Poll: CFC

[Vlad Drkulec]

Re: Poll: CFC

The real way for the CFC to grow is more tournaments and clubs, meaning that organizers must be nurtured. Players will appear from nowhere :)

Organizers and players must be nurtured. You are right about players appearing from nowhere. It is happening in Windsor. If you get a critical mass of players more players appear spontaneously.

[Garland Best]

Re: Poll: CFC

I think this should be done using the CFC Newsfeed. I really like the newsfeed postings, but its hardly noticable on the front page. Put it under a scrolling news banner. Also the posts formerly done by Bob were worth posting. All this would make the front page less static. Plus John Upper was posting snippets of the magazine each month in the newsfeed, which would address Patrick's points..

[Kevin Pacey]

Re: Poll: CFC

I like the CFC newsletter:

• I feel that John Upper has done a great job with the variety of topics and extensive coverage.
• However, the level of explanation is aimed the same level in all articles- way over my head.
• Could the beginner and intermediate level material be outsourced?

I think the CFC website is poor:

• I'd like to see simple functionalities such as rating progress graphs and head-to-head records.
• It's not clear where to find something... I believe the topics need to be branched out ala "Kotov style"
• I don't understand why TDs have to submit crosstables through e-mail. They should be able to upload them through the website where the Executive Director can approve or reject with the help of simple validation code (e.g. player ABC is not from the same province could trigger a warning flag)

I used to do articles for the newsletter concerning my own games (based around the openings or endgames involved) which I tried to have with at least some notes that might appeal to class player readers. More than one editor felt that I should annotate games besides my own, however. One also felt I was including too many of my wins. Also rejected was the idea of doing book reviews, as this was felt not to be Canadian content enough.

Regarding branching the topics on the website, this may be easier said than done. A topic may be worth including in more than one branch, somehow, and in any case there could prove to be too many desired branches. Best for now IMHO is to isolate the most popular/useful topics, and this has already been done pretty well as far as looking up ratings goes, at least, for example. I have spotted at least one clear instance where some tidying up/unifying would be desirable, however, given it is felt to be worth the time and effort. That would be putting chess instructors both with and without FIDE instructor titles on the same webpage. In any case, the contents of the CFC website are not that numerous IMHO, and anyone willing to spend the time can search the various parts of it and become familiar with where topics vital to them are located, as inconvienent as this might prove, at least at first.

[John Upper]

Re: Poll: CFC

I didn't want to reply to any of the posts until the thread seemed dead, which it seems to be now.

NB: I had to split my post into two parts because:

a) I am sooo long winded,
b) the CFC site isn't the only one with user issues,
c) a little of (a) and a little of (b).

Tony,
thanks for prompting people to send in comments and suggestions about the CCN.

What are your favorite and least favorite things about the CFC?

I have to say that setting up the poll with the 2x2 options you gave is not the most nuanced way of collecting opinions. The poll asks only about the services the CFC provides over the internet, but there are maybe one or two other things the CFC does to promote chess.

It made me think of a poll like this:

1. I love Tony's Chess Talk poll but the CFC presidents/candidate's posts could use improvement.
2. I love Tony's Chess Talk poll and the CFC presidents/candidate's posts.
3. I think Tony's Chess Talk poll could use improvement but I love the CFC presidents/candidate's posts.
4. I think Tony's Chess Talk poll could use improvement and the CFC presidents/candidate's posts could use improvement.

:)

Both the magazine and the website could be vastly improved by posting the content from the magazine on the public website, instead of in a members' only section.

as both Bob, Garland and Egis have variously pointed out, there are:

1. 2 free issues per year of it online, and
2. regular free samples of it on the CFC Newsfeed, and
3. replayable games from it, also free on the Newsfeed; to which I'll add
4. translations of Newsfeed analysis in the FQE newsletter Echec .

whether the CFC makes the content of the CCN public or keeps it for members only isn't my call, but IMHO, that's already a lot of free samples for non-members.


I don't have distribution numbers for the CCN.
I've asked them about it, but so far no progress. It ought to be easy to add a counter to the PDF link, and even simpler just to get info about the difference in CFC bandwidth between a week when the CCN comes out and the week before (which would allow a good estimate of how much it is downloaded, since it is by far the largest single thing on the CFC site).

I'd probably be more inclined to pay membership dues to support a publically available site that promoted Canadian chess rather than for the right to obtain an email newsletter.... you might well generate more revenue by driving traffic to your site - some of the people you attracted would start or resume playing tournament chess, support the Olympic team, etc.

When I renewed my membership in the CFC last year, I could see only two benefits: rating calculations and the newsletter....
I have asked on here before about other benefits from a CFC membership, but so far nothing is even in 3rd place (in my opinion).

I agree that for most tournament players the ratings list and the newsletter (in that order :p) are the two main benefits.

There are other other things the CFC does which your membership money contributes to which could be candidates for the 3rd place on Kerry's list:

• collects and distributes $$ for players and coaches and HoDs to international youth events
• qualifies Canadian reps for international events

I expect to see many CFC members (and their parents) who care about those last two at the CYCC in Montreal this week.

One of the ways the CCN helps promote chess which I haven't seen mentioned here, is that it pays serious competitors for their annotations. This helps them offset their expenses. It's not even remotely enough for anyone to pay their bills, but it's a lot better than nothing -- I know this, because when I offer titled players nothing for their notes I get nothing from them. :p So, one way to think of the CCN (and the CFC membership that funds it) is as a way to redistribute money from paying members to the professional, semi-professional, and up-and-coming chess players who write for it.

This year, as editor, I have paid the following members of the 2014 Canadian Olympiad teams for their notes:

Bator Sambuev, Eric Hansen, Aman Hambleton, Alexandra Botez, Qiyu Zhou.

There have not been any (yet) from Anton Kovalyov, Leonid Gerzhoy and Yualing Yuan... but each one has told me they will send something.


So, Patrick, have I sold you a membership yet...

when I was a CFC member I never even had access to the magazine. I guess I was supposed to email the executive director and get a login, but I just never got around to it. You'd think that as a standard procedure, when a new member signs up, someone at the CFC would ensure that they had been assigned a login to the members' area, but I guess no one ever thought of doing this.

I noticed this last summer when I was collecting online entries for the 2013 CYCC and CO.
There was also another more confusing thing about the membership renewal page: sometimes the person paying for the membership would put the wrong name in as the member because the website membership subscription page didn't have an option for distinguishing between who payed and who was being paid for. (e.g. when a parent would buy a membership for a child)
I mentioned both these problems to the ED and Prez last summer...

Login vs email
Bob G. addressed this, but I'll reitterate...
I occasionally get email asking for login passwords from members who want the Newsletter. That's never been how it works. The ED has a list of emails of members -- certainly a very incomplete and often out-of-date list -- to whom he sends an email with a link to a page where the current CCN can be downloaded.
If you're a current CFC member and want the CCN, you have to send your email to the ED. Not me: I don't have the CFC membership list or emails. Send it to the ED: admin@cfc.ca


End of part 1...

[John Upper]

Re: Poll: CFC

Part II

NB: I had to split my post into two parts because:

a) I sooo long winded
b) the CFC site isn't the only one with user issues
c) a little of both (a) and (b).

I like the CFC newsletter:

• I feel that John Upper has done a great job with the variety of topics and extensive coverage.
• However, the level of explanation is aimed the same level in all articles- way over my head.
• Could the beginner and intermediate level material be outsourced?

A point by point rebuttal:


[*]I feel that John Upper has done a great job with the variety of topics and extensive coverage.

OK, you win this one.



[*]However, the level of explanation is aimed the same level in all articles- way over my head.

It's the first time I've heard this -- nobody said this in response to the poll I did over the winter and published in the 2014.04 CCN.

I would like to point out that the CCN has a range of skill levels served by its various annotators. Among just the regular contributors, some include lots of long variations of a type that can challenge ambitious players up to GMs (e.g. Eric and Razvan's notes), others include both analysis and lots of verbal explanation (e.g. Porper and Pechenkin). Deen tries to taylor his notes to the level of the players he's annotating -- more detail for the strong players, more about plans and basic errors for the weaker ones -- and this is why I'll continue to get him to annotate the youth events (including the 2014 CYCC for the July or Aug issue). In fact, I like all the notes these guys send, and I intend to keep getting more from them.

As background, apart from formatting, grammar and spelling, I make very few changes to the notes players submit. The only changes I regularly make are by adding variations when their notes end before their evaluation is clear to me. e.g. if they say "with a winning attack" and I don't see it, then I'll work it out on my computer and add a few moves and sometimes some words to indicate how to win. When I do that I almost always add the prefix "editor - ..." so you'll know who to blame.

Unless players ask I don't even make suggestions about how they should write about their games. The only exception so far was Daniel Abraham's report on his rd.1 draw with Li at Reykjavik (CCN 2014.03). I asked Daniel not to write variations but to tell us the story of what it was like to do something almost none of us well ever get to do: sit at board 1 (against a 2700 ) at of one of the most competitive open swiss events in the world... and not lose! DA did an excellent job with that, and it's one of my favourites of the first 12 months... and it certainly can't have been too difficult for anyone to understand.

I assume the problem is mostly with my own notes, which can be way way detailed. I try not to write like that all the time, and when I annotate much lower rated players I try to follow Deen's example and taylor the notes to the players. But...

...annotating for the CCN is pretty much the only time I can spend on chess. I've played much less chess this year, and I haven't rebuild or even reviewed my repertoire for over a year, so the only time I get to do anything like serious chess studying is when I annotate games. Some of that studying shows up in my notes; not all -- I 'kill my darlings' to make space -- but maybe too much for some readers. If so, sorry to be so overwhelming...
Usually when I do this for a mini-opening survey it's simply because I had to do the work to orient myself before commenting on the middle-game, and once I've sifted through opening books and databases and collected the essentials I flatter myself to think it might be useful to anyone else who wants to learn that opening. FWIW, I happen to know two juniors who used my CCN analysis of the Latvian Gambit in CCN 2013.11 to smash it.

Still... it's absolutely not necessary to read more than you like [it won't be on a test at the end], and there will be a bit more variety in the next couple of issues, when some of games annotated by the kids who played in the 2014 NAYCC.

Anyway, this is still an interesting problem and an area to work on. I guess I'd like some more detail. Tony, could you send me an example (or a link to some examples) of analysis which you do like and which you feel is well suited for your level and interest?


[*]Could the beginner and intermediate level material be outsourced?

Absolutely. I would love that.
...but we can afford to do it only if they're prepared to annotate games at the rate I've been paying myself (a little under $2/game, I think).

Any takers?

[Before you ask: direct notes from the Fritz auto-annotate or blundercheck functions are not an acceptable substitute for real notes in the CCN.]

I think the CFC website is poor:

• I'd like to see simple functionalities such as rating progress graphs and head-to-head records.
• It's not clear where to find something... I believe the topics need to be branched out ala "Kotov style"
• I don't understand why TDs have to submit crosstables through e-mail. They should be able to upload them through the website where the Executive Director can approve or reject with the help of simple validation code (e.g. player ABC is not from the same province could trigger a warning flag)

I have no idea about the technical requirements for running the rating database, but agree with the first two.

Here are some of my suggestions for the CFC website (in addition to the ones about rebuilding the membership renewal pages mentioned earlier and which have been partly addressed, AFAIK)

First: Appearance.
Charcol and Grey??? Even accountancy websites don't pick colour-schemes that boring! Maybe a funeral home specializing in the dignified last rites of insurance agents...

Second: Layout.
the menu at the top was obviously not designed by regular users of the site. The "upcoming events" link should be top-level, not somewhere under "player info".
And why do "Who's Who" and "History" have two top-level links when they cover the same topic? (are they that busy?)

Third: current info
both the Clubs list and the tournaments list are regularly out of date.
This matters a lot during the busy season because some BIG events are not even listed: e.g. the Kitchener Chess Festival --- which includes the North American Junior championship with a guaranteed IM title and GM norms -- starts July 30 and wasn't on the CFC site yesterday.

Fourth: the site is really slow...

Fifth: once sped up so database searches are feasible, graphs, top 10s etc would be nice.


PROs:
#1. It's worth reminding ourselves that long long ago (1980s-90s) we couldn't see any ratings or CFC info without waiting for the newsletter or visiting the store. Now it is possible to see event cross-tables from the previous weekend, and to see rating lists divided by province, age and gender.

#2. It doesn't carry obscene photoshopped pictures of Canadian chess players, or homophobic slurs against chess organizers, or unsubstantiated claims about a "thoroughly documented expose of CFC wrong-doing" which always dissolves into another rehash of Barry T. and the OCA...

[yes, I know some of you consider #2 a "con". :o]


Enough for now.

BTW, I sent the most recent CCN in yesterday (97 pages, 10Mb, 49 games/studies)
I expect the next one will be done in a week, and possibly out by the end of July.... if it's sunny in Montreal.

[Kerry Liles]

Re: Poll: CFC

Thanks John for your thoughts and ideas... I should have made it more clear that I would consider the (your) magazine far ahead of the ratings
as the main benefit of belonging to the CFC and paying for a membership. Sorry that wasn't explicit.

Your point about the fostering of higher-level chess via the payment for annotated games is quite valid although I suspect the overall total is
not likely to be a significant amount of money. Promotion of the game and events within Canada is also a worthwhile byproduct of the newsletter.

Thank you for producing this excellent magazine and thank you for working for $2/hour ( :) )
I have a rather good idea from personal experience how much effort goes into such a production and you have my respect.

[John Upper]

Re: Poll: CFC

Thanks John for your thoughts and ideas... I should have made it more clear that I would consider the (your) magazine far ahead of the ratings as the main benefit of belonging to the CFC and paying for a membership. Sorry that wasn't explicit.

Thanks, that's flattering. I think getting to play rated tournaments is the main benefit of a CFC membership, so I would actually rank them in the other order. I put the little -- :p --- emoji after my remark because the amount of extra work it would take to make the CCN the main benefit of CFC membership is way beyond what I can do. I wasn't sticking my tongue out at you, but in exhaustion thinking about the effort.

Your point about the fostering of higher-level chess via the payment for annotated games is quite valid although I suspect the overall total is not likely to be a significant amount of money. Promotion of the game and events within Canada is also a worthwhile byproduct of the newsletter.

Agree about both.

Thank you for producing this excellent magazine and thank you for working for $2/hour ( :) )
I have a rather good idea from personal experience how much effort goes into such a production and you have my respect.

Hold on a sec... the "$2 per" number I mentioned was an estimate of the amount I pay myself to annotate games for the CCN ($2 per game), and most of those games take more than an hour to annotate. But I also get paid for doing the "editor work" for the CCN: collecting games, selecting the good games, finding and editing photos, ID-ing people in the photos for captions, collecting the basic info about all the tournaments and background info about events mentioned in the articles, finding writers, politely reminding late submitters, cajoling late submitters, badgering late submitters... then doing all the layout work.
Annotating games is extra.
I haven't actually counted the number of hours I spend on the CCN. I estimate it comes out to U$8/hour, but I'm afraid it might be much less... It certainly was much less for the first few, but I've gotten faster at layout and photo editing since then.

[Tony Li]

Re: Poll: CFC

John,

Could you please check your inbox?

Thanks.

[Bob Gillanders]

Re: Poll: CFC

I don't have distribution numbers for the CCN.
I've asked them about it, but so far no progress. It ought to be easy to add a counter to the PDF link, and even simpler just to get info about the difference in CFC bandwidth between a week when the CCN comes out and the week before (which would allow a good estimate of how much it is downloaded, since it is by far the largest single thing on the CFC site).

Well Johnny, some of that technical stuff after "it ought to be easy" (but it doesn't like it is) is over my head, but what I do know is that the email with the link to the April issue was sent to 1,484 members. 8 bounced which you advised me of (thank you). So we have email addresses now for 78% of members. (I remember a time when that percentage was much smaller. So thank you Gerry and Michael) :)

[John Upper]

Re: Poll: CFC

the email with the link to the April issue was sent to 1,484 members...

That's how many invites were sent; I want to know how many people went to the party.

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

Re: Poll: CFC

That's how many invites were sent; I want to know how many people went to the party.

I download for several my devices...