4. Officer Elections - Tournament Coordinator

[Lyle Craver]

Governors - I have erred in failing to add this thread from the start of the meeting!


The outgoing Tournament Coordinator is Pierre Dénommée who I am pleased to nominate for a new term.

Governors, please accept my apologies in leaving this position off the list of Officer roles to be filled. Due to the delay I have made this item a 'sticky' to keep it at the top of the list to ensure the maximum # of eyes see it! LC

[Fred McKim]

Richard Berube is willing to stand for Tournament Co-ordinator. I understand that Felix Dumont is nominating him, but in any case I will also nominate him in case Felix doesn't get on before the deadline this evening.

[Edward Porper]

Richard Berube is willing to stand for Tournament Co-ordinator. I understand that Felix Dumont is nominating him, but in any case I will also nominate him in case Felix doesn't get on before the deadline this evening.

Is this an automatic governorship position?

[Félix Dumont]

Yes, I just talked with Richard and he wishes to stand for the position. I therefore nominate him.


I will remind people of his brief bio (given for the governors election) :
Richard Bérubé
Profession : Executive director of the FQE since 1995 (with the exception of 2003-06).
Some achievements : Organized more than 100 tournaments, including 3 Canadian Opens and 13 Quebec Opens. Founded the Magazine Échec au Roi (Chess & Math). Put in place a FIDE Arbiter seminar.
Player : Fide master, Vice-Champion of Quebec 1991. Trainer of the Canadian team for the WYCC on 7 occasions (during 1991-2003 years). Trainer of Pascal Charbonneau for 10 years, now a GM.

He also wanted to add more details about his experience as an organizer. He doesn't seem to have access to here, so I post it for him.


I've spent most of the last 30 years working for different chess associations. Even so, many CFC members might not really know me. So, here is a brief summary of my chess career as an organizer.

The first major tournament I organized was the Quebec City Winter Carnival tournament in 1981 under the flag of the Quebec chess league. That tournament was dying at the time and I can say that the 1981 edition was a complete success and a strong rehearsal. The same year, I also organized the Canadian Open in the same city. I think it's still the only time this classic tournament was held in the old city.

From 1982 to 1984, I ran a full-time private chess club in Quebec City. At some point we had more than 100 members and different type of activities were on the calendar, including some specials ones like simuls with big names : Nigel Short, Michael Stean, Igor Ivanov…

After completing my studies (Sociology in 1987), I proposed an interesting project to Larry Bevand and its new association (CMA) : the publication of a chess magazine entirely dedicated to children (Échec au Roi. Soon after, an English edition followed (David Smith). I produced 29 issues over a period of 7 years.

This lead me to the FQE in 1994 and I am still here today. At the beginning, I was responsible of the magazine (Échec +). I became the Executive Director in 1995. Over those years I organized an important number of tournaments at different levels. This includes the Quebec Open, the Canadian Open, the CYCC, the Quebec Invitational, the Montreal Open and Invitational (TIM), the Quebec Junior, Team-Quebec (youth)…

So, I believe I have a very good idea of what is needed to organize a chess tournament and my experience might help the CFC.

Richard Bérubé

I (Felix) would like to add that the executive director position at the FQE has nothing to do with the executive director position of the CFC. The FQE has an administrative assistant that does pretty much all what Michael now does for the CFC (ratings, answering the phone, maintening the website...). Richard's job mostly consists of organizing tournaments and events, meeting sponsors, supervising all the employees and taking all the important decisions at the FQE. Therefore, any important decision or information has to go through him, which makes him the perfect FQE representative.