2018 FIDE Elections

[Vlad Drkulec]

At this point, the only candidate that seems unsuitable comes up short in the diplomacy category. I did get the chance to test Nigel Short's appeal to young women who don't know much about chess. They rated him 1200. This unscientific survey had a sample of two being the young woman from France and another young woman from Toronto who was a ph'd candidate in mathematics who shared an airBNB with me over the course of the CYCC and Canadian Open. We were in separate rooms but shared a kitchen, bathroom and living room the last of which none of us ever used.

[Vlad Drkulec]

Claim of bribery are complete nonsense. The sequence of events was that the board voted actually at least twice because the composition of the board changed over the course of the FIDE campaign. There were one or two abstentions but everyone who cast a vote voted for Kirsan. Before announcing our decision we talked to the campaigns. Sponsorship of norm events came up in the conversation. No one from the federation received any benefit for their vote or endorsement which had already been decided before any discussions of sponsorship. As far as I know, the vote by the CFC board was communicated to the Kirsan people. Ultimately the Kitchener Chessfest and the Alberta Chess Association received the funds and ran tournaments with those funds though I am not certain that the funds fully covered the costs of the tournaments. Alberta received the funds after the CMA was not able to put together a tournament on a timely basis after initially winning the bid.

[Sid Belzberg]

Your description of events does not comport with what you posted here on chesstalk at the time nor does it comport with the CFC governors/voting members posts from their forum at the time ( one of the governors/voting member forwarded me those posts for some reason). Once again you have not answered my request for transparency, Documentation of 1) The FIDE/Kirsan Makro $80,000.00 sponsorship deal that you proudly talked about here on chesstalk at the time (you had no choice when another governor "spilled the beans") and 2) Documentation where FIDE/Kirsan claim financial difficulties did not allow them to complete the obligation for the remaining 60K as per your original chesstalk post about this.
Whatever credibility you had left if any is evaporating at an alarming rate.

[Vlad Drkulec]

The voting member made libelous statements which he backed down from. You are repeating them.

I am not focused on living in the past but what is clear in the last decade Kirsan Ilyumzhinov contributed more to Canadian chess than you did. Sad but true.

[Sid Belzberg]

The voting member made libelous statements which he backed down from. You are repeating them.

I am not focused on living in the past but what is clear in the last decade Kirsan Ilyumzhinov contributed more to Canadian chess than you did. Sad but true.

You are the one that brought up the past by changing the narrative of why FIDE did not honor the deal you spoke so highly of that caused my transparency request in the first place.

You are the one making libelous comments, not me. I simply have made a request for transparency that you refuse to comply with. You are the one that keeps changing the story with your posts, not me.

You threatened to sue Felix and in fact Felix responded by in effect saying ok I won't press it but I still think it is a bribe.You might think you can intimidate Felix with threats but you do not intimidate me. Reread the thread, he did not back down from his opinion, an opinion that I happen to agree with.I saved the original thread in case you can't find it. So far nothing you have posted will change my opinion and in fact has only strengthened my opinion by your total lack of transparency and your numerous attempts to deflect from my request for information caused by your inconsistent narrative.

Do you really think that the CFC endorsing a ex dictator who's political aids murdered a journalist, who's regime consigned mothers under his regime to mental hospitals for complaining about not being able to feed their children , who is under US sanctions for allegedly facilitating transactions with Assad and ISIS through a Russian bank he is involved with , who is closely allied with Putin, claims that he is abducted by Aliens help's your credibility or the CFC's?

Do you think that by posting here and saying FIDE could not honor it's deal because of tight finances and then later posting here that FIDE did not honor it's deal because CFC/organizers did not set up FIDE sponsored tournaments helps your credibility or the CFC's? Especially when the CFC FIDE rep posted saying that the lack of funds was the problem, not lack of organizing tournaments, contradicting what you posted.

I don't think Anton found your "contributor" Kirsan very helpful to Canadian Chess when he was in effect kicked out of the FIDE World cup (after beating a ex world champion!) for no reason.

In fact, you have yourself to blame for me not making recent contributions to Canadian Chess that by the way when I was involved my contribution was far more then the lousy 80k in sponsorship that turned out to only be 20K.

Here you are still supporting Kirsan's close ex partner for the last two decades. The only reason Makro abandoned Kirsan was that he had no choice. He was quite content to participate in the horrible worldwide corruption that took place in the FIDE 2014 elections before the US sanctions were put on. Of course, no one should be surprised that he is strongly endorsed by you. Supporting Makro is in fact living in a very shameful past.

Congrats Vlad, you sold the CFC's reputation down the river for 20K and continue the same stupid path.

[Vlad Drkulec]

I have not changed my story at all. You are asking for things that do not exist and you are asking for them in a hostile manner and in somewhat hostile chesstalk environment which has no official standing from the point of view of the CFC. If you really wanted more illumination you would be asking for them in the right forum free of claims of bribery.

The CFC's reputation is just fine. We declined to support an awful candidate for FIDE president in 2014 (not unlike most of the chess world) and you just can't get over the fact that we could not make the leap of faith that things would be different with Garry this time. The arrogance would be under control. It obviously was not under control. The USCF made that leap of faith but the CFC being more cynical and having had dealings with Mr. Kasparov in the past was more wary.

For something to be bribery it should involve some benefit to the persons allegedly being bribed. It seems to be your position that getting an event which benefited neither myself nor any member of the executive constitutes a bribe. I like the Alberta Chess Association and I like the Kitchener Chessfest but the claim that we somehow altered our behaviour because of the sponsorship is frankly ridiculous and these types of deranged attacks which seem more appropriate to spurned lovers than adult men do not cast you in a very good light.

Sponsorship funds are not hard to come by for the CFC in this current environment. What is hard to come up with is good organizers who can run with the sponsorship opportunities which we uncover in a matter of course. The attacks of you and the other naysayers just make it more likely that you are going to be stuck with me for a long, long time until I die or tire of the nonsense because there are not many willing to put up with the stream of abuse over so little.

We are supporting Mr. Makropoulos because he seems to be the best candidate at this preliminary stage. Being a capable number two is not a disqualifying fact. If we came out in support of Dvorkovich which potentially could still happen you would accuse us of being in bed with Vladimir Putin.

You want us to support Nigel Short but you ignore the message that this would be sending to our girls. Half my students are girls and I could not look them in the eye if we supported someone who behaves that way towards young women. Most of them are of course too young to understand the nuances of his behaviour but the response of twenty something girls seems to be universal abhorrence of his behaviour because it is something that is all too common in the world at large and sadly in the chess world as well.

[Vlad Drkulec]

You threatened to sue Felix and in fact Felix responded by in effect saying ok I won't press it but I still think it is a bribe.You might think you can intimidate Felix with threats but you do not intimidate me. Reread the thread, he did not back down from his opinion, an opinion that I happen to agree with.I saved the original thread in case you can't find it. So far nothing you have posted will change my opinion and in fact has only strengthened my opinion by your total lack of transparency and your numerous attempts to deflect from my request for information caused by your inconsistent narrative.

I am not trying to intimidate you. I am simply responding to your increasingly shrill and irrational attacks.

I can't afford to sue billionaire Sid Belzberg pretty much whatever he does to me though I can embarrass billionaire Sid Belzberg by responding to his irrational posts in a rational way. Billionaire bully Sid Belzberg will not succeed in bending me to his will so I would advise him to stop trying.

I have been through an internet related lawsuit when the law was much less favourable to the plaintiff. The outcome was successful in that we got the defendants to stop doing what they were doing. Lawsuits mostly benefit lawyers. In Quebec there was at least one major judgement where the court conceded that the claims were true but still awarded major damages to the plaintiff. I was not entirely happy with the process in the U.S. though I was happy with the outcome which according to friends of the defendents put them in terror of losing their house and all of their assets if the matter proceeded to court. Their moment of collapse came when they realized that the dirty tricks they thought that we were behind clearly did not lead anywhere near us and thus led their position to be indefensible.

[Vlad Drkulec]

Why are you relitigating the 2014 campaign in 2018? Your arguments got no traction then and they are unlikely to gain traction now.

[Sid Belzberg]

I have not changed my story at all. You are asking for things that do not exist and you are asking for them in a hostile manner and in somewhat hostile chesstalk environment which has no official standing from the point of view of the CFC. If you really wanted more illumination you would be asking for them in the right forum free of claims of bribery.

The CFC's reputation is just fine. We declined to support an awful candidate for FIDE president in 2014 (not unlike most of the chess world) and you just can't get over the fact that we could not make the leap of faith that things would be different with Garry this time. The arrogance would be under control. It obviously was not under control. The USCF made that leap of faith but the CFC being more cynical and having had dealings with Mr. Kasparov in the past was more wary.

For something to be bribery it should involve some benefit to the persons allegedly being bribed. It seems to be your position that getting an event which benefited neither myself nor any member of the executive constitutes a bribe. I like the Alberta Chess Association and I like the Kitchener Chessfest but the claim that we somehow altered our behaviour because of the sponsorship is frankly ridiculous and these types of deranged attacks which seem more appropriate to spurned lovers than adult men do not cast you in a very good light.

Sponsorship funds are not hard to come by for the CFC in this current environment. What is hard to come up with is good organizers who can run with the sponsorship opportunities which we uncover in a matter of course. The attacks of you and the other naysayers just make it more likely that you are going to be stuck with me for a long, long time until I die or tire of the nonsense because there are not many willing to put up with the stream of abuse over so little.

We are supporting Mr. Makropoulos because he seems to be the best candidate at this preliminary stage. Being a capable number two is not a disqualifying fact. If we came out in support of Dvorkovich which potentially could still happen you would accuse us of being in bed with Vladimir Putin.

You want us to support Nigel Short but you ignore the message that this would be sending to our girls. Half my students are girls and I could not look them in the eye if we supported someone who behaves that way towards young women. Most of them are of course too young to understand the nuances of his behaviour but the response of twenty something girls seems to be universal abhorrence of his behaviour because it is something that is all too common in the world at large and sadly in the chess world as well.

I have not changed my story at all. You are asking for things that do not exist and you are asking for them in a hostile manner and in somewhat hostile chesstalk environment which has no official standing from the point of view of the CFC. If you really wanted more illumination you would be asking for them in the right forum free of claims of bribery.

You certainly have changed your story here many times with your posts chesstalk as outlined previously. The things that I say do not exist existed according to your own posts here. You took on it yourself to deem a reply on your CFC chess forum as "libelous" and delete it. The post that you deleted stated the CFC supported an ex dictator of a murderous regime. I never had any issues about the disposition of the initial payment made (under the "non existant" deal according to your ever changing narrative). I do have issues with members of the executive who benefit via Arbitration jobs in FIDE sponsored tournaments who do not recuse themselves in the 2014 election although they did in the 2010 election for exactly this reason.
The CFC voting members should get rid of the lot of you and put in Bob Gilanders as President to administrate the thing. I don't really give a damn who you or the CFC support's. It is the CFC's loss, not mine. FUBAR!

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

You want us to support Nigel Short but you ignore the message that this would be sending to our girls. Half my students are girls and I could not look them in the eye if we supported someone who behaves that way towards young women. Most of them are of course too young to understand the nuances of his behaviour but the response of twenty something girls seems to be universal abhorrence of his behaviour because it is something that is all too common in the world at large and sadly in the chess world as well.

Tell us about "behaves that way". I only remember he wrote about differences.

imho:

Dvorkovich seems out of the favor of Putin and Co - removed from the Minister cabinet, and send to fight for the chess seat.
Makro - he is not a house cleaner being a part of the house for ages.

[Vlad Drkulec]

The things that I say do not exist existed according to your own posts here.

Lets not get into the whole debate about the existence of God again. God exists. Get over it.

[Sid Belzberg]

Lets not get into the whole debate about the existence of God again. God exists. Get over it.

Now your replies border on trolling so this conversation is over.

[Vlad Drkulec]

Now your replies border on trolling so this conversation is over.

This does not break my heart.

[Sid Belzberg]

This does not break my heart.

This Will
https://www.canadiancharitylaw.ca/bl...dian_charities

[Vlad Drkulec]

Tell us about "behaves that way". I only remember he wrote about differences.
.

That's the thing, you are basing your analysis on only part of the picture. I am basing my analysis on a more complete picture including first hand reports from affected people and first hand reports from individuals on the chess circuit who have seen these behaviours.

I cannot blame Mr. Short for being attracted to young women who are extremely beautiful. Most heterosexual males are. In most cases the young woman gets to decide when the behaviour crosses over into what is offensive. When that line is crossed it is often possible to cross back with the right blend of humour and charm. Its even possible to occupy the dirty old man niche but sometimes things go awry and no amount of charm can put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Seduction is a dance of negotiation. It is best if the parties to the negotiation are operating from positions of equality and equal power.

imho:

Dvorkovich seems out of the favor of Putin and Co - removed from the Minister cabinet, and send to fight for the chess seat.
Makro - he is not a house cleaner being a part of the house for ages.

Not every house cleaner is a good house cleaner.