare for this report, I requested that Gerry let me know if possible whether CFC membership totals have changed much since our committee started emailing ex-CFC members on our list, but so far no reply from the ED.

There was another, lesser side to our membership drive effort so far. Even before the membership drive emails to ex-CFC members began in October, I volunteered to compile the names, locations and email addresses of Canadian chess instructors for the CFC website (excluding FIDE and Nationally titled instructors already listed). Later, one ex-CFC member moving to Canada indicated they would rejoin the CFC after I had passed along a link to these instructors names. Here is the link, from the CFC website:

http://chess.ca/instructors


Regarding resources the membership drive committee has at its disposal, other than our list of ex-CFC members from Gerry, on 11 October 2011 President von Keitz informed me that the CFC budget for advertising was currently nil for this term, though he noted it might be possible to justify a carry-over of $500 from last term (the amount set aside for last term's CFC/club brochure program, which was never implimented).

While I waited for our list of ex-CFC members to be sent by Gerry in October, CFC membership drive committee members Rob Clark and Vladimir Drkulec had an interesting idea for what $500 or less as an advertising budget might be used for by the CFC. Rob suggested the CFC might buy [advertising] banner space on a chess website. Vlad suggested that the CFC trade banner space of ours for banner space on other chess sites. Rob and Vlad's suggestions were quickly passed on by me to President von Keitz.

Kevin Pacey
CFC Membership Drive Committee Chairman
Ottawa

[Bob Armstrong]

Procedures’ Committee Report

The Procedures’ Committee was disbanded in November/11 by President Michael von Keitz on my recommendation, as Chair, since it had no current duties, except supervising the Handbook Updating Subcommittee ( Kerry Liles ). So Kerry became the “ Handbook Updater “, reporting directly now to Treasurer Fred McKim, since he has been handling the new CFC Website file for the executive, and the new website is where the Handbook is now lodged.

Bob A, former Chair of Procedures' Committee

[Bob Armstrong]

Public Relations Coordinator Report

Bylaw 3 of the CFC Handbook, under Duties of Officers in Section 8C, gives the mandate of the Public Relations Coordinator position ( created at the 2010 AGM ) as:

“ 8C. The Public Relations Coordinator will be responsible for promoting the image of the CFC and for promoting chess generally to the public. As such the Public Relations Coordinator will, among other things:

- deal with mainstream media to promote significant chess news, such as Canadian Chess Champions, a new Canadian GM, major tournaments like the Can. Closed, Canadian Open, Can. Women’s Closed, CYCC, etc., the various benefits accruing from playing chess and other positive aspects of the chess culture. “

Here is the update on activity since the 2011 Fall Meeting ( Oct./11 ):

1. “ News “ items ( on the CFC Website Homepage under “ Latest News “[copies on members’ CFC Chess Chat Forum, Facebook, and Twitter ] ) - Posted 44 news items

2. Press releases: issued 2:

i) Re junior expert Michael Song, Bronze Medal winner in U 12 Open at the 2011 WYCC;
ii) Re Can. GM Mark Bluvshtein, voted 2011 Can. Chess Player of the Year.

3. Media referral: dealt with a few, some as a result of press releases, to 2010 U 10 World Champion, Jason Cao, Michael Song and Mark Bluvshtein.

4. Video Clips ( on the CFC Website video gallery ) - with CFC President, Michael von Keitz, arranged for 5 video clips to be posted. As well, I now have for review a long list of other chess video links for future posting on the website.

5. Discussion Boards: posted numbers of times on the members’ CFC Chess Chat Forum, and the CMA ChessTalk, answering CFC issues raised.

6. New Media Links: I have been provided by members with media links across the country, and will slowly be integrating them into the CFC Media E-mail Groups as time permits.

7. The CFC " News Video " - cooperated in research re the “ news videos “ on the CFC website, done by Friendlyman ( aka Shawn Geley ).

8. New CFC Facebook Non-Profit Page: have built it up from about 35 members to over 100.

Bob A, CFC Public Relations Coordinator

[Lyle Craver]

So Bob, when chess stories appear in local papers do you want copies?

[Bob Armstrong]

So Bob, when chess stories appear in local papers do you want copies?

Hi Lyle:

What I need is a link to the article/news clip, so I can post it onto the website.

Bob A

[Kevin Pacey]

Early in December, in trying to prepare for this [membership drive committee] report, I requested that Gerry let me know if possible whether CFC membership totals have changed much since our committee started emailing ex-CFC members on our list, but so far no reply from the ED.

Kevin Pacey
CFC Membership Drive Committee Chairman
Ottawa

Just today I received an email from ED Gerry Litchfield. He happened to have the 1 January 2012 Membership figures, though could not go back and do the same for December.

The total CFC membership as of 1 January is 1852. The last total was 1821, as of 1 May 2011. As Gerry pointed out, it would be best to compare a given month's totals for the current year with the same given month of the previous year to obtain a truer picture of the trend, given the peaks and valleys in membership levels throughout a given year, but still it is encouraging to see our membership total is up, if only slightly.

Gerry noted that presently he only does an annual comparison of membership totals, i.e. for 1 May of each year. Here is a link to the pdf that he sent me for 1 January 2012 membership level details, i.e. by province and membership types. Hopefully everyone can read it:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&p...ngGX7iSF6xR3gg

[Michael von Keitz]

Rob suggested the CFC might buy [advertising] banner space on a chess website. Vlad suggested that the CFC trade banner space of ours for banner space on other chess sites. Rob and Vlad's suggestions were quickly passed on by me to President von Keitz.

Kevin Pacey
CFC Membership Drive Committee Chairman
Ottawa

At the time, I suggested I preferred Vlad's angle. As Chair of our Long-Term Planning Committee, I'd recommend that discussion be deferred to him and his fellow committee members.