A new strategic plan for the Chess Federation of Canada

[David Ottosen]

Players are driven by ego. The CFC should be looking at fodder to feed that need, as should the larger provincial federations.

I couldn't disagree more with your central premise. If you promise ego boost from chess, you are making a promise you can't deliver upon, which leads to quick abandonment of the product.

Classical OTB chess should be promoting the challenge and the difficulty, not that you're going to objectively succeed. Because you won't; you might have relative success, you can play a good game, you can outperform your rating, but you aren't going to go win the weekend swiss if there's a bunch of masters playing.

[Vlad Drkulec]

A lot of interesting and useful ideas in your post Mr. Crowhurst.

My own perspective on the loss of juniors as high school gets more intense and jockeying for position at Universities becomes more of an issue is that we need to instill a love for chess which somehow compels them to return to chess once adulthood kicks in.

The statistics that would be needed might come from a new rating system. A youtube channel would require some of the same skills that many of our top players that are active in this sphere already have.

[J. Crowhurst]

Players are driven by ego. The CFC should be looking at fodder to feed that need, as should the larger provincial federations.

One element might be a web page that is a bit more professional than the current one, and a lot more interactive. It might have a lot more content that is dedicated to the accomplishments of lower-rated players. An example would be, alongside the lists of top players, juniors, and other age brackets, have lists of the players who were top ten in rating increase from the previous month, or a list of the biggest upsets in the past month. Perhaps the latter might link to a 10 minute video that covers a few of those games, with analysis by somebody titled of the key positions in the game. The video content might also include a brief interview with the winner of one of those games.

Along the same lines, the CFC might consider having a YouTube page. One possible source of video content could be chess tournaments themselves, with a videographer present approved by the CFC to shoot footage of gameplay from a distance, and narrative or interview content between rounds. Whatever. Something that the players who played in the tournament might watch in the hopes of seeing themselves or their friends mentioned. I'm thinking a 44 minute piece structured similarly to those shows that cover poker tournaments that consist of play, profiles of players, analysis, and interviews. There would be a learning curve, but if the people making that content get good enough, it isn't entirely unthinkable that one of the sports or fringe TV channels might be interested in buying a package of 10 episodes that they can air at 3 am (3:30 in Newfoundland, ha ha). The provincial federations would have to be on board for this, obviously.

The CFC might consider promoting the awarding of trophies or medals as prizes for all sections and rating groups, and in particular trophies for top juniors in each section. Trophies become a permanent reminder of a player's success, and perhaps more importantly, for juniors it's a permanent reminder for the player's parents of their child's success, and a positive reinforcement for them to encourage the player's future participation.

Here in B.C., there used to be a weekend three day swiss tournament, the B.C. Amateur Championship, held concurrently with the B.C. Closed Championship. Anybody who was not eligible by rating to play in the B.C. Championship could enter the Amateur. Over the years, there was discussion about having the winner of the Amateur be granted a seat in the following year's B.C. Closed. I don't know if they ever tried that, I didn't stick around long enough. I only know they stopped organizing the Amateur event some years ago. The CFC (and provinces) might consider doing such a thing for their respective championships. The promotional value of having a... [insert favoured term here] ...in a provincial or national championship would be great, and the presence of such a player would be doing little violence to the reputation of the top event.

The unspoken undercurrent in all of these suggestions is that we are trying to retain the younger players for as long as possible until they graduate from high school or university and enter the workforce. Once they are working for a living, their priorities will change, and the influence of the actions CFC et al will be diminished in terms of getting them to continue turning out.

[Vlad Drkulec]

When asking students to evaluate a position, I sometimes ask them to imagine if they were not bound by the rules but could simply pick up a piece or several pieces and move them anywhere on the board, which pieces would they move and where would they put them?

A similar exercise in the context of developing a strategic plan would be to imagine an ideal end state for chess in Canada. What would that look like?

[Vlad Drkulec]

Yes, there are many inequities built into the current system.

[Dilip Panjwani]

Vlad Drkulec posted:

Ozempic cost is very high.



All the essential scientific discoveries for drugs is done in Universities, from whom the drug companies buy it for a paltry sum, and then fleece society with the monopoly. Instead, University research needs to be appropriately rewarded from taxes, and then made available to whoever wants to use it. That would certainly bring down the prices...

[Vlad Drkulec]

I like this discussion and I agree with the overall vision of CFC. I also agree that CFC needs a fresh strategic direction backed by strong market research. However, let's not think that having a well-documented strategic plan will all of a sudden elevate the CFC or solve the current issues with chess in Canada. Here are a few points to consider as we look for ways to accomplish the outlined vision for CFC:

• Money: I've not seen CFC's financials but I'm pretty sure CFC primarily relies on membership dues and rating fees as primary sources of revenue. There is no chance you will reach your objectives by relying on membership dues except you 10X the fees you charge which I don't recommend. CFC must be focused on attracting sponsorship dollars, private and government funding if you want to have an impact on chess in Canada.

• Rating fees and membership dues are the primary sources of revenue for the CFC. Our constituents and customers are primarily serious chess players who play in tournaments.
  
  I think growing membership numbers will help. Objectives need to be defined before we can decide whether we can achieve them under the current cost structure. Attracting sponsorship dollars is not that hard if you have that objective and set out in that direction. Currently the sponsorship dollars are mostly generated by approaching local tourism bureaus. They do not go to the CFC so we benefit only indirectly but they do help the local organizer by funding tournaments. Typically these bureaus provide some logistic support and funding for tournaments is typically in the $5000 to $20,000 range.
  
  

• Leadership: We do have great people who love the game of chess and have dedicated so much of their time to serving the chess community in Canada. If we continue with the status quo, we will continue to get the same dismal results. We really need to change the leadership structure, particularly the executive leadership. CFC needs an Executive Director (ED) whose primary role is to raise sponsorship funds, create and lead the new strategic direction for CFC, and elevate the CFC's presence in the Canadian and international chess community. CFC needs a business-minded ED and must be ready to pay a competitive wage for this role ($150K to $200K per annum).