Online Canadian Qualifier (Zonal)

[Victor Plotkin]

Likely, some writers have serious problems with reading comprehension.

[Mario Moran-Venegas]

Victor I believe you should not let her of the hook . She ("journalist" for chessbase)should apologise. She is in fact saying you provided her with incomplete statements:"I received the information directly from the Canadian Chess Federation. Actually, they did not precise who is the winner of the Zonal and who is the 'joiner' but just supplied me the names of 'the winners who got spots for WC'. However, in the lists of participants on the World Cup's official website (https://worldcup.fide.com/), Bareev and Demchenko are listed as the Zonal's winners and Preotu and Zhou as Federation Spots."

[Mario Moran-Venegas]

She is right about the fide website though.

[Frank Dixon]

So, I know this was the 2021 Canadian Zonal and World Cup Qualifier, but does it also serve as the OFFICIAL Canadian Championship for 2021? Or has that been discussed?

[Victor Plotkin]

This was not a Canadian Championship or Canadian Closed - 2021. The winner of this tournament would not automatically get a spot for National/Woman Canadian team on the next Olympiad (hopefully, Moscow, 2022). We discussed this issue with other CFC directors before the start of this tournament, and our approach was that the winner of Canadian Closed -2022 (hopefully, Apr 2022, Kingston) would get the spot.

[Victor Plotkin]

She is right about the fide website though.

I sent her an email and kindly ask her to fix these mistakes.

About the FIDE website. After a very long negotiations with FIDE, CFC got 2 spots for World Cup and Women World Cup, but technically, FIDE still requires that any Zonal tournament must be:

1. Hybrid or OTB
2. Regular time control.

Canada got 2 spots and that was exactly the goal of the Qualifier. The distribution between Zonal 2.2 spot and Federation Canada spot was really random and has absolutely no impact on Canadian players.

[Victor Plotkin]

After a long and not always pleasant conversation with Chessbase, the new article is much better.

https://en.chessbase.com/post/asian-and-canadian-zonals-2021

[Sam Sharpe]

Thank you for your perseverance, Victor.

[Hans Jung]

Thank you for setting the record straight Victor.