Pre-Meeting - Nominations for CFC Positions

[Fred McKim]

A list of CFC Directors (Executive), Officers, and Committee Members that are to be elected at the AGM is given in
http://www.chesscanada.info/forum/showthread.php?5396-CFC-AGM-August-16-23-2020

Leading up to the meeting, please feel free to a) Make a nomination or b) Volunteer for a position right here

[Aris Marghetis]

A list of CFC Directors (Executive), Officers, and Committee Members that are to be elected at the AGM is given in
http://www.chesscanada.info/forum/showthread.php?5396-CFC-AGM-August-16-23-2020

Leading up to the meeting, please feel free to a) Make a nomination or b) Volunteer for a position right here

Hello Fred, I have been proud to serve on the National Appeals Committee, some years as the Chairperson. I humbly offer to continue in this capacity.

Thank you, best regards, Aris Marghetis,
IA (Category B), IO, FIDE Lecturer
Member, FIDE Arbiters' Commission
Member, FIDE ARB Education Team

[Vladimir Drkulec]

I will be running for CFC president again this year.

I have been president for seven years, masters rep for two before that and some may question why I would continue for another year. Most non-profits change presidents every year or two. The job if done properly is a significant amount of work and the reward does not come in the form of any monetary renumeration. The reward for a job well done is that chess grows and thrives and children and adults get to play a game that they and I love and enjoy. The strategic actions and inactions that I and the other members of the CFC board of directors undertake often go unnoticed.

When I was masters representative I was also the chairperson of the strategic planning committee and chief writer of a strategic business plan for the CFC which might be updated but still could form the basis of a plan for the CFC to go forward.

This last half year has been somewhat of a body blow to our carefully unfolding plans. In February, life was good, and everything seemed to be breaking our way. Memberships were steadily growing. Tournaments were increasing. Our revenues and net income were through the roof. There were some storm clouds but over-all the trend was positive

We were looking forward to a Canadian Youth Chess Championship and Canadian Open that might break records in Mississauga. No one anticipated that all that would be cancelled along with every major world chess event and that we would be confined to online play for the next four to six months or perhaps even longer.

In March, we were scheduled to participate once again in the Canadian Sport Tourism Alliance expo in Edmonton. Once again Hal Bond and I would have met with thirty communities interested in attracting chess tournaments. The expo was cancelled just a week or two before we were scheduled to travel. This did not set us back as much as you might think because we continue to communicate with communities that we talked to at previous iterations of this expo so aside from this lost Covid 19 summer the pipeline of communities is still filling.

The last seven years have revealed many challenges but the job of CFC president has been fun as well. Getting the CFC past the NFP Act hurdle was one turning point. Getting the renewed recognition of the Canadian Olympic Committee as the governing sport body for chess in Canada was another key moment. From that flowed the first invitation to the Canadian Sport Tourism Alliance (recently renamed to Sport Tourism Canada). This filled our rolodexes with contacts which greatly simplified the process of finding communities to host CYCC, the Canadian Open, the Canadian Closed and Zonals and other tournaments.

The next few months and possibly the next year or two will be made more difficult due to the pandemic. I am not going to abandon the CFC in the midst of a crisis and believe that my record of leadership over the last seven years has been a good one and will continue to be a good one until such time as the voting members at whose pleasure I and everyone in the executive serve shall decide on a different direction for the CFC or alternatively life or fate shall make some decisions for us.
I had some challenges in the past year including a torn Achilles tendon last summer which caused my weight to balloon due to inactivity. This led to some other issues with blood pressure and diabetes being the most worrisome. In the Covid lockdown, in addition to working on some chess openings, I have managed to drop more than 24 pounds and have returned to my weight of a few years ago. I believe that I will be able to effectively serve the CFC this year and perhaps into the future.

As for my past career, I have a diploma in Electrical Engineering Technology, undergrad degrees in psychology and business admin with a heavy concentration in life sciences along with an MBA with concentrations in finance and marketing. I taught introductory undergrad finance at the University of Windsor for a little over five years while running a computer consulting business. I then became a software specialist for major local supplier of factory automation equipment and software. That involved software support and sales support for factory automation software sales. That was the most fun I ever had in a paid job. I left that job to marry someone in California. Later I worked as a computer analyst at an automotive company and did computer consulting. I still do the occasional computer consulting to old customers but mostly these days I teach chess either in group classes or individually. Before the pandemic, I had three adult students at once which was a bit of a record for me. Mostly I teach kids but only online these days.

[Fred McKim]

I am willing to serve as CFC Treasurer for 2020/2021

[Christina Tao]

I would like to continue to serve as the CFC Youth Coordinator 2020/2021

[Pierre Dénommée]

Hello Fred, I have been proud to serve on the National Appeals Committee, some years as the Chairperson. I humbly offer to continue in this capacity.


I also humbly offer to continue in this capacity.

[Hal Bond]

Thank you Fred for setting this up.

I will stand again for the position of Canada's FIDE Representative.

[Fred McKim]

Christina Tao is standing again for Youth Coordinator (she accidentally put it on the 2019 thread)

[Mahmud Hassain]

Dear Chess Friends,

First of all, I wish to thank all the Voting Members, Officers, and Directors of the Chess Federation of Canada ("CFC") for their dedication and service. In particular, I wish to thank Vlad Drkulec for his years of service as President of our Federation, a tenure which is second only to the inimitable John Prentice.

I take this opportunity to declare my candidacy for President of the CFC. I believe it is time for a new start and a fresh perspective to build on previous successes.

My name is Mahmud Hassain and I offer a wealth of experience and leadership both inside and outside the world of chess.

My first CFC rated experience was a tournament held in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1987. A decade later, I began an unbroken chain of CFC membership renewals which continues to the present day. The CFC is dear to me. During my time in Manitoba, two Canadian Opens were held in Winnipeg, the first in 1993 and the second in 1997. Although I don't claim to be the driving force behind these events, I was involved in the organization of both, and took great pride in their success. During this period, I also served as a Governor of the Manitoba Chess Association.

For the past two decades, I have been a member of the Kitchener Waterloo Chess Club ("KWCC"). I also served as a Governor for this organization and, ultimately, as its President. In 2006, for the third time in my chess career, I was involved in the organization of the Canadian Open, this time in Kitchener.

In addition to my involvement in governance and event organizing, I volunteer in schools and actively promote chess within my community. In 2013, my efforts were recognized by The Ontario Volunteer Service Award.

Outside of chess, I offer significant experience in governance and applied leadership. Most recently, I served a seven-year term as Governor of Traverse Independence - a health organization - whose annual budget is $7,000,000. Here, too, I served a term as President. During this term, the organization received federal recognition for its leadership.

Most important, from my perspective, is my membership in Rotary International. I have served for the past six years as a Governor of the Rotary Club of Guelph and, in the 2021-22 Rotary year I will serve as the Club's President. Rotary is one of the largest service organizations in the world, which recruits leaders who create a positive and lasting change, and I live by its motto: "Service Above Self".

I recently finished a Master's degree in Leadership at The Lang School of Business and Economics at the University of Guelph. This program “identifies leaders and makes them better leaders”. Entering into the program, I had the great fortune of receiving the personal endorsement of the late Dr. William C. Winegard, a former President of the University and Federal Cabinet Minister. He was a mentor and a close friend whom I miss dearly.

Although it has been my intention to serve the CFC for several years now, my various service commitments over the years have left me unavailable to serve the CFC in the way I would like to. Having completed some my non-chess commitments, I am satisfied that I am available to serve the CFC with the time and attention that I would expect of myself as a member.

My platform is three-fold: improve the online presence of the CFC, engage the CFC membership and Voting Members through modern communication means, and take the CFC to new heights using collaborative outreach strategies.

To achieve my vision for the CFC, we must engage the Voting Members to develop a new Strategic Plan, which will serve as a living document to guide our operations for the years to come.

In a few days, I will extend an invitation on this Forum to a virtual “Meet the Candidate” session. I look forward to meeting you then.

Yours in Chess,
Mahmud

[Fred McKim]

I am posting this for Tony Li (ON) who is in the process of getting his account set up here.

"I would like to stand for election to the Ratings Auditor position.

I am a relatively new CFC life member with optimism on the future of tournament chess in Canada. My background is in math and statistics. I am also a team player, having worked at a large multinational corporation for the past decade.

My goal is to observe, listen and analyze the data in order to remove barriers to entry created by imperfections in the rating mechanism."

[Paul Leblanc]

I'm looking forward to hearing about the barriers to entry created by imperfections in the rating system. This is the first time I have heard about it.
Paul Leblanc
CFC Rating Auditor

[Paul Leblanc]

Chess Foundation Trustees
Current status of trustee terms (CFC Secretary please correct me if I am wrong):
Lloyd Lombard 2023 (re-elected for 4 years at the 2019 AGM)
Hugh Brodie 2022
Hans Jung 2021
Ian Findlay 2020 (re-elected for 1 year at the 2019 AGM)
Paul Leblanc 2020

Ian Findlay and myself are both willing to stand for re-election.

[Mahmud Hassain]

Mahmud Hassain is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Mahmud meet and greet
Time: Jul 31, 2020 08:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us04web.zoom.us/j/76030909211?pwd=OHNpbTk0ZkdCditBNVVScHVYQXV2UT09

Meeting ID: 760 3090 9211
Passcode: 3CF6vV

[Pierre Dénommée]

I am willing to stand again for the position of Womens' Coordinator.

I am willing to stand as an FQE VM, knowing that the election to any CFC office would vacate this position.

I am willing to stand for Director at Large.

As I have already stated, I am willing to stand again as an NAC member.

[Mahmud Hassain]

Hi Chess Friends,
After last week's Zoom meeting, I had the chance to communicate with some members. Thank you to those who managed to attend. And thank you to those who reached out.
In a few days, I will post here a second ZOOM invitation for all voting members to attend. I welcome, encourage and appreciate your participation.
Thank You
MH

[Serge Archambault]

Hello all,

I'm still humbly offering to continue my implication on the NAC as well.

Serge Archambault

[Paul Leblanc]

Rating Auditor
I am willing to stand for Rating Auditor

[Stephen Wright]

I nominate Paul Leblanc for Ratings Auditor

[Paul Leblanc]

I feel that the Rating Auditor’s primary goal is to protect the integrity of the CFC’s most valuable asset, the Regular ratings.
If re-elected, I will not change the K factor as I believe that the rating bonus formula performs the function of identifying and rewarding strong results.
I will not introduce rating floors. I believe they are artificial and distort the correct allocation of rating points. I do not believe there is a problem with players intentionally losing games to lower their ratings.
I will not support a change to the maximum number of Regular rated games to be played in a single day. This is just not serious chess and is more appropriately rated as Quick chess.
The CFC Regular rating system has been in equilibrium since the introduction of the bonus point formula in 2012. If needed, there is provision to make adjustments to the bonus formula to counter inflation or deflation. This has not been necessary up to now.

[Michael Lo]

I am willing to stand again as a member of the Kalev Pugi Fund Committee.

[Tony Li]

I would like to thank Paul for his many years of service to the CFC. I am not running against him. The CFC needs every current and future volunteer to work together in order to reach the 10,000 member goal.

Here are my ideals - The CFC rating system should do the following and no more:

Track improvement or deterioration in playing strength.
Be mathematically sound.
Only as last resort, take inorganic action in order to avoid significant inflation/deflation.

The CFC rating system should not:

Need to be protected except against unsound rating mechanics such as participation bonuses.
Lag the strength of an improving player because that player should "earn it".
Discourage participation with mathematically unsound clauses such as the maximum number of games per day.
Need performance bonuses, when the organic mechanisms function well. In particular, the bonuses are excessive for tournaments with many rounds because the bonus threshold barely increases with number of rounds.

Issues With the Current System

1. Lack of a supporting anchor of stable adult players. We have fewer than 1000 active players, and most of them are improving juniors or declining seniors. Ratings will drift randomly until we get enough players with stable playing strength.

2. The bonus system is deflationary at the lower end and inflationary at the upper end. This is because it pumps the same number of points to players of all strengths to reflect their improvement (with a lower bonuses for over 2200 that is consistent with the lower k factor). However, improvement occurs much more at lower ratings. This has resulted in inflation at higher ratings (obvious by comparing CFC spread vs FIDE spread), and deflation at lower ratings.

3. The current rating system has no mechanism to deal with the improvement in the player pool's playing strength that happened and will happen while OTB chess is shut down for 1-2 years, and is not ready for the shock when OTB chess returns.

Proposed Solutions

1. Embrace the real core of the future CFC- adult players and stabilized juniors rated between 1200 and 1600. We can do this by the following:


Provide them value for their weekend. 5 games is not enough. Segregating them into quick rated games is not enough. We should provide them double rounds - 10 games in a weekend, at 1 hour time time control. The current system does not allow this by arbitrarily restricting the maximum number of games per day to 4. We should discuss removing the restriction, particularly at lower ratings (e.g. 1200 or 1400 cutoff), as the 1 hour minimum time is enough for predicting players' strength.
Allow them to see their improvement by starting them off at their real strength. Increase the maximum reduction in the provisional rating formula from 400 to 700 (a la FIDE). Right now a player with strength of 800 can walk into a club of 1400-1600s, lose all their games, and start with an 1100 rating. When they work hard and get to 1100 strength in a few years, their rating will barely change. Hard work and lack of visible improvement is hardly a recipe for membership renewal.
2. Remove the bonus system, and increase the k-factor for juniors. This means that points are only pumped into the system when juniors outperform adults relative to their ratings. Simple and organic. No need to calibrate the threshold for bonus or multiplier for number of rounds in a tournament.

3. Introduce a 12-month, 100-point rating floor when OTB reopens. Since a 100 point decline in playing strength is unlikely over a 1 year period, this should provide stable players protection against extremely underrated players when OTB returns. This will be a temporary measure to fight rating deflation.

[Aris Marghetis]

--- moved to thread entitled CFC Rating System Issues ---

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

I'll stand again for the Vice-president position. Thnx for support.

[Vladimir Drkulec]

Egidijus Zeromskis has indicated that he will stand for Vice President again. He has done well in this position. I am happy to see that he has thrown his hat back in the ring.

[Michael Lo]

I nominate Felix Dumont to stand again for the Pugi Fund Trustee position.

[Mark S. Dutton, I.A.]

DIRECTORS

4.1 President
4.2 Vice-President
4.3 Secretary
4.4 Treasurer
4.5 Youth Coordinator
4.6 FIDE Representative
4.7 Director at Large
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CFC Director at Large - I will stand for this position on the CFC executive again.

Mark S. Dutton, I.A., I.O.
BCCF

https://ratings.fide.com/profile/2611040/arbiter_organizer


International Arbiter (2004); International Organizer (2011)

Canadian tournament organizer and director since 1972, having directed more than 600 tournaments in Canada (in Quebec, Ontario and Alberta and BC)

Served on Executive and Board of Directors of the Toronto Chess Club, Greater Toronto Chess League, Ontario Chess Association; and more than 25 years as Governor of Chess Federation of Canada

President, club manager Scarborough Chess Club, 1993-1998

Served BCCF as a Director and Victoria Chess as a TD and the CFC on the Executive since relocating to British Columbia.

https://ratings.fide.com/profile/2611040/arbiter_organizer

[Vladimir Drkulec]

Mark has done a good job in this position and I would expect he would continue to do a good job.

[Tony Li]

I am withdrawing from this year's election to the Ratings Auditor position.

I have not succeeded in generating meaningful discussion regarding the shock to the rating system due to the COVID shutdown. I will be investing my time instead on improving my communication skills.