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Thread: 4.6 Nominations for CFC FIDE Representative

  1. #1
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    Default 4.6 Nominations for CFC FIDE Representative

    Please make nominations for FIDE representative here.

    Nominations close 1800 Day 3 (Tuesday) with elections ASAP thereafter ending at 1800 Day 7 (Saturday)

  2. #2
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    I have not seen any declaration from Victor Plotkin that he will run for FIDE representative again. If he made such a declaration, I would be willing to nominate him.

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by Vladimir Drkulec View Post
    I have not seen any declaration from Victor Plotkin that he will run for FIDE representative again. If he made such a declaration, I would be willing to nominate him.
    I second the nomination of Victor Plotkin for FIDE representative.

  4. #4
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    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.

  5. #5
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    Victor could you copy your report to the OUTGOING meeting? (It's an excellent report but that's where officer reports should be)

    I am happy to accept your nomination for a new term.

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