Four cheap ideas that might improve Canadian chess a bit

[Paul Beckwith]

Re: Four cheap ideas that might improve Canadian chess a bit

Actually I meant the VP question to be for Bob G. but heck, anything is possible. Not able to commit to anything tonight since I would need to work on my boss for a while.

Does one have to be a governor to run for prez?

[Kevin Pacey]

Re: Four cheap ideas that might improve Canadian chess a bit

Actually I meant the VP question to be for Bob G. but heck, anything is possible. Not able to commit to anything tonight since I would need to work on my boss for a while.

Does one have to be a governor to run for prez?

Oops. Well, I guess I'll show up at the meeting anyway, if only to help try to make a quorum.

I've heard that the CFC has in the past had a President(s) who wasn't an incoming Governor (but maybe it was because no Governor ran?). I believe our own NJF ran for Prez without being a Governor (not sure if he was allowed to be considered for vote without his at least being a CFC member).

In any case it might be better to be a Governor if you can vote for yourself to be Prez (though I'm not sure if that's the case).

[Bob Gillanders]

Re: Four cheap ideas that might improve Canadian chess a bit

Actually I meant the VP question to be for Bob G. but heck, anything is possible. Not able to commit to anything tonight since I would need to work on my boss for a while.

Does one have to be a governor to run for prez?

I would be delighted to be on your team! :D

[Peter Bokhout]

Re: Four cheap ideas that might improve Canadian chess a bit

Hi Peter

Not all Canadian chess teachers are necessarily (currently) CMA ones. Here in Ottawa, for example, I know of one inactive master who teaches chess to adults as well as juniors, and who is not with the CMA (or the CFC). I believe there are a number of other teachers who were formerly teaching with the CMA.

Hi Kevin,

Now that I have seen the April issue of the online Canadian Chess News an at least partial apology is certainly called for! Excellent articles by yourself, Lawrence Day and Stephen Wright and a good rundown of international events and local colour. Very well done!

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Four cheap ideas that might improve Canadian chess a bit

Kevin; in my opinion the best way to get chess to grow in Canada is to get more adult females playing.

I was at a pub in Ottawa a few nights back playing blitz with our CFC president Eric and Johnny Upper; the waitress was extremely interested in the games; I explained the moves to her while El presidente and John were battling it out. Later a women (Carleton student in psychology; I told her a study of the chess subculture would make a good doctoral thesis) who was sitting at a nearby table came over at least twice and was also interested in watching. She was captivated by the game; her boyfriend had to come over and drag her away from the chess action!

In my opinion, if we got females interested in the game the membership would skyrocket. Look at the popularity of Kevin Spraggetts site; do you think it is the chess puzzles and games on it.

Perhaps I should run for CFC president with this as my main platform chess promotional idea?

In all seriousness, you are likely to have this idea met with scathing criticism from Monsieur Hebert. Not because he's anti-women, but because he's already on record against any initiative that would widen the base of the chess pyramid with less-skilled (i.e. non-elite) players.

Therefore I am in favour of this idea, despite what follows:

I notice, Paul, that you specified ADULT women. Perhaps this is because you see that Corinna Wan and perhaps others are segregating younger girls from boys, presumably because the girls don't want to play chess with boys (this isn't a knock against Corinna or anyone else, who are trying only to provide something for the girls where otherwise there would be nothing).

Or is there some other reason you don't want to include younger girls at this time? After all, younger girls would improve faster and have greater likelihood of becoming competitive and highly rated. Most adults of either sex will never be competitve in chess if they have no childhood exposure to it.

Most of your adult women will quickly lose interest once they realize how outclassed they are. Sure, they're fascinated at first with a few drinks in them at the pub. Maybe even some of them will be initially fascinated sober. This initial fascination doesn't necessarily translate to long term membership.

In fact, this could have a negative impact if the adult women are there only to find a nice guy to get close to, and once having done that, convince their new beau to stay away from chess and spend time alone with her.

So FWIW, my advice to you on this idea is get them while they're young. I'd also advise against segregating them, which only reinforces the inferiority feelings that spawn the segregation in the first place. Girls not wanting to play chess with boys is at least slightly pathological -- not proven perhaps, but my opinion and at least worthy of consideration. You could work to encourage girls to want to play chess with boys; this could help both the boys and the girls realize that at their age it's not all about winning and losing. This requires spending time with them, teaching them to analyze and to learn. It also requires things like brilliancy prizes and sportsmanship prizes, preferably INSTEAD OF or at least EQUAL TO placement prizes.

Of course, you could do this with adult women newbies also. But, you know, somehow, once one moves beyond childhood, the fascination of seeing one's lone King chased around a chessboard by an army of opposing pieces seems to disappear fast, and worse is one's adult awareness that little to nothing was learned from the experience.

[Ken Kurkowski]

Re: Four cheap ideas that might improve Canadian chess a bit

"But, you know, somehow, once one moves beyond childhood, the fascination of seeing one's lone King chased around a chessboard by an army of opposing pieces seems to disappear fast, and worse is one's adult awareness that little to nothing was learned from the experience."

I don't know about that... check out the list of early-bird entries for the Canadian Open. Lots of names with an 's' to the right- that's seniors (over 50).

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Four cheap ideas that might improve Canadian chess a bit

"But, you know, somehow, once one moves beyond childhood, the fascination of seeing one's lone King chased around a chessboard by an army of opposing pieces seems to disappear fast, and worse is one's adult awareness that little to nothing was learned from the experience."

I don't know about that... check out the list of early-bird entries for the Canadian Open. Lots of names with an 's' to the right- that's seniors (over 50).

Those are the exceptions to the rule.

But shhhh, don't tell them that. :)

[Lucas Davies]

Re: Four cheap ideas that might improve Canadian chess a bit

So, in response to an idea of getting adult women to play in tournaments to attract more men, you instead suggest.......... getting more young girls to play. Hmm.

[Ben Daswani]

Re: Four cheap ideas that might improve Canadian chess a bit

So, in response to an idea of getting adult women to play in tournaments to attract more men, you instead suggest.......... getting more young girls to play. Hmm.

I don't wanna be seen; touched; heard; bothered, by the fellas, who got that look in their eye. They wanna take me home, without knowing my name.

[Jean Hébert]

Re: Four cheap ideas that might improve Canadian chess a bit

In all seriousness, you are likely to have this idea met with scathing criticism from Monsieur Hebert.

I am impressed. You actually know one word of french, which probably equals your knowledge of chess.

[Kevin Pacey]

Re: Four cheap ideas that might improve Canadian chess a bit

1) On the matter of getting more women/girls to play:

As Egidijus pointed out in an old thread, it's less of an issue for girls to participate in male participated/(-dominated) activities if they know there are more girls than just themselves who are going to show up, e.g. if they go to such activities with at least one other girl.

Chess organizers might therefore attract more women/girls to an open event, which involves males as well, if they could manage to get at least one woman/girl to sign up well in advance, whom might then be prominently listed as an entrant(s) in further advertising of the event. Prominence could be acheived simply by preceding the traditional tentative listings of all entries so far (in order of rating) with a listing of all ladies playing in the event (including their chess titles, if any, and noting which, if any, are juniors). Such tentative listings could be advertised to the general public, besides just within CFC circles as usual. This lines up with the point about advertising in my initial post of this thread.

2) Regarding adult players getting tired of getting crushed (e.g. having their kings driven around):

Besides low-ranked players receiving chess lessons (something that ties in with my suggestion of putting prominent links to chess teachers on websites), a possible solution to ease the problem is to have more open events done by class sections, so there are less mismatches for the whole event than in a one section open swiss.

A problem with that is that many players like playing much higher rated players at least once in a while. Another issue is to avoid the yo-yo effect for average middle-ranked players in large one section swisses, where in one round they are paired way up, lose, then are paired way down, win, then they are paired way up... Perhaps accelerated pairings should be used as much as possible in one section open swisses, in an attempt to minimize mismatches, if we are not to revert to class section swisses, which had been poorly attended at times when they were tried in the past, as I seem to recall.

[Gary Ruben]

Re: Four cheap ideas that might improve Canadian chess a bit

1) On the matter of getting more women/girls to play:

If you want more women in chess, let them run chess.

Let's have a woman CFC president!

So simple is gender equality.

[Kevin Pacey]

Re: Four cheap ideas that might improve Canadian chess a bit

Hi Gary

Having a woman CFC Prez would be novel, but it would of course first take a woman being willing to run for the job. The CFC has (and has had) the odd female organizer and/or Governor, as perhaps you know. It seems it would take some sort of persuasion for one to run, and part of that persuasion could be to say to them that taking the office could advance the interest of Canadian women's chess, and thus Canadian chess as a whole.

Another question is, are most women interested in participating in the rough and tumble of holding a high political office, in chess or otherwise? In Canadian politics there are relatively few women. Some would say government would be better if there were more women in office, and others would say that some of the worst politicians have included women. Such is gender equality :).

[Duncan Smith]

Re: Four cheap ideas that might improve Canadian chess a bit

The veteran women in Canadian chess have not really shown a deep political interest or extra effort toward's advancing interest in Canadian women's chess. This is their right of course ( we all have our own life priorities ) but to achieve the latter goal they would have been better off spending time with the junior girls showing up 10 years ago and finishing very high internationally for Canada. This never happened. The result would have been a notably stronger Olympiad team ( several teams ) and better awareness of these juniors during the decade. The promotion aspect for the CFC would have been significant.

The momentum bringing in new female entrants is gone now. The youngsters from the last wave are now 16-23 years old that group has far more leadership promise if they retain interest in chess. Unfortunately, the CFC itself has probably not endeared itself to these players; several of them experienced disasters like Belfort and witnessed some pretty bad politics concerning the women's Olympiad team.

[Gary Ruben]

Re: Four cheap ideas that might improve Canadian chess a bit

The veteran women in Canadian chess have not really shown a deep political interest or extra effort toward's advancing interest in Canadian women's chess.

It's not a players responsibility to advance interest in chess. That's what the organizers are for.

If you like the organization and the way things are done that's fine. If you don't then put up with it or do what has to be done to change it.

In any case, chess is such a weird game I never told my wife I knew more than the moves until after we were married.