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Thread: 4. Executive and Officer reports

  1. #1
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    Default 4. Executive and Officer reports

    This thread is for Executives and Officers to post their reports to the assembly.

    It is not really intended for open Q&A but at the chair's discretion he may or may not allow this.

    To those posting reports please label your report in the message line 4A, 4B etc as per the agenda

  2. #2
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    4.K. Chess Foundation of Canada
    The Foundation benefitted from a good year in the investment markets and ended the year with total equity of $409,938 compared to $333,746 last year.
    We received a donation of $10,000 from Andres Pugi for the Pugi Fund which now stands at $30,504 (included in the total equity). Andres specified that income from his donation go toward assisting young female players.
    Eight life memberships were sold (Paul Clarkson, Carolyn McMaster, David Schwartz, Bryan Morgan, Anthony Leonard, Norman Conrad, Francis McDyer and Ali Hus) for a total of $4,770.
    Total investment income was $12,923 which will be forwarded to the CFC. This includes $1,080 specified for the Pugi Fund.
    I encourage all voting members to consider the Chess Foundation of Canada in your estate planning.
    Paul Leblanc
    Treasurer, Chess Foundation of Canada
    CFC Voting Member

  3. #3
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    4.I Rating Auditor
    There hasn't been enough Regular rated activity to provide any meaningful comments on the Regular rating system.
    The decision to allow on-line events to be Quick rated during the pandemic has worked out fairly well. It has generated a decent amount of rating fees and membership renewals.
    The COVID rating bonus program has been very popular with 111 x 200 point awards as of 30 April and another 19 since then. It was interesting to note that despite the COVID bonus and the existing bonus system, average Quick ratings declined a bit during the past year. I monitor average Quick ratings for players rated over 1200 and that average has declined from 1625 to 1575 since the pandemic started. I sense that stronger players are playing less online rated chess and lower rated players are playing more. That alone may account for the decline in averages.
    Quick ratings which weren't highly regarded in the past have earned a fair amount of respect and popularity.
    The COVID bonus incentive is due to expire on October 1st. If over-the-board chess has not resumed by then, the CFC should consider extending it.
    Also, the decision to allow online chess to be Quick rated was meant as a COVID measure and a discussion needs to be had about when and if to move back to pre-COVID rating policies.
    I would like to acknowledge the CFC webmaster, Don Parakin for his great work to re-create the rating audit software that I need to do my job. There was a temporary loss of that feature when the website was re-built.
    After 10 years I will be stepping down as CFC Rating Auditor. I would like to thank Presidents Michael von Keitz and Vlad Drkulec for their solid support. The first couple of years were pretty challenging, right Michael?
    Also, without the help of Bob Gillanders, Roger Patterson and Fred McKim, I would have been sunk.
    Paul Leblanc
    Treasurer, Chess Foundation of Canada
    CFC Voting Member

  4. #4
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    Executive Directors Report - AGM 2021

    After more than a year of pandemic shutdown, OTB chess is returning. Alberta and New Brunswick have already seen OTB chess this summer. Our Upcoming events list includes October events for Ontario and PEI, November events for Alberta & BC. Chess Clubs in Calgary & Edmonton are now open and chess clubs across Canada are contemplating opening in September.

    Canada is amongst the top 15 nations in the vaccination race. Will we have another wave and lockdown this fall delaying a return to normal? We’ll see. I have found it advisable to treat all sources of information with much skepticism. CFC finances are in good shape and should weather any reasonable delay to normal.

    We continue to restore areas of the website thanks to our webmaster, Don Parakin. Recent additions include a chess crossword puzzle and news banners.

    Members’ utilization of the new Go membership system continues to grow. The most frequent error is existing members creating a new account instead of accessing their existing account. If you have a CFC number, you already have a Go membership account. If you are having trouble accessing the account, please contact the office. Most likely the problem is we don’t have your email in the system.

    I look forward to OTB chess again soon. This online chess, it is just not the same. Take care everyone.

  5. #5

    Default I. Woman’s Coordinator

    The highlight moment of Women Chess is Maïli-Jade Ouellet Continental Championship, a first in Canadian history, This allowed us to send more participants in many FIDE events. We should now begin to think about how to empower her to successfully defend her title: for example, by providing a FIDE Trainer.

    At the Online Team Championship of the Francophone Chess Association, Maïli-Jade scored 9/11, helping the Quebec Team to earn the first place and deserving an invitation to the next in person Francophone Chess Association Championship where she can pursue IM and GM norms. Although very unlikely with the expected very strong men field, she could get the IM title by registration by winning the tournament.

    COVID future is still uncertain in Quebec, we are awaiting further instructions from the Public Health Department. All OTB competitions were suspended for both men and Women. The earliest date for a return to competition is September, but we must get clearance from the Quebec Government.

    I thanks the CFC for covering the fee of my FIDE online arbiter training. I am now ready to act as Chief Arbiter and as online arbiter in online and hybrid FIDE rated tournaments.

    Respectfully Submitted,
    Pierre Dénommée

  6. #6
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    4E, 4G FIDE Representative, Master Representative


    Since my election as the Canadian FIDE representative, I have been involved in different projects. Some of them have been more related to my position as a Master representative, but it's more convenient for me to submit one report instead of two.

    A. World Cup and qualifiers.

    Probably, the most difficult event for FIDE even normally, let alone during COVID. Not only because of the large number of players, (206 for Open and 103 for Women = 309 total) but also because of a very complicated system of rules and qualifiers.

    Since the deadline for all qualifiers was set to Jun 5, CFC had very limited time to organize a Canadian qualifier (Zonal). Also, at the very beginning, (Mar-Apr) it was unclear if FIDE-Americas would be able to organize Continental qualifiers and which format would be used.

    1. Continental Hybrid.

    With a very tight time frame, CFC was able to organize 3 locations for this Hybrid event: Toronto (Markham), Montreal, and Vancouver. The tournament itself was at the end of May with strong COVID restrictions in Canada and some strong players, who expressed their interest initially, decided not to play. Still, 4 Canadians advanced to the 2nd round (it was a knock-out event), 3 of them lost to 2550-2600 GMs with the same score 0.5-1.5. GM Bator Sambuev was the only Canadian who survived the first 2 rounds; he lost in round 3 to GM Bacallao (Cuba, 2590) in an armageddon game on time in an absolutely winning position.

    This result was good enough for some prize of 300 EUR for Bator. After about a month Bator got 270 CAD (which is about 180 EUR). Bator complained to me... I sent an email to FIDE... no reaction, but a week later Bator got 125 CAD more. Sure, FIDE doesn't care about the 15 CAD handling fee for upcoming wires.

    It was a very challenging, but interesting experience for me. I want to thank Canadian arbiters who served at 3 Hybrid locations: Corinna Wan, Karen Wan, Diana Tsypina, Joe Roback and Mavaddat Javid. Without their active involvement it would have been impossible for Canadian players to participate in this event. I also want to thank Patricia Gamliel who stepped up and helped host and even participated as an unpaid official at the Montreal hub.

    Lessons for the future: it looks like Hybrid events will be more and more popular for some official tournaments, like junior/senior events or Continental championships. While these tournaments are very expensive and require a lot of time and effort from secondary organizers (CFC), they would be the only choice in certain situations. The alternative is no tournaments at all.

    2. Canadian qualifier (Zonal).

    It was a relatively easy decision about the time frame for this tournament: after the Continental, but before the deadline of June 5, which means the first week of June. However, the type of this event (OTB, Hybrid or online), time control and format (knock-out, swiss, RR) required a lot of difficult, unprecedented decisions.

    a. Type of event. The main problem was a FIDE requirement for OTB or Hybrid for Zonal tournaments. According to FIDE rules, Canada had 2 spots in each World Cup and Women World Cup: 1 spot for being top-91 country by average rating and another spot as a Zone 2.2. It was a significant risk that FIDE would not accept an online Canadian qualifier as a Zonal and thus reduce the number of spots for Canada from 2 to 1.

    The FIDE has the Global Strategy Commission, (GSC) which is responsible for any ruling related to WC and Zonals. I spoke extensively with the 2 main people in GSC – GM E.Sutovsky (the chairman) and GM P.Tregubov (the secretary) and explained to them that COVID restrictions make it impossible for CFC to organize any OTB or even Hybrid event. In the end, I got their OK for an online event.

    b. TC. Initially, CFC considered a RR tournament with 10 players and a standard (90+30) TC. However, the reality of online chess makes the slow TC very problematic, especially from the Fair Play point of view. After some consultations with our top players I decided to propose a "slow rapid" (25+10) TC and CFC directors accepted this approach.

    Now, almost 3 months later, it looks like it was a successful decision, which allowed us to attract a relatively strong field. E.Bareev told me that he would not play with a slow TC; possible cheating was his major concern.

    c. Format. Many years ago, I read an autobiography by A.Karpov. His first major tournament as a World Champion was the Milano tournament in 1975. The format for this event was really unusual: 12 players RR; 4 winners advance to play-off; 4-games matches in the semifinal and 6-games matches in the final. Higher position in RR gives tie-break advantages in knock-out matches.

    In that tournament, Karpov finished 2 in RR (after Portisch), drew with Petrosian 2-2 in semifinal, advanced to final and beat Portisch 3.5-2.5.

    I decided to propose a similar format. In our case, we didn't need a final as we had 2 spots in the World Cup. It worked pretty good for the Open section. After a very competitive RR tournament, R.Preotu, E.Bareev, R.Panjwani and S.Thavandiran advanced to 1/2-final. Both Razvan and Evgeny won their semifinal matches 2.5-0.5 and earned the spots in the World Cup.

    Unfortunately, only 5 players expressed their interest in the Women's qualifier. DRR was the only practical choice and Q.Zhou and S.Demchenko earned a trip to Sochi.

    My special thanks to Aris Marghetis who was a chief arbiter for this tournament and did an excellent job with his positive, but strict attitude. We have many good arbiters in Canada, but Aris's experience in different online events makes him a great choice in this case.

    3. World Cup (Sochi-2021)

    5 Canadians participated in the World Cup: 4 winners of Canadian qualifiers (Zonals) and M.-J.Ouellet, who won the American Women Continental in 2019. I am really happy that FIDE was able to provide strong VISA support (it's very difficult to get a visa to Russia nowadays). Also, I want to mention some crucial help from the CFC president to one of our players with the second dose of the vaccine.

    In the Women World Cup, all 3 Canadian players got a very difficult opponent in the 1st round and lost. M.-J.Ouellet got a winning position in her 1st game with black, but missed the best continuation and lost on time in an already equal position. Only a draw in her 2nd game and she lost the match 0.5-1.5.

    S.Demchenko drew 2 games with a standard TC, drew 2 more games in "slow rapid", but lost 0.5-1.5 in fast rapid. A very good fight by Svitlana against a much higher-rated opponent.

    In the World Cup, Razvan lost his 1st round match 0.5-1.5 against Yakubboev (Uzb, 2598). E.Bareev was the only Canadian in the 2nd round, he lost 0.5-1.5 to A.Tari (Nor, 2639) and missed an opportunity to play against Magnus Carlsen in the 3rd round.

    In my opinion, the entire World Cup project was a huge success by FIDE.

    B. FIDE meetings.

    About a month ago, I attended the FIDE Qualification Commission (QC) meeting. The goal of the meeting was to inform FIDE members about some changes for FIDE title regulations which will likely be implemented Jan 1, 2022.

    There are many minor, mostly technical changes; the main goal of them is to give the QC more power in a few specific situations. The major change is that any title application must include at least one norm from an individual swiss tournament with at least 40 participants.

    From what I heard during this meeting, QC is very uncomfortable with the current title situation and the well-known article in the NY Times about the youngest GM in history. They clearly want to stop norm/title achievement by playing exclusively in round-robin or very small Swiss events, like Mishra in Budapest. Clearly, the new requirement would make this "easy title route" more difficult.

    I fully support this proposal. The vast majority of Canadians who earned a title recently achieved it with 2 or all 3 norms in bid swiss events (GMs Preotu and Hambleton, IMs Kleinman, Chiku-Ratte, Thavandiran and others). So, we have nothing to worry about.

    C. Online Olympiad - 2021.

    Like a year ago, FIDE organized an online Olympiad. The format and rules are similar to the previous edition. Thanks to our achievements at online Olympiad-2020, Olympiad-2018 (Batumi) and Women Olympiad-2018, we made the top division again. That means we don't need to play in the lower stage and start playing on Sep 8.

    A lot of players who played in 2020 expressed their interest again. Still, we have some changes. R.Preotu will be playing on Men's boards and M.Gedajlovic will be playing on Junior board. Unfortunately, Q.Zhou will not be playing.

    Canadian line-up is expected to be:

    Open boards: N.Noritsyn - R.Preotu - R.Panjwani.
    Junior board: R.Talukdar - M.Gedajlovic
    Women/Girl board: A.Burtasova - O.Golubeva - M.-J.Ouellet - S.Demchenko.

    Still, we can change the line-up until the end of August. However, all the above mentioned players secured their spot.

    D. Other online events.

    There are a lot of online events nowadays. Some of them, like the University Championship or Corporate Championship, attracted some interest from Canadian players.

    I want to mention a Francophone online team chess cup, organized by AIDEF. In the "amateur" section of this event team Canada got 3rd place (out of 30 teams). Quebec had a separate team and finished 10th. Victoria Doknjas and GM G.Szabo (the captain) did a great job organizing and managing the team.

    The winner of the main section was a Quebec Team, which included GM T.Roussel-Roozmon, IM O.Chiku-Ratte, FM S.Rodrigue-Lemieux, and WGM M.-J.Ouellet.
    With a lack of interest from our top players, Canada was represented by a junior team, which performed exceptionally well. I want to mention a very strong (almost 2400) performance by FM Anthony Atanasov, who was able to beat GM T.Roussel-Roozmon.

    Special thanks to CFC youth coordinator Christina Tao who stepped up at the very last moment and organized a very strong young team.

    E. Conclusion

    6 months ago I won a tough campaign against a very strong and capable opponent who had unprecedented support from the CFC president. The day following the election, I created a list of goals and expectations for myself as a FIDE representative. I can't say that I am 100% happy with my accomplishments. At the same time, I think I have been able to help in certain situations.

    I accept the nomination for another term.

  7. #7
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    Here are the financials posted at Fred McKim's request.
    Attached Files Attached Files

  8. #8
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    4.F Report from Youth Coordinator

    2020 FIDE Online World Cadets and Youth Rapid Chess Championships
    Nov 27 – Dec 13, 2020 Selection Stage
    Dec 19 – Dec 24, 2020 Final Stage
    https://www.chesscanada.info/forum/s...Nov-17-Dec-23)

    Canada sent a team of 34 players for this event. 5 players were Continental top 10 and were directly invited, 10 players were the champions from National Active Chess Championship and 19 players were from wild cards at the last minutes.

    After the Selection Stage, Canada had 6 players were advanced into the Final Stage
    Mendes Aaron Reeve (U10)
    Chandra Anand Rishi (U12)
    Issani Nameer (U14)
    Rodrique-Lemieux Shawn (U16)
    Talukdar Rohan (U18)
    Demchenko Svitlana (G18)



    May 29-30, 2021 Francophone Online Team Chess Cup
    The tournament is organized by AIDEF. In the "amateur" section of this event, Canada was represented by a junior team. The team performed exceptionally well. I want to mention a very strong (almost 2400) performance by FM Anthony Atanasov, who was able to beat GM T.Roussel-Roozmon.

    Players were Anthony Atanasov, Max Chen, Johnathan Han, Noah Nathaniel Yuen, Anni Guo and Kaitlyn Tao



    Jul 3rd, 2021 CYCC Online tournament
    https://www.chesscanada.info/forum/s...Online-Jul-3rd

    CYCC Online tournament qualified players to the FIDE Online Cadets and Youth World Cup (Aug 1st – 31st).
    We had 360 players registered. On Jul 3rd, we had 180 boards all running at the same time. Players were closely being monitored by the zoom room arbiters and the Fair play Team members. The event had a total of 8 zoom rooms. Players are required to sign in with front and side view cameras. We had a Fair Play Team constantly checking games and all games were sent to Dr. Ken Regan for in-depth analyst.

    With the huge success of CYCC online, it brought in a great fund to CFC Youth Fund. The top 3 winners of each age category were invited to JtM Special training group specially designed for the FIDE Online Cadets and Youth World Cup and were fully sponsored by the Fund from the CYCC Online tournaments

    Not only that, the 4th and 5th place were also invited to join the JtM special training group for a pre-negotiated discount price by the CYCC Online organizer and the JtM Organizer.

    With over 40+ players took part of this great training camp, kids are all well prepared for the FIDE Online Cadets and Youth World Cup tournament.




    2021 FIDE Online Cadets and Youth World Cup
    Aug 1st – 20th, 2021 Selection Stage
    Aug 26th - Aug 30th, 2021 Final Stage

    CYCC Online qualified 30 players who were top 3 from each age category after tie-break. Then in the last minutes, Canada received an extra 20 wild cards to join this incredible event. Therefore, all winners who finished top 5th place were invited to play in the Selection Stage.

    A team of 50 players played from Aug 1-26 during the Selection Stage and 5 players advanced into the Final Stage
    • Chen Rae (G10)
    • Liu Zachary Hankun (U10)
    • Zhao Jifan (U10)
    • Jiang Hanxi (G12)
    • Rodrique-Lemieux Shawn (U16)



    Aug 16-21 North American Youth Chess Championship at Chicago

    We have a team of 23 players who flew over to Chicago and participated in the 2021 NAYCC tournament. It is an over-the-board tournament and it is very strict. No parents are allowed in the playing hall.


    After 9 rounds, we had some incredible great results.
    U10G Shuang Chen 6th place
    U12O Johnathan Han 2nd place
    U14G Rachel Ruoxu Chen 2nd place
    U16O Ian Zhao 4th place
    U18O Anthony Atanasov 4th place, tie for 2nd place
    Anthony played up in U18O section with performance rating as 2205, finished with 6.5/9. After tie-break, he finished in 4th place. Incredible results.

    NAYCC results can be found under Chess-results.com
    http://chess-results.com/tnr571458.a...et=YES&flag=30




    Aug 7-8 XXXI Panamerican Youth Chess Festival 2021
    https://www.chesscanada.info/forum/s...-Festival-2021
    There is tremendous interest in this tournament as players are eager to play against players in different countries. Unlike the FIDE World Cup, there is no restriction on the number of players. Therefore at the end, I registered 143 players into this event.

    However, the organizer cancelled the Selection Stage in the last minutes and all players were automatically advanced into the Final Stage. We were all very disappointed on the organizer decision,

    Due to pandemic regulations and restrictions in Canada it is unlikely that we can organize a hybrid event or series of hybrid events to accommodate 157 (143 registered + 14 official )players. We are restricted to gatherings of 25 individuals which would include players, any organizers, arbiters and parents which would seem to be necessary for some of the very young children. It is very difficult to get definitive answers from medical authorities on questions about chess tournaments. We probably would have been able to organize an event for approximately twenty or even perhaps thirty players but with one month until the games are to be played it seems unlikely that we can get the number of locations or arbiters required to put on this tournament in Canada as most of our chess clubs have been closed since the pandemic began in March 2020.

    Therefore, the final decision is CFC will not send a team to play in the Final Stage of the Panamerican Youth Chess Festival.



    Christina
    CFC Youth Coordinator

  9. #9
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    4M. Treasurer's Report

    As usual, I want to summarize the Financial Statements with a very brief Revenue Statement (May 1, 2020 - Apr 30, 2021)

    Revenue

    Net CFC Memberships .............. $26,284
    Chess Foundation Donation ...... $11,523
    Rating Fees ............................ $6,542
    CMA ...................................... $2,500

    Total ..................................... $46,849

    Expenditures

    Administrative ....................... $53,640
    International ......................... $3,764
    Magazine / Newsfeed ............. $2,337
    CSTA Conference ................... $260

    Total .................................... $60,001

    Net Loss ............................... $13,152

    Considering there were only a handful of OTB events during the 12 months, we fared really well. Part of this might be due to the way we count membership income, but assuming OTB resumes in the next 3 or 4 months, we should be looking good again for 2021 /22. Mitigating the CFC loss was the $10,000 contribution to the Pugi Fund and some great holdings by the Chess Foundation. We already have $30,000 set aside for the 2022 (and 2024 ?) Chess Olympiad (FQE paid $5,700 this year as part of the CFC-FQE agreement) from the previous 2 Fiscal years. The Youth Fund received contributions from the National Online Youth and the CYCC Online (which is not accounted for here as it's part of 2021/22).

    To be honest, all of the hard work relating to producing these figures lies with Bob and our Financial software. My job is to keep in touch with proposed expenditures and whether they make sense or not. I would say at least 90% of my duties concern themselves with more general CFC responsibilities.

    I'm looking forward to another year on the CFC Board.

    Fred

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