4. Executive / Officer Reports

[Paul Leblanc]

You will see in the CFC Financial Report that:
The Foundation has $341k under management (compared to $321k last year) and that the Foundation generated $11,184 of income for CFC general revenue.
The increase in funds under management was about half from new life memberships and half from capital gains.
The Foundation holds a balanced portfolio of equities and fixed income investments. Turnover from year to year is very small.
Anyone wishing for more details is welcome to contact me.
Please consider the Chess Foundation of Canada in your estate planning. When renewing your annual membership, consider a life membership.

[Victor Plotkin]

A. Olympiad-2018.

Yesterday I announce the board order for the National Team: Hansen - LeSiege - Noritsyn - Preotu - Hambleton.

According to the registration list, both our teams share 39-40 positions in the starting ranking. While I don't expect the same success as in 2016, I hope for solid performance for both Canadian Teams.

For the National Team, the rating gap between 2nd and 5th player is extremely narrow, less than 40 points, compare to 200 points in 2016 and 100+ points in 2014. It gives us a lot of options for round-by-round decisions.

For the first time in recent years (or even for the first time ever - I am not sure) CFC executive decided to "outsource" the position of the Women Team Captain. I know GM G.Szabo from U-16 Olympiad 2014. He was a captain of Canada-1 (with R.Preotu and Q.Zhou), while I was the captain of Canada-2 and Canada-3. He is a knowledgeable and nice person.

Many our players use Istanbul for connection. In another thread it was mentioned that Turkey now is not the safest place in the world. I believe, that Istanbul airport should be safe enough, but we have another problem. Some team members, including myself have a very tight connection in Istanbul. In case of delay in out first leg flight Toronto-Istanbul, we can potentially miss the next flight Istanbul-Batumi. Still, we have almost 24 hours before the start of the first round. Reminds me one of my favorite book: Jules Verne "80 days around the world".

[Vladimir Drkulec]

Thank you Victor for that report. We all wish the best of luck to our teams on the journey and in the Olympiad.

[Victor Plotkin]

B. World Senior Team Championship

I started this project more than a year ago and I am very happy with the results. Our Team (Cummings - Plotkin - Findlay - Barron) finished 6th out of 67 teams in Dresden. I would like to share some information and ideas about this tournament.

1. From the very beginning, I told to all potential Canadian players that I want team of 4 and not team of 5. Being a player and a captain for the team of 5 is a clear conflict of interest; at the same time it's absolutely fine with team of 4. Canadian players often play 2 game/day and should have no problem with a comfortable 9 games/9 days schedule. Some risk that somebody gets sick or can not play for another reason definitely exists, but this risk is not too high with reliable players.

2. 4 teams in this tournament were much stronger than others (USA, 2 from Germany and England), we played with 3 of them and lost all 3 matches. We won all 6 matches against other teams including 3-1 victory over higher rated Germany-2 (almost 200 points total rating advantage) and 4-0 over team called "Ulm", with similar rating. 6 wins in 9 matches allow us to share 6th place, our tie-break was very strong, so we finished 6th overall.

I have some funny story about Ulm. It's a very historical place, Napoleon defeated Austrians there in 1805. This Ulm battle was one of the best even for Napoleon and probably his "cleanest" victory. Napoleon lost about 500 soldiers, Austrians lost almost 30.000. Napoleon would have been proud of us.

3. Every player from our team gained rating points. We gained more than 80 points overall. Rating points will be donated to Canadian underrated juniors in the nearest future.

4. I.Findlay had the best performance in our team with 6.5/9. He missed an IM norm by just half a point.

5. M.Barron and myself won team blitz tournament (each team included just 2 players) with 7 wins and 2 draws in 9 rounds. First prize was 250 EUROs, but the satisfaction was much more important.

6. The organization was at very high level, Germans were well-prepared and thought about every possible detail.

7. According to the FIDE calendar, the next World Senior Team Championship will be in May 2019 in Crete, Greece.

Conclusion: a very good event. As far as I know, all Canadian players enjoyed this chess vacation. I would be happy to see more Canadians participating in this championship

[Fred McKim]

4L Treasurer's Report

I wanted to wait until we had the completed financial statements before filing this informal report.

First off, our Financial Situation this year was very strong, mostly due to a 5% increase in Membership numbers and a 20% increase in Rating Fees. Our net revenue of $11K is the largest in recent memory and would have been $16K, except for the accounting acknowledgement of a $5K debt to FIDE America from some previous NA Youth / Junior events held in Canada. I will make a few more comments in the Financial Statement Thread.

My portfolio work as Treasurer probably only contributes to 10% of the whole of the work that goes on for the Federation, that I am directly or indirectly involved in. For example, this year I had the pleasure to attend the Canadian Sports Tourism Expo with Vlad. We are hoping the dividends from this will continue for years to come.

I will be more than pleased to serve the CFC for another year as a Director of the Corporation and specifically Treasurer.

Fred McKim
CFC Treasurer

[Vladimir Drkulec]

4L Treasurer's Report

I wanted to wait until we had the completed financial statements before filing this informal report.

First off, our Financial Situation this year was very strong, mostly due to a 5% increase in Membership numbers and a 20% increase in Rating Fees. Our net revenue of $11K is the largest in recent memory and would have been $16K, except for the accounting acknowledgement of a $5K debt to FIDE America from some previous NA Youth / Junior events held in Canada. I will make a few more comments in the Financial Statement Thread.

My portfolio work as Treasurer probably only contributes to 10% of the whole of the work that goes on for the Federation, that I am directly or indirectly involved in. For example, this year I had the pleasure to attend the Canadian Sports Tourism Expo with Vlad. We are hoping the dividends from this will continue for years to come.

I will be more than pleased to serve the CFC for another year as a Director of the Corporation and specifically Treasurer.

Fred McKim
CFC Treasurer

We do need some clarification on exactly which tournaments are part of this $5000 FIDE America figure. Anyway the financials have been a pleasant surprise as I don't think we expected them to be this strong though this is not unusual when you move beyond the breakeven point. Everything flows to the bottom line.

[Vladimir Drkulec]

B. World Senior Team Championship

Congratulations on an impressive result!

Every player from our team gained rating points. We gained more than 80 points overall. Rating points will be donated to Canadian underrated juniors in the nearest future.

This is too true.

[Michael Barron]

Thank you, Undriadi, for your work as CFC Youth Coordinator!

Any plans for U-16 Olympiad 2018?

[Pierre Dénommée]

4H. Woman’s Coordinator's report

With the precious help of the FQE, the Women Zonal has been organized. WIM Mali-Jade Ouelette has won both the Womens' Closed and her age group at the CYCC and will represent Canada twice at a World Championship.

There should be a women on the FQE board of directors. Her appointment has not been made official yet, but has been mentioned during the FQE AGM. This will certainly help Women's chess locally.

FIDE allows us to do both a non-Zonal Women chess championship and a Women Team Championship in which norms are possible despite not having at least three Federations present. It will be much harder to find a bidder for those and I may be compelled to make a return as an organizer.

I am willing to stand for reelection.

Respectfully Submitted

Pierre Dénommée
CFC Woman’s Coordinator

[Vladimir Drkulec]

Thank you, Undriadi, for your work as CFC Youth Coordinator!

Any plans for U-16 Olympiad 2018?

The situation in Turkey is chaotic. It is not a safe place to send our kids.