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Dark Knight / Le Chevalier Noir
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---- Nous avons besoin d'un traduction français!
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The latest Bob's newsletters ( FW: Scarborough Community of Toronto Chess News & Views, Issue # 11-13, March 1, 2010, and Database CNV#11-13 ) have a picture from 1977(?) and E.M. asks who are the guys playing.
"1. Is it Jim Paterson or Gary Ruben sitting on the left?"
Have you seen it? (I'm not sure that the newsletters are online, thus no link at this moment)
No, I haven't seen it.
By 1977 I wasn't playing much at the Scarborough club. I was organizing correspondence chess. However, I played on the Scarborough team against Indianapolis in 1976 and 1978 so I would have been going to the club around that time.
I'll tell you, if it is a good looking fellow it's probably me. :)
Seriously, though, I can't recall Jim Paterson. I guess my memory isn't as good as it used to be.
No, I haven't seen it.
...
However, I played on the Scarborough team against Indianapolis in 1976 and 1978 so I would have been going to the club around that time.
"A Bit of History - 1977 Scarborough/Indianapolis Peace Game Photo – Can You
Help?"
* You may ask Bob to send you a copy.
** I could paste+copy a picture here.
The last 10 SCC newsletters ( Scarborough Community of Toronto Chess News & Views ) are on the SCTCN&V website ( the newsletter has it's own website separate from the SCC website - http://scarboroughchess.webhop.net )
So Gary can see the picture there.
Thanks for the plug for the newsletter Egis. If anyone wants to get on the free subscribers list, just e-mail me at bobarm@sympatico.ca .
"A Bit of History - 1977 Scarborough/Indianapolis Peace Game Photo – Can You
Help?"
* You may ask Bob to send you a copy.
** I could paste+copy a picture here.
I had a look at the site and the newsletter and picture is there. It must be Jim Paterson sitting at the table. I don't remember him.
However, I think it's me in the background with the blue shirt. My wife also thinks it's me. The other man in the game in the yellow shirt is Jim Honeycutt. (If I've spelled it right.) He was our house guest in 1977. I guess I played in 1977 and 1979. For some reason I thought it was 76.
I can't recall who the tournament director was or the team captain. I do recall defeating their board 1 with white. Larsens opening. 1. b3.
"When you become a member of the CFC, you join a fraternity of chess players, enthusiasts, teachers, and organizers from across Canada devoted to promoting chess."
If your interest is in qualifying to represent Canada internationally, either as an individual in the World Cup or the various FIDE junior events, or as a member of our teams at the Chess Olympiad, then you MUST join the CFC to be eligible for the qualifying events. Getting a rating and playing fair tournaments lets you compare your strength to other potential champions. Also you can measure over time your progress in increasing your strength.
Note: The process of determining champions is of necessity elitist. If you are wedded to egalitarian principles you may prefer an endevour where everyone has the same chance, like for example bingo or playing the lottery. Chess is different: It has no luck element. In a chess game your fate is essentially in your own hands.
Like a SPORTS FEDERATION the CFC determines the process and okays the tournaments which determine who represents Canada. It is the gatekeeper to the international arena. Hence the CFC has members whose concern is not primarily "promoting chess" but wishing to test their own excellence against other similarly motivated members. They are required to join even if they find the nebulous public-relations agenda of 'promoting chess' to be a load of malarkey.
Consider: the growth of chess popularity in Canada has been extraordinary. CMA's scholastic competition has broken 10,000 competitors. One online site of many, chess.com, has broken 50,000 Candian members. If the expression 'promoting chess' meant what it says, then there ought be great satisfaction. However as used by some, the expression means promoting over-the-board tournament chess such as requires CFC membership; in other words, promoting the CFC, the elite serious chess organization with the history and international relations.
The structure of the CFC is obviously based on parliamentary democracy. For a sports federation this is unsound, a handicap to national excellence. For example the governors represent regions and representation to the Canadian Closed always involves regionalism.
With a carefully tended rating list such as ours, a normal sports federation would use it to invite to a championship the top players by excellence criteria rather than either involving geography or satisfying the greatest number of players. That could be left to the Canadian Open.
In the semantics of Bob's egaltarian fraternity, the idea of excellence is downplayed, an elitism, to be conquered in the interests of the grassroot masses. By accident this philosophy promotes mediocrity. Why improve if the class prize is huge? Sure, chess is fun and keeps your mind nimble. But that's not what a healthy sports federation does: it promotes excellence in its field.
Some very interesting points here that can lead into some deep philosophical discussion. But first, let's just compare chess to tennis, another head-to-head sport:
Tennis Canada mission statement:
"Tennis Canada's mission is to lead the growth, promotion, and showcasing of the sport of tennis in Canada, build a system that helps produce world class players, and foster the pursuit of excellence for all."
From the above mission statement, it appears a healthy sports federation can both promote it's sport AND foster excellence. The real problem appears to be that the CFC isn't healthy and probably never has been.
Whether or not this is due to the structure of the CFC is beyond me to answer, but again, perhaps a comparison to Tennis Canada is needed, because that federation must also deal with regionalism.
Incidentally, I found this on the Tennis Canada website:
Tennis Canada just recently (since January 2009) began using the Chess Elo ranking system; the Quebec Tennis Federation has been doing so since 1982. However, TC uses a "star value system to highlight the importance of the high profile events", as outlined in the links below:
TC can use a "star" value because TC has a wide field of sponsored events, because TC can attract corporate sponsors, because tennis is a widely followed and widely-watched sport, because a tennis match is for many people entertaining to watch even on TV.
CFC probably can't use a "star" value system because CFC doesn't have a wide field of sponsored events, because CFC can't attract corporate sponsors, because chess, even if it is "widely" followed, isn't widely watched, because a chess match is for the vast majority of people NOT entertaining to watch, ESPECIALLY on TV.
Now for the philosophically inclined:
Lawrence seems to be defining excellence in chess as the propensity to winning individual games, not anything to do with the "art" of chess. That alone is a philosophical tinderbox. The ensuing claim appears to be that promotion of such excellence should be the mission statement for the CFC, which leads to the following consideration:
One could hypothesize a player who wins something around 50% of his or her games, but whose wins are works of dazzling insight and profound vision that amaze all who analyze them, and then another player who wins > 90% of his or her games, in which all the wins are long, drawn out struggles wherein some minute advantage is seized upon and pressed all the way to a winning K + P vs K ending. Whose chess mind should be considered more "excellent"? Whose chess accomplishments should be considered more "excellent"?
Moving on... as Lawrence points out, chess is different from other sports / games in that it has no luck element. I would rephrase what Lawrence wrote to say that in chess your fate is in your own mind, as opposed to hands. The hands merely express the decision of the mind, a trivial point, but maybe not so trivial.... I'll return to that in the next point.
But now let us also consider that the chess mind generally doesn't deteriorate with age at nearly the same rate that the skills of more physical individual sports (golf, tennis) do. Kasparov could still be at or very near the top right now if he chose to do so.
What these two factors - lack of luck, and very slow deterioration - add up to is that in chess, the elitist structure is much more static and enduring than in other sports. How does this affect the grassroots level of chess throughout the world? The philosophical question is, should we even care?
One more philosophical consideration:
Because if it is the mind that determines Lawrence's definition of excellence in chess, then creations of the mind -- specifically, software chess engines that are demonstrably the work of one person, even if they combine in a new way elements created by other persons -- have legitimate claims to chess excellence on behalf of their creator.
We all know that the best chess software programs are now superior in terms of chess ratings to not only their creators, but even the most excellent human mind working alone.
Thus I would argue the true elitists of chess should not be the highest-rated human players, but the individual creators of the highest-rated software programs. Where such programs are created by teams of people, those people would be the elitists of a different category, the most excellent chess team.
Cue Mike Myers and Dana Carvey (Wayne's World):
"Most excelleeeeeent...... chess team!"
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
Why does everyone want to compare chess to other sports? Why not come compare chess here to chess overseas and show why Canadian Chess is so poorly run and why Overseas chess is supported more. When we start using overseas techniques to get support to chess in Canada and get started on a better footing then maybe just maybe we would get more support for Canadian chess.
But if some do, why would you object? Do you somehow feel a need to be in control of how other people think?
Sometimes, words like "everyone" are not intended to be taken literally. Sure, he could have said "nearly everyone" or "almost everyone" or something like that, but it seems a small leap of faith to understand that he didn't mean every single person on the planet...
This isn't the climate change thread... (although given enough time, it might degenerate into something similar)
Why does everyone want to compare chess to other sports? Why not come compare chess here to chess overseas and show why Canadian Chess is so poorly run and why Overseas chess is supported more. When we start using overseas techniques to get support to chess in Canada and get started on a better footing then maybe just maybe we would get more support for Canadian chess.
John, I was not comparing chess to tennis, instead I was comparing the chess and tennis federations in Canada, because each is dealing with a head-to-head sport and has to deal with the same regional issues when holding championships.
Can you detail the overseas techniques you mention? The 800 pound gorilla in the room that everyone does their best to ignore is still money, i.e. corporate sponsorship.
If they are getting corporate sponsorship overseas much more than in North America, perhaps it's because socialist governments are providing tax breaks that basically make it free to the corporations, thus transferring the true cost on to the taxpayers. Or perhaps corporations there see a far greater fan base then exists on this side of the ocean; another good example of that is soccer, which has been trying to get going in the U.S. for several decades now, and still has far less public interest than it does in Europe.
Overseas techniques alone don't seem to be the answer; if it were simple, it would have been done by now. One thing about Americans is that if there's money to be made, they can smell it and they will do it. If it hasn't been done, then it probably can't work with the American public. So that leads us to, how do we adapt to suit the American public? That primarily means IMO making chess watchable in person and even more on TV.
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
Can you detail the overseas techniques you mention? The 800 pound gorilla in the room that everyone does their best to ignore is still money, i.e. corporate sponsorship.
There's a difference between not having money and not wanting to spend the money you have. Do you understand the difference?
If we want the CFC structure to improve then we have to look at chess structures that are working and see what they do and whether we can use their ideas.
I believe a tournament Like Corus could be done in Canada but we need that Business that wants to promote that type of Chess. Maybe BC organizers could do it. They just finished a GREAT Olympics in Vancouver.
Hey why not the City Of Toronto they saved $15 Million in Snow removal this year. Now wouldn't that make a Big event. lol.
I personally am not interested in what the CFC does in regards to the level that Bob Armstrong wants to see.
Just give me a better package for my membership dues and rate my tournaments.
If you want to appeal to most chess players young and old you have to get a better promotable product.
Chess 'n Math has control of the junior masses. They had better marketing skills I guess.
I noticed we have only had two Gov Letters with this executive. Is this because they have nothing to change or discuss.
Are they not doing anything to improve chess in Canada?
They only have 4 Months to overhaul the Federation.
Can it be done?
I'd doubt it.
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