A holding place for Victor Plotkin's Report.
A holding place for Victor Plotkin's Report.
1. Change in the Olympiad selection rules.
Last year, Fred McKim and myself submitted 6 motions for Olympiad selection process. VMs approved 4 of them, included the most important one (Selection Committee is eliminated). While 4 out of 6 is not a bad result, I was really disappointed that the motion about bonuses for Junior players failed.
Probably, it was all my fault. I was concentrated in discussion about other motions, especially about FIDE-rating only for the National Team. Being sure, that "junior" motion will pass anyway, I did not pay enough attention to it.
I do not want to start discussion again. However, I want to express my opinion about this "junior" motion.
a. The initial idea of Selection Committee was to give more chances to younger players. By adding 20-30 points to juniors, I wanted to take the best from this idea.
b. The deadline for the Olympiad is about 5 months before the start of the tournament. In these 5 month "random junior" is expected to improve his rating, while "random adult" is expected to stay with the same rating. How many points "random junior" is expected to gain? In my opinion, about 10-20 in 5 months. It's a very modest expectation even for 2400-2500 players.
c. Theoretically, every junior is under-rated, because rating reflects past results and not the current strength. I believe, that junior improves every time, even if he does not play/study chess.
d. I am not talking here about "giving to junior extra motivation". I am talking how to make our Olympiad Team stronger. I believe, that our team is stronger with the junior rated X, than with the adult rated X+20 or even X+30.
2. Canadian Closed.
Many players, including myself believe that it was the worst Canadian Closed for the very long period of time. I expressed my opinion on Chesstalk with words "total disaster".
Not only organizers/arbiters are responsible for this "disaster". CFC executive and myself as a Master representative are responsible also. We all need to learn lesson from this fiasco. Canadian Closed deserved a much better attitude.
At least twice CFC violated it's own rules during this Canadian Closed
a. No free entry to IMs and no free accommodations for GMs/last winner/runner-up.
b. CFC executive granted a waive of 10-points penalty for 2 players (Hansen, Preotu) who did not play in Closed for Olympiad Team calculation.
If the want other people to respect CFC (or at least to take CFC seriously) we have to follow our own rules. If we do not like our rules, let's change them.
3. Olympiad Team.
Unfortunately, this is not the first time that Canadian Closed had an incident that could potentially destroy relationship between our top players. It's a very possible scenario that both Sambuev and Noritsyn will play in 2018-Olympiad. A Team Captain will have a pretty serious problem in 2018.
Actually, a very well-known conflict between Hansen and Sambuev started after Canadian Closed -2011 (misunderstanding about play-off/ World Cup spot) and deteriorated after Closed-2015.
4. Senior events.
Nowadays, we have more and more senior tournaments. One of them is World Senior Team (4 or 5 players) chess championship. This event is scheduled for Jun 30 - Jul 8, 2018 in Dresden (Germany). I will be senior next year (2018-1968=50) and hopefully would like to play there.
Last edited by Victor Plotkin; 08-22-2017 at 01:02 PM.
Victor,
Thank you for the interesting report and for the great job as Olympic team captain. 11th place is really outstanding result, not mentioning that in the last round the team was literally one chess move in one game away from drawing with US, which would result in the 4th place instead of 11th.
Also, I would like to point out that I share your concern about "junior motion", which did not pass. I agree with your assumption that the team will be stronger with X rated junior rather with X+20 rated adult. I may add to this that the team also will be more experienced in the following Olympiad, because this junior will be playing his second Olympiad instead of first. By the way, in the next Olympiad, because of failing of this motion, we may not have Razvan in the team.
My suggestion is that after having additional explanations about the "junior motion" in your report, Executive may want to put it for voting for the incoming meeting once again. If this will happen, I am prepared to second this motion.
Actually I think we were one move away from a winning position which would have meant Canada won the match instead of losing.
In general, you are not supposed to vote on the same motion over and over though it seems to me that the Liberals may have added some wiggle room in the regulations and certainly made it more difficult to find explanations of the rules aside from the laws and the accompanying regulations.Also, I would like to point out that I share your concern about "junior motion", which did not pass. I agree with your assumption that the team will be stronger with X rated junior rather with X+20 rated adult. I may add to this that the team also will be more experienced in the following Olympiad, because this junior will be playing his second Olympiad instead of first. By the way, in the next Olympiad, because of failing of this motion, we may not have Razvan in the team.
My suggestion is that after having additional explanations about the "junior motion" in your report, Executive may want to put it for voting for the incoming meeting once again. If this will happen, I am prepared to second this motion.
I think we could have some discussion on the junior bonus and a decision made as to whether we want to try to vote on this again. In any event it wouldn't be in effect for 2018 Olympiad. I think one of the problems is that it may violate the Canadian Charter of Human Rights.
I believe, we can discuss it next year and make adjustment for 2020-Olympiad (if necessary).
About the Canadian Charter of Human Rights or discrimination - I don't see any violation here. However, the magic word "discrimination" was, likely the main reason for failure of this motion.
That means you want to artificially increase k-factor from 10 to 11 for fast improving players. If adult player A increased his rating from 2400 to 2500 you would take him instead of another adult B with rating 2509? Not sure about it.
I remember, one year I increased my FIDE rating from 2230 to almost 2330. I lost 70 points the following year. We do not know for sure if it's a real progress, or just a random fluctuation. For juniors, it's a different story.
Mr Plotkin,
Your report concerning the Canadian Closed is completly unfair. This tournament was organized in Time pressure. Only six weeks. Nobody was interested to organize the tournament even if it was a zonal. The conditions were not perfect, but quite ok (lighting, space, parking, cafeteria on the site, bilingual web site, hotel nearby, games recorded). When you say «disaster», you probably refer to the case Sambuev-Notitsyn. This case was in fact very simple. CFC took no time to render a decision and it was supported by FIDE which is, in a way, the Supreme court of Chess.
A suggestion : as a CFC officer, you are not supposed to discourage organizers, but to help them. To have super conditions, this tournament needs at least 10 000 $ to 15 000 $ in sponsorship. This will surely boost the participation of masters. Any ideas ?
Richard Bérubé