2. Opening Comments of Chair

[Lyle Craver]

Please welcome our president Vladimir Drkulec

[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.

[Aris Marghetis]

I have not been on ChessTalk since it was recently virused up.

[Vladimir Drkulec]

I have not been on ChessTalk since it was recently virused up.

We need to prepare ourselves for a post-Chesstalk world. Either Larry will sell it to someone who will make more of it than it currently is or Larry will get tired of the exposure. I was under the impression that they had solved the virus problem.

[Ken Craft]

Chesstalk is about to charge for tournament notices. I think we should emphasize that the service is free on our discussion forum.

[Aris Marghetis]

Chesstalk is about to charge for tournament notices. I think we should emphasize that the service is free on our discussion forum.

I agree Ken. Maybe we compile a little starter email for TDs, providing all of the links (announcement, ratings, etc.)

[Vladimir Drkulec]

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.

[Michael Lo]

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.

My laptop's CPU usage is stable at 3-4% when accessing ChessTalk. Try to clean up your computer with one or more anti-virus software.

[Ken Craft]

My comment that the CFC offered free advertisement of chess tournaments appears to have been removed from Chesstalk.

[Vladimir Drkulec]

My comment that the CFC offered free advertisement of chess tournaments appears to have been removed from Chesstalk.

Well that is Larry's domain and perhaps to be expected. He doesn't want to give free advertising to the competition. For a tournament in Windsor, I don't think Chesstalk is a factor. I won't be advertising there particularly if the hacking continues. I am also not clear if this new policy also applies to tournament announcements like WYCC/WCCC and so on. If so, future announcements will be confined to the CFC forum and website.