Please welcome our president Vladimir Drkulec
Please welcome our president Vladimir Drkulec
I would like to welcome the voting members to the December quarterly meeting. There are no motions on the table so this is to provide the voting members with an update since the last meeting in August. There have been a number of developments in the chess world which affect Canada since our last meeting. The most troublesome was the incident at the World Cup where our player Anton Kovalyov was unceremoniously accosted by the organizer prompting him to withdraw after making it to the third round of the tournament.
We should probably encourage our organizers to make more use of our forums to advertise our events and encourage members to visit our forums for information about upcoming events. Chesstalk has introduced a new fee for tournament advertising starting January 1st, 2018. Its not even clear how much longer Chesstalk is going to be around as Larry Bevand looks for a buyer.
Raja Panjwani achieved his second GM norm recently at a U.S. Thanksgiving weekend tournament in Charlottesville. On this occasion, I thought back to something John Upper wrote in a recent email highlighting some of the positive results achieved in Canadian chess in the last four and a half years.
The following is an excerpt:
I didn't pay close attention to Canadian chess before I became the CFC newsletter editor, but since then, off the top of my head, I can recall:
WYCC gold - Harmony Zhu
WYCC gold - Qiyu Zhou
IM titles:
Aman Hambleton,
Razvan Preotu,
Michael Barron,
Michael Song,
Michael Kleinman,
Shiyam Thavandiran
GM title: Razvan Preotu
first ever WGM title for a Canadian: Qiyu Zhou
FIDE IA titles: both Danny Goldenberg and Vadim Tsypin
Results:
Best ever Canadian Olympiad Result: 2016 Baku Men's team
Anton Kovalyov qualifying for the World Cup twice, and winning three rounds in 2015 and two in 2017, defeating former FIDE Champions Kasimdzhanov and Anand along the way, and losing only to Caruana and the Testicle who Walks Like a Man.
Several North American YCC champions
Hal Bond working the Carlsen-Anand WC match and the Kamsky-Topalov Candidates Final
Aris Marghettis working the top board at both the 2014 and 2016 Olympiads
Other:
multiple records set for attendance at the CYCC
THREE (Editor: actually 4 as IM Jean Hebert has also published a book in French and English translations) chess books published by Canadian authors:
David Cumming's The English (Everyman);0
Raja Panjwani's The Hyper-Accelerated Dragon (Thinker's Press);
Razvan and Michael Song's The Chess Attacker's Handbook (Gambit)
Has there EVER been 4.5 year stretch where Canadian Chess has seen so many good things?
John Upper
I have not been on ChessTalk since it was recently virused up.
Great points!
Chesstalk is about to charge for tournament notices. I think we should emphasize that the service is free on our discussion forum.
It appears chesstalk still has an issue with a hacked website. As soon as you open it the CPU usage goes to 100%. Using this forum results in a short spike but returns to a negligible load on your CPU very quickly. Close chesstalk and usage drops back to normal.
As the organizer of the Banff Open, I plan to use the CFC site as soon as the ACA (Alberta Chess Association) approves my 2018 tournament during its budget meeting. The $20 that Chesstalk will charge to advertize my tournament I consider a bargain, although I am sure the topic will come up at the next ACA meeting. The ACA also has a webiste where Alberta tournament are advertized. I am thinking most provincial organizations have websites?