4. Executive and Officer reports

[Oksana Golubeva]

4D. Women’s Coordinator report

Overall, it was a very productive year. I am particularly proud of organizing the first-ever women's and girls' festival in Toronto, which had an amazing turnout of 64 participants!
* Initiated the motion to organize the Canadian Women's Championship every year.
* Initiated a discussion regarding the selection criteria to attract players to the championships.
* Assisted in promoting the 2023 Canadian Women's Closed Championship, which had 21 participants.
* Assisted in promoting the petition to recognize chess as a sport in Canada.
* Maintained general communication with FIDE officials, including the Deputy Chair of the FIDE Management Board and FIDE WOM Chair.
* Organized the first-ever women's event, the Toronto Chess Festival for Women and Girls, with free entry for all participants. The event had 64 pre-registrations, 54 participants in the tournament, 3 speakers (2 WGMs, 1 WFM), 3 hours of lectures, over 40 participants in the simul exhibition, 20 prizes (including 5 rating groups and 4 age groups, plus 2 special prizes), 64 certificates of participation, and free lunch. The organization included preparing a program for the event (lectures, simul exhibition, rapid tournament, video recording of lectures, and posting them on the FIDE YouTube channel), broadcasting the moves of the rapid tournament leaders, arranging lunch for all participants, selecting a host, negotiating with sponsors, attracting and coordinating speakers, promoting the event, and overseeing general project management. Received a FIDE certificate of appreciation for the event.
* Participated as a speaker at the event without any charge.
* Achieved preliminary agreement with FIDE WOM for a similar event in 2024.
* Attracted a contribution for the women's chess fund.
* Supported a scientific project “Girls in chess”. Initiated partnership with FIDE. Signed a partnership agreement on behalf of CFC.
* Participated in board meetings and other discussions.

[Olga Mushtaler]

You also showed excellent initiative when we had an issue with the chess.com club. You have shown yourself to be a valued member of the board with new ideas.

Both of us solved it! And thank you!

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

You also showed excellent initiative when we had an issue with the chess.com club.

Out of curiosity - what was an issue?

[Vladimir Drkulec]

Out of curiosity - what was an issue?

The CFC club on chess.com merged with Team Canada, resulting in a consolidation of resources and members. We got an administrator and Team Canada got access to matches only available to federations. Olga, our CFC vice president, conducted a survey on the CFC Facebook page to gather input from fellow CFC members. However, the administrator of the merged club made some negative comments about the CFC on the Facebook page. Olga took it upon herself to address these comments and emphasized the importance of resolving issues privately before resorting to public criticism. Surprisingly, the administrator had not previously mentioned any of these concerns, catching the CFC president off guard. Despite this, the individual, who was facing serious health issues at the time, eventually returned the club to the Team Canada entity. This was annoying because we had spent some time working on the club, advertising on our website. With the CFC name attached it was our asset and it was simply yanked away.


In the meantime, the CFC club remained dormant with a name similar to "old CFC club." All that it took to restart the club was to remove the "old" descriptor and we didn't even have to change the links on our web page. Olga has since taken up the responsibility of managing the club effectively. The individual responsible for the negative comments has sincerely apologized for their behavior and expressed a desire to restore the old club as the official team of the CFC. However, due to concerns about a potential repeat of past events, there is a preference for a smaller, more dependable club that remains under the control of the CFC. It is anticipated that, at some point, Team Canada will no longer be eligible to participate in international matches, as they are no longer recognized as the national federation club. Although an administrator at chess.com initially failed to acknowledge this fact when Olga followed up on it, the issue was resolved after reaching out to my contacts at chess.com via email, reestablishing the CFC club as the official federation club.


While acknowledging the significance of online chess, there were criticisms regarding the CFC's hesitance to regularly rate online games. This caution stems from the potential for cheating in online games, which necessitates careful consideration of the rating system's integrity. The rating system serves as a vital asset for the CFC, as it determines eligibility for numerous domestic and international tournaments.

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

The CFC club on chess.com merged with Team Canada,....

Thnx. Seems they created drama out of nowhere. I recalled the merge, and it seemed a good move as the CFC groups was inactive for ages.

[Paul Leblanc]

The middle range of players, rated roughly 1200 to 2000 have lost an average of about 100 rating points since 2017. Those below 1200 and the top players have been pretty stable.

[Victor Plotkin]

4I. Rating Auditor

My first year as Rating Auditor has been quite uneventful. I have answered some rating queries and many thanks to Bob Armstrong for providing valuable guidance, although one could say 'The rating formula speaks for itself'. The biggest concern at the moment is deflation in the CFC rating system. Paul Leblanc did excellent work in producing statistics using Don Parakin's excellent rating calculator to show that our ratings have been deflated by about 100 points since 2017. Most likely caused by players improving online and not playing OTB due to the Pandemic. We are currently weighing our options and should make a recommendation to the CFC Executive shortly. A concern for me is that other ratings have also experienced deflation, so it may be better to stay in line with the other systems rather than just make an adjustment to everyone's CFC rating.

The good news is that COVID seems to be under control now and over the board chess is flourishing.

I agree with Ian that both FIDE and CFC rating systems experience mild deflation right now. I don't know about any FIDE plan to change the rating rules, that means the current trend will continue.

Paul Leblanc and myself evaluated CFC-FIDE gap as around 125 points 3 years ago. I believe the gap is even larger right now. That means any attempt to stop (overturn) CFC deflation will cause a very significant CFC-FIDE gap, which is not desirable.

[Christina Tao]

4.F. Youth Coordinator

Report from CFC Youth Coordinator

This year, start with chess petition organized by Olga, it generates lot of supports from all chess organizers and parents that we have been talking to. It is a great initiative and thank you.

With Shawn Rodrigue-Lemieux won 1st place in the 2022 World Youth, it bought chess into another level of publicity. Besides, Shawn, many Canadian top players were getting interviewed by news outlet. Even Vlad Drkulec and myself were invited to the radio shows, news or interviews.
https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/quebec-s...pion-1.6073479

This year, CYCC qualifying tournaments are running all across Canada, we are seeing tremendous interested in chess and CYCC registration is skyrocketing to 400 registered and 63 on the waiting list with more than 1 month into the event. The organizer is working along with hotel diligently to solve this issue. This is such excited news. With CYCC is just around the corner, I am starting to work on World Cadet/World Youth registration.

On April 13 to 23, 2023 Canada sent 8 players to World School Chess Championship in Rhodes, Greece. We had an incredible result. Little Elliot McCallum in under U7 section came home with 1st place.

This year, we have 30 players interested in World Youth U16 Chess Olympiad 2023@Eindhoven, Netherlands from Aug 12 to 19, 2023. Usually we only have a handful of players interested. Therefore we are planning to send more than one team, I am working on official team and addition teams now.

This year, Pan-American Youth Chess Championship is in Chicago from Aug 11 - 18 and many Canadian players will participate in that event. It is a very tough job to award the official players.

Setup up World Junior U20 Chess Championship Mexico City, Mexico from Sept 20 to Oct 2, 2023. Work along with Ken Green on setup the Canadian Junior Chess Championship which is the qualifying tournament to World Junior U20.

Lately I had been working with Vlad Rekhson on running the National School Teams Championship on Jun 11, 2023 in hybrid format. We received the invitation about FIDE World Schools Team Championship on May 11 and within a month, we are setting up our National one. The winning team from the National will receive up to $10,000 grant from FIDE. This is very attractive. Therefore it generate lot of interests from all provinces. So far we have 3540 visits to the post. This year, timing is very tight but hopefully, we will have more time to plan out this National School Teams tournament in next year calendar.

Right now, I am overwhelming with all the interests on all international tournaments. It is such great feeling to see the grow of chess across all regions in Canada.



Christina
CFC Youth Coordinator