Clarification for Quitting the Online Olympiad

[Victor Itkine]

Thanks to Victor Plotkin for sharing some details about his initial plan, who should play 18 games on the first two boards. Victor didn't have to disclose this now. Captain is not accountable to the players and the public. Only to CFC management.

I believe, this thread went to a wrong direction. Instead of explanations from the Captain, which are unnecessary in this situation, I would prefer to hear what the consequences will be faced by the player who violated Olympiad contract. This is what CFC has to decide now. If it happened in one of the major leagues (NHL, NBA, NFL, etc.), the player who quieted the competition in such a fashion would be suspended for at least 10 games.

I agree with Réjean Tremblay's suggestion that GM Kaiqi should lose the privilege to represent Canada in any International competition. This matter should be discussed by CFC Executives or/and on the next CFC meeting. Is that enough? I am not sure, because GM Kaiqi most likely will not be able to qualify for the National team in subsequent Olympiads. I would additionally suggest CFC considering from 6 to 12 months suspension for participation in all tournaments where CFC membership is required, including next Canadian Closed.

In order to prevent similar situations in the future, I'll bring a motion for the next CFC meeting providing automatic penalties for players who quit their performance for the National team in the middle of the tournament without a valid reason.

Victor Itkine
CFC Governor.

[Frank Dixon]

I am disappointed in this situation, leaving Canada without a backup plan in the middle of a tournament, which will have a major impact on our efforts to perform well, and advance further in the competition.

Without assigning blame to anyone, the online Olympiad concept is a new one, forced in 2020 by COVID-19, so I believe that more effort and time needed to be devoted, to coordinate all of the elements together. However, with both GM Kaiqi Yang and captain Victor Plotkin being Toronto residents, they could have perhaps met face-to-face to try to resolve this situation, before GM Yang made his decision to withdraw from the team.

I will say this: I have been very impressed with the previous efforts by captain Victor Plotkin on behalf of Team Canada in Olympiads, as significant successes have been attained. I got to know GM Kaiqi Yang slightly at the 2019 Kingston Zonal, where I was part of the organizing / directing team; I was impressed with his play and conduct at that time. As well, CFC President Vlad Drkulec deserves some credit for Canadian successes during this period, since he has been in his post for something like 7 or 8 years now.

Best to all,
Frank Dixon
NTD, Kingston

[Kaiqi Yang]

I received an email from the CFC president and have decided to respect and follow his advice.

It is never my intention to involve in situations like this. But sometimes when things happen, I have to stand up for myself.

I will not comment further on this post anymore.

[Kaiqi Yang]

Well I'm sorry Mr. Yang for your loss. It does seem poor that Board 2 (as order was posted) only played 1/3 games. There seems to have been no communication by either you or Mr. Plotkin about that strategy. You are partly to blame for not clarifying your intentions to play 2 or 3 games a day.

But, if maintained, you would have had one game later in the day, and one on Sunday (and possibly more). Three games as a result from your hard work preparing. Then you could have complained to the CFC afterwards.

But, now, by your own decision, you only have one game played and are destroying your reputation. In the middle of a tournament with no other sub players available, you walked out on all of your teammates and country. Remember to tell your students that you are a quitter.

1 out of 4 games in the first 4 rounds, maybe read the whole story before you post a comment here.

[Victor Plotkin]

Kaiqi mentioned that he has a wonderful score against Mark and I. What can I say? Kaiqi is a very good chess player, but these numbers don't prove any point.

For example my score against Kamsky is 4-0 in my favor.... Doesn't mean that I am a much better player.

[Victor Plotkin]

I mentioned to Kaiqi in my e-mail before his surprising decision to quit the tournament that I expected him, Raja and Mark to play 4 games each, while Nikolay should play 6 games. I added, "That doesn't mean that every player plays the initially determined number of games. Whoever performs better - plays more, whoever performs below his rating - plays less. I used the same approach on the last 4 Olympiads with different line-ups."

As one player mentioned "it's impossible to please everyone... A captain has to be given some discretion"

I can explain my every decision, one after another, I just don't think it's necessary now.

[Erik Malmsten]

Well I'm sorry Mr. Yang for your loss. It does seem poor that Board 2 (as order was posted) only played 1/3 games. There seems to have been no communication by either you or Mr. Plotkin about that strategy. You are partly to blame for not clarifying your intentions to play 2 or 3 games a day.

But, if maintained, you would have had one game later in the day, and one on Sunday (and possibly more). Three games as a result from your hard work preparing. Then you could have complained to the CFC afterwards.

But, now, by your own decision, you only have one game played and are destroying your reputation. In the middle of a tournament with no other sub players available, you walked out on all of your teammates and country. Remember to tell your students that you are a quitter.

[Kaiqi Yang]

"
Hello,


As you probably know, FIDE is trying to organize Online Olympiad 2020.

https://www.fide.com/news/608

Canada will probably play in Division 2 or in the Top Division, that means from Aug 12 or Aug 19.

Each team will consist of 12 players (6 reserves), and only 4 adult males (2 reserves). In case we get more than 4 positive responses from your group the CFC chooses 4 players by the last FIDE rating.

Are you interested in participating?

The deadline for registration is Jul 13, we don't have too much time to submit our line-up. Please response ASAP.


Victor Plotkin

"

This was the initial email I received from Victor.


If you were using CFC and I would not be in the team as a result, I am OK with it. I was mainly playing outside of Canada and I don't quite track my CFC rating.

If you formed the team by FIDE and listed me as "Board 2" but somehow you decided using CFC during the tournament, you have to communicate with me first before this tournament even begin, I would have my realistic expectations.

I suggest you read the FIDE's official guidelines and distinguish the main players and reserve players properly.

Also funny stuff here, you and your son should know me better than any other players in Canada since you lost me 0-3 and Mark lost me 0-3, in a total of merely 6 games we met in the past five years, even couldn't get half-point from me. You don't have to show how strong your son is. I know it for sure.


Kaiqi

[Victor Plotkin]

Continuation...

3. Some funny stuff.

Kaiqi ties all his problem in this tournament with myself as a captain. Without me he had no chance to even make the team.

When we started talking about this event almost 2 month ago, we discussed what rating we should use for qualification matters. Vlad Drkulec had the opinion that "The rules as written refer to CFC rating for new tournaments. This has been our interpretation for the last seven years." My opinion was that it is better to use Olympic rules (FIDE rating for Open boards, average FIDE-CFC rating for other boards). While Vlad's approach was very possible as well, in the end we moved on with my proposal.

What would have happened had we accepted Vlad's proposal? As some of you know, Kaiqi's CFC rating is extremely low for a GM, much lower than that of any other Canadian GM, lower than most Canadian IMs and even lower than the CFC rating of some young strong FMs. He just had no chance to make the team.

As many strong players decided not to play in this tournament, Nikolay has the highest CFC among players who accepted the invitation.

N.Noritsyn - 2615

After that we sent an e-mail to the next 8 in line. 4 of them (K.Yang, R.Panjwani, M.Plotkin and A.Samsonkin) accepted. I was forced to send an e-mail to Artiom explaining that he could not make the Team.
But if we use CFC rating only, the picture is different.

M.Plotkin - 2549
A.Samsonkin - 2534
R.Panjwani - 2524
S.Thavandiran - 2501
O.-K.Chiku-Ratte - 2478
Zong Yu - 2477

K.Yang - 2475

So, even if everyone else declined the invitation (except Nikolay, Mark, Artiom and Raja), Kaiqi is number 5. And we still have some players ahead of him, to which I didn't send the invitation. Furthermore, if I really wanted Mark to be a member of the team, I would have accepted Vlad's offer to use just the CFC rating because Mark's is relatively high.

[Kaiqi Yang]

Thank you, Victor. Why not be direct here and explain the considerations behind your decisions regarding the player list?

I am sure you are a competent captain with convincing experience leading Team Canada in the past. Just you are not being professional this time when your son is involved. What do you think?

[Kaiqi Yang]

Hi Vlad,

My apologies that I didn’t reach out to you at the first time regarding this issue.

Since I came to Canada in 2015 as a newcomer, you and the CFC executives are always being supportive. I sincerely appreciate it.

Kaiqi

[Victor Plotkin]

Initially I did not want to respond to this thread, but unfortunately I have no choice.

A few points:

1. I don't remember any conflict with Kaiqi. Actually, we never talked with one another except for saying hello and handshake before and after our game. I know absolutely nothing about his conflict with other members of the Plotkin family. Kaiqi is a chess tutor, as well as Mark is, so they possibly compete for the best conditions, talented students, better rates with other strong coaches in GTA like E.Bareev, N.Noritsyn, A.Samsonkin, Q.Zhou, G.MIlicevic, J.Ochkoos and many, many others.

As Marks's dad, I am very happy about his ability to make money in this tough economical environment. I am sure he is a good coach and kids like him. I am pretty positive that Kaigi has enough students as well.

2. About being "unprofessional captain". For the last 10 years I was 4 times the captain of the Open Olympiad Team (2012, 2014, 2016, 2018), twice a captain of Canadian Team at the World Team Senior Championship (2018, 2020) and once a captain for 2(!) Canadian Teams at U-16 Olympiad (2014). I don't know if any person in Canada (except maybe Evgeny Bareev) has more experience as a captain.

I remember that in 2012 E.Porper called me "incompetent amateur". I didn't like that because I always wanted to be a "competent amateur", but absolutely it was more logical to call me "incompetent" in 2012 than now.

[Vlad Drkulec]

It was with great sadness that I read about this situation. I was greatly distracted by the CFC election where I experienced an unexpected insurgency from within the ranks of the CFC executive and in one case the ranks of my friends. I don't think much good comes from presenting this on Chesstalk. The trolls will arrive soon enough. In the future, I would hope that when something like this arises an email might be sent to whoever is the CFC president, by someone who is involved in this situation. I apologize for not being more involved as I was offline for much of Friday driving my mother to London for a CAT scan and there was an election which was closer than it should have been and so I was not checking chesstalk.

[Kaiqi Yang]

Yes, I definitely know it is a privilege to represent Canada. I spent my whole summer attending online tournaments as much as I could to prepare for this tournament as I said earlier.

However, I was unbelievablly shocked to see how unprofessional a captain can act like this in such an important international tournament for his personal reasons. Is what his doing really for the good of Team Canada?

I know exactly what criticisms I would face when made my decision to quit. I already did my best to maintain my professionalism and stay calm for the first three rounds. But when all the time I committed, my efforts, my expectations are played around by our unprofessional captain with 0% COMMUNICATION regarding his decisions, who to protect my rights as a player to be treated fairly?

Again, I quit hoping in the future, such things will not happen again, and all the players will be treated fairly. Otherwise, where our future goes?

Kaiqi

[Réjean Tremblay]

It's a privilege and an honor to represent our country. A player quitting during an international competition like Olympiad representing Canada without very serious reason (major health problems of a spouse, child or himself or death of a family member for exemple) should lost this privilege forever. My 2 cents opinion.

Réjean Tremblay, Quebec city