5A-3 Bids for National Events

[Lyle Craver]

This thread is for presentation of bids for national events. Please note that bids for national events are normally decided at the Annual meeting by the full Assembly.

This forum DOES allow attachment of documents in addition to written text here. Anyone interested in doing so should check with the president if they need assistance posting their attachments.

[Vladimir Drkulec]

This thread is for presentation of bids for national events. Please note that bids for national events are normally decided at the Annual meeting by the full Assembly.

This forum DOES allow attachment of documents in addition to written text here. Anyone interested in doing so should check with the president if they need assistance posting their attachments.

The forum is very limited in what attachments can be posted so we will likely have to do what we did before and have Don Parakin set up a link to the files on the CFC website.

[Michael Barron]

Do we have a bid for 2024 Canadian Seniors Championship?

[Don Parakin]

... have Don Parakin set up a link to the files on the CFC website.

Done. See LINK (https://www.chess.ca/en/cfc/championships/bids/). This has my current (mis)understanding of the status of CFC championships for 2024/25/26. There's currently no active bidding that I'm aware of so there's no bid files to view. This is a public page. When bidding happens, the bid details will appear on a page intended for VMs only (like at the last AGM).

[Vladimir Drkulec]

Done. See LINK (https://www.chess.ca/en/cfc/championships/bids/). This has my current (mis)understanding of the status of CFC championships for 2024/25/26. There's currently no active bidding that I'm aware of so there's no bid files to view. This is a public page. When bidding happens, the bid details will appear on a page intended for VMs only (like at the last AGM).

We are working on bids for NAYCC maybe 3 or 4 bids and Canadian Seniors two bids I think. We need bidders to submit budgets with their bids especially the ones that go outside (need to be approved by FIDE America for example).

I also wish people would work with Tourism bureaus as this can often lead to some significant funds if they are tournaments that generate hotel room stays.

[Michael Barron]

Wasn't 2024 Canadian Juniors Championship awarded to Excelsior Chess Club?
Please see: https://excelsiorchessclub.ca/our-tournaments/2024-canadian-juniors/

[Vladimir Drkulec]

Wasn't 2024 Canadian Juniors Championship awarded to Excelsior Chess Club?
Please see: https://excelsiorchessclub.ca/our-tournaments/2024-canadian-juniors/

Yes it was.

[Don Parakin]

Ooops! 2024 Junior is now on the LIST (https://www.chess.ca/en/cfc/championships/bids/).

[ian findlay]

I had heard that the Calgary Chess Club was interested for the Canadian Seniors 2024. Did they not submit a bid?

[Vladimir Drkulec]

I had heard that the Calgary Chess Club was interested for the Canadian Seniors 2024. Did they not submit a bid?

I do not believe that I have received that bid yet though if it came during the Candidates crisis it might have been lost in the fire hose flow of emails. They seemed to be seriously interested.

[Michael Barron]

Thank you, Don! :)

[Mahmud Hassain]

We are working on bids for NAYCC maybe 3 or 4 bids and Canadian Seniors two bids I think. We need bidders to submit budgets with their bids especially the ones that go outside (need to be approved by FIDE America for example).

I also wish people would work with Tourism bureaus as this can often lead to some significant funds if they are tournaments that generate hotel room stays.

Dear President, Executives, and Voting Members,
I hope this message finds you well. I am writing to address some important inquiries regarding the evaluation process for the NAYCC bids, as well as the anticipated timeline for the announcement of the outcome.
I am delighted to learn the encouraging news that multiple bids have been submitted for the NAYCC. This level of interest underscores the significance of the event and the enthusiasm within our community. My sincere appreciation extends to all parties involved.

As a member of the Guelph bid team, alongside esteemed colleagues Hal Bond and Patrick McDonald, I am deeply invested in ensuring a transparent and equitable evaluation process. Following discussions with Vlad and other stakeholders, our bid was formally submitted in mid-February 2024.
In light of our collective commitment to fairness, I seek clarification on the decision-making framework. Specifically, I am interested in understanding whether the outcome will be determined by the executive team, the Voting Members, or an ad hoc committee established independently of the bidding organizers. Clarity on this matter is crucial for upholding the integrity of the selection process and ensuring that all parties involved are treated with the utmost fairness and respect.


Furthermore, I kindly request information regarding the anticipated timeline for announcing the outcome. Understanding when we can expect a decision will enable all stakeholders to plan accordingly and maintain transparency throughout the process.
I humbly request a legitimate, persuasive, and fair explanation of the decision-making structure and timeline for announcing the outcome of the NAYCC bid evaluation process.
Thank you, and I eagerly await your response.
Sincerely,
Mahmud

[Vladimir Drkulec]

Dear President, Executives, and Voting Members,
I hope this message finds you well. I am writing to address some important inquiries regarding the evaluation process for the NAYCC bids, as well as the anticipated timeline for the announcement of the outcome.
I am delighted to learn the encouraging news that multiple bids have been submitted for the NAYCC. This level of interest underscores the significance of the event and the enthusiasm within our community. My sincere appreciation extends to all parties involved.

As a member of the Guelph bid team, alongside esteemed colleagues Hal Bond and Patrick McDonald, I am deeply invested in ensuring a transparent and equitable evaluation process. Following discussions with Vlad and other stakeholders, our bid was formally submitted in mid-February 2024.
In light of our collective commitment to fairness, I seek clarification on the decision-making framework. Specifically, I am interested in understanding whether the outcome will be determined by the executive team, the Voting Members, or an ad hoc committee established independently of the bidding organizers. Clarity on this matter is crucial for upholding the integrity of the selection process and ensuring that all parties involved are treated with the utmost fairness and respect.


Furthermore, I kindly request information regarding the anticipated timeline for announcing the outcome. Understanding when we can expect a decision will enable all stakeholders to plan accordingly and maintain transparency throughout the process.
I humbly request a legitimate, persuasive, and fair explanation of the decision-making structure and timeline for announcing the outcome of the NAYCC bid evaluation process.
Thank you, and I eagerly await your response.
Sincerely,
Mahmud

On September 20th, 2023 your group asked for a 30 day option to prepare a bid for NAYCC. There was a flurry of emails and after several months I asked where the bid was. In the very first email of September 20th I said that Christina Tao and I were considering organizing the NAYCC for the benefit of the CFC youth fund and later we thought about doing something for women and girls. We were both very busy so we would welcome other bids. I think even earlier there was a request to allow a Guelph bid to go directly to FIDE America for NAYCC and a new North American Schools championship. The latter tournament which was higher risk because it was new was dropped. I indicated that many people would be mad at me if we did not give everyone that had talked to me about NAYCC an opportunity to prepare a bid.

I did not see the first form of your "draft bid" which was sent to Christina Tao, our youth coordinator on January 28th. She told you, apparently, that the entry fees were too high. A second bid was received February 24th which was also sent to me. The entry fees were better but still on the high side. There was no budget attached. I think we need to see a budget. February 24th was a time when I was quite focused on saving the Candidates tournament so I did not have any time to deal with many side issues as every moment was precious.

The CMA indicated that they were going to bid as well. They did. Their first entry fees were a bit high. We told them their fees were high. They pointed to the CYCC fees in Laval. I pointed out that the CYCC fees included $150 for the youth fund which they had not realized. They came back with some better fees and said that they would present us with a budget.

We decided to explore other options. There may be bids from as many as four other communities who I have talked to about the tournament and at least one other that Christina has talked to. The thing that puzzles me is that the CCA which sanctions the tournament presents a certain structure for the tournament which we followed in 2016 in Windsor but everyone seems to have departed from to some extent. We will be talking to the CCA about the bid that we think is the best.

I am a bit frustrated with a number of bids for junior events where the fees seem to be going higher and higher especially in cases where there are no prizes beyond trophies. For national events, and international events, I think there need to be budgets. When there are no budgets, there can be unpleasant surprises and we get complaints.

The evaluation process for any bids will include the interests of the CFC and CFC youth chess, the players and the parents of the players, as well as the organizers and how well the bids align with the CCA (FIDE America) rules for the tournament. We don't want chess to be something that only rich people can afford to play. I would hope that we see all bids within a month or so. If a tournament generates very large profits there should be some benefit to the CFC youth fund and the bids so far have presented some benefit to the youth fund. The question is whether it is proportional to being given the right to host it. Realize that the executive have a fiduciary duty to the CFC and its interests so the winning bid will be the one that is in the best interests of the CFC balancing all factors.

Realize as well that whichever bid we decide is best still has to be approved by FIDE America or CCA.

[Mahmud Hassain]

On September 20th, 2023 your group asked for a 30 day option to prepare a bid for NAYCC. There was a flurry of emails and after several months I asked where the bid was. In the very first email I said that Christina Tao and I were considering organizing the NAYCC for the benefit of the CFC youth fund and later we thought about doing something for women and girls. We were both very busy so we would welcome other bids. I think even earlier there was a request to allow a Guelph bid to go directly to FIDE America for NAYCC and a new North American Schools championship. I indicated that many people would be mad at me if we did not give everyone that had talked to me about NAYCC an opportunity to prepare a bid.

I did not see the first form of your "draft bid" which was sent to Christina Tao, our youth coordinator on January 28th. She told you, apparently, that the entry fees were too high. A second bid was received February 24th which was also sent to me. The entry fees were better but still on the high side. There was no budget attached. I think we need to see a budget.

The CMA indicated that they were going to bid as well. They did. Their first entry fees were a bit high. We told them their fees were high. They pointed to the CYCC fees in Laval. I pointed out that the CYCC fees included $150 for the youth fund which they had not realized. They came back with some better fees and said that they would present us with a budget.

We decided to explore other options. There may be bids from as many as four other communities who I have talked to about the tournament and at least one other that Christina has talked to. The thing that puzzles me is that the CCA which sanctions the tournament presents a certain structure for the tournament which we followed in 2016 in Windsor but everyone seems to have departed from to some extent.

I am a bit frustrated with a number of bids for junior events where the fees seem to be going higher and higher especially in cases where there are no prizes beyond trophies. For national events, and international events, I think there need to be budgets. When there are no budgets, there can be unpleasant surprises and we get complaints.

The evaluation process for any bids will include the interests of the CFC and CFC youth chess, the players and the parents of the players, as well as the organizers and how well the bids align with the CCA (FIDE America) rules for the tournament. We don't want chess to be something that only rich people can afford to play. I would hope that we see all bids within a month or so.

Thank you, Vlad, for your reply.
Still the original two questions were not answered.
How the decision is made and when do we know?
Thank you
Mahmud

[Vladimir Drkulec]

Thank you, Vlad, for your reply.
Still the original two questions were not answered.
How the decision is made and when do we know?
Thank you
Mahmud

I don't expect to have much free time over the course of the next month. Christina will not have much free time over the course of the next month. I would hope that we would have a decision in two to three months. I or Victor will likely need to have some discussions with FIDE America once we see all the bids in order to meet all their requirements. We have had your bid for less than a month and it was well beyond the thirty day window that was first indicated and in fact the bid did not appear for five months. Mid February would be February 15th or so. February had 29 days so it was actually late February and as I said I was rather distracted by the Candidates crisis while Christina has been distracted by the World Cup for Cadets and a number of other events. Prepare and submit a budget as we will ask the same from each and every other community that bids for this event. Your bid is not complete without a budget.

It should be noted that we need to have a fully formed bid for FIDE America (CCA) one year before the scheduled start of the tournament with budget and all forms filled out fully. We are not there yet.

[Patrick McDonald]

Hi Vlad,
I am still wondering how the decision will be made.
You have indicated that you and Christina will be working on your own bid.

This raises a couple of concerns:
1) you are working on a bid of your own after being privy to all other bids being submitted?
2) if you or the executive are deciding on the successful bid to be submitted to the CCA, are you and Christina abstaining from the vote?

Aside from this, you mention "all forms filled out fully", I am not aware of any existing forms that need to be filled out? What does this mean?

I don't believe all bids for events in the past few years have always included a budget to be accepted as valid bids ... When you replied to our submission with the improved amount per player being contributed to the CFC Youth fund that we offered with a “works for me”, we took that to mean that you were happy to forward our bid to the CCA. (at which point, we began the process of securing site and talking with potential sponsors)

Had you told us that you were also planning on putting in your own bid (you and Christina), we would have forwarded our bid to the secretary in confidence. I am not sure how proper it is that you prepare your own bid with the “inside” knowledge of all other bids coming in. (kind of “insider trading” isn’t it?)
As for approval time-frame, we are hoping for sooner than later. We are expecting to continue discussions with some sponsorship opportunities, but need to have everything in place before we do this. Could you give us some time-frame? In our conversations with you/Christine, there was no expectation that there would be competing bids. This is all a new development and as such did not expect that there would be such a delay in approving. We expected that we would just be revising our proposal if you or Christina found any concerns with our proposal, not that there would need to be time for comparing multiple bids. (I believe this is the first time there has ever been competing bids for this event?)
Patrick

[Vladimir Drkulec]

This is the nice thing about keeping all your emails. When there is doubt about what was said,... Can we agree that the email below clearly states that we might be bidding and there are multiple communities involved?

Christina and I will be abstaining from the vote, IF we wind up submitting a bid. If we do not submit a bit we will not be abstaining from the vote.
The CCA site talks about forms but does not provide them. Calgary filled out forms previously as I recall and CMA has done the same. I probably have them in a document dump somewhere.

It is not the first time there were competing bids for this event. I made it very clear that there were multiple communities interested in hosting this event in my first email to Hal on September 20, 2023 and that I would be soliciting other community interest at the sport hosting conference Spo Ho Ex in Ottawa in October. I also made it clear that Christina and I had been discussing putting together a bid to benefit the youth fund. I have discussed this tournament with no less than six communities. My guess is that there will be at least four bids. Maybe there will be just two.

In the case of saying that $20 Cdn per player worked for me, that was in the context of following the CCA bid requirement of $100 US per player entry fee. That was what our early bird fee in Windsor was in 2016. Me saying it worked for me only indicated that I might vote for it assuming that there was no better bid. At no point did I say that we accepted your bid. Only a positive vote of the CFC board could accept your bid.

If someone were to submit an outstanding bid with significant funds going to the youth fund then I probably wouldn't even consider organizing the tournament. It wouldn't be necessary at that point.

Shortly, I will have an idea of what is possible. If I think we can put $50k in the youth fund and/or a fund for women/girls chess we will definitely do it assuming we win the bid. If we come to the conclusion that we can only put in $20k and someone else's bid is giving us $10k or more then it is obviously not really worth it. I understand exactly how much work is involved and if I were to put in the same amount of effort in some other area, I'm sure we would have more than $10k of incremental impact.




On Sep 20, 2023, at 6:50 PM, Vladimir Drkulec wrote:


Hi Hal,

Christina and I had a long talk about youth matters this late morning to early afternoon. Of course, this predated your email. We have been discussing doing NAYCC internally for quite some time as a way to generate funds for the CFC youth fund in order to fund projects like youth training and sending players to the array of new tournaments from FIDE is becoming impossible to keep track of. [sic]

In 2022, the only place that we could organize NAYCC was in Alberta because of existing covid regulations.

I am not sure what the latest CCA regulations for this tournament are. Probably something like $20 US per player to CCA (FIDE America). Entry fees seem to be in the $225 range. At 400 players that is $90,000 gross revenue and more if you take into account late fees and sponsorship. Costs for official players have to be taken into account but even at $100 entry fee, this was a profitable tournament for the organizers. I think it is not unreasonable to ask for some substantial donation to the youth fund as this tournament could garner 500 or more entries in the current environment.

I am not even aware of the North American Schools Chess Championship existing as an event. Are you asking for the Canadian Schools Chess Championship? Again for this it looks like something which requires a similar setup as CYCC. I believe that our youth budget this year was in the $50,000 range so far, so we don't have the ability to absorb too much in the way of extra expenses though to be fair we are not always going to send three teams to the U16 Olympiad.

I do have some interest from other communities in NAYCC but we need a very good bid to discourage us from organizing it ourselves. I think it needs to be in Ontario.

I am going to a sport hosting event in Ottawa in a few weeks and the NAYCC is one carrot that we are dangling.

We are not going to award this event in the next month. You are asking for an option to present a bid and we are happy to give you that option. It does need to be a very good bid from the point of view of the CFC.

Vlad

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

As I recall well if there are multiple bids, they're going for the Voting members approval.

[Vladimir Drkulec]

As I recall well if there are multiple bids, they're going for the Voting members approval.

That is true for Canadian tournaments sanctioned by the CFC. This is a tournament sanctioned by CCA (FIDE America). The situation is more complicated than a normal event which the CFC controls.

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

That is true for Canadian tournaments sanctioned by the CFC. This is a tournament sanctioned by CCA (FIDE America). The situation is more complicated than a normal event which the CFC controls.

Thought the bid is a bid, isn't? Then executive could submit that to FIDE America.
And are there set deadlines for receiving and approving them? My buddies already are asking if we should book for the 2025 Spring open, and that's for a local tournament. You want to get a location for your best dates, you need to act yesterday.

[Vladimir Drkulec]

In 2016, after many contacts with potential organizers and in some cases even thinking we had an organizer for the tournaments we found ourselves in September 2015 not having organizers for the 2016 CYCC, CO and NAYCC. I got hard no's from people who put in bids when we decided to put in bids. Some of the Windsor parents and coaches got together and suggested that we put in bids with a large group of parents offering financial support if the tournaments lost money. Initially they were only interested in the two youth events but I told them that CYCC and CO were tied together. Recall that in 2015 there was no Canadian Open. We could not do that two years in a row. The three tournaments were a package for us and our sponsor but others were only interested in the youth tournaments.

As far as I recall that was the only time NAYCC was voted on by the voting members and that was because of the unique situation because it was part of a package that included CYCC/CO. No one wanted the Canadian Open as I recall. Some submitted bids did not meet the minimum requirements for CYCC (ie $150 per player to youth fund and tied to Canadian Open). Since that time we have worked closely with bidders to make sure that bids cover at least those basic conditions.