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In its future plans the CFC might consider providing Canadian clubs incentives to try to establish or maintain more of what I would call mega-clubs: clubs with 100+ members :). The RA club in Ottawa, for example, used to have 100+ members.
I've recently been informed that in Europe and possibly elsewhere, clubs are robust and they in effect act as sponsors for big open tournaments, for strong players, as well as what we'd call class players, who play in these tournaments together, but with no class prizes. This is what permits the state of affairs - i.e. no class prizes - that Tom and (I think) Jean have advocated for a long time. Unfortunately they never mentioned that clubs in fact have played such a big role in how nations other than Canada or the USA manage to do without class prizes in typical tournaments. I had trusted that it was simply that only FIDE ratings had been used in such nations, and until recently there was no such thing as a class FIDE player.
In the CFC Handbook, in the past if not the present as well, clubs are in fact SUPPOSED to be taken into account when choosing CFC Governors, i.e. to try to have as many different clubs represented as possible. This condition may be being ignored, at least at times (e.g. the RA club in Ottawa has several Eastern Ontario CFC Governors) simply because volunteers are hard to come by in some provinces/leagues. However if an attempt to have more clubs represented by Governors was made, that might be a first step towards building stronger clubs, or even mega-clubs, in Canada. Clearly the founders of the CFC meant that Canadian clubs be the foundation of the CFC, possibly based on the European model.
Once many strong clubs are established, as in Europe, we can therefore then be in a better position to decide whether it's worth doing without class prizes, as Tom and Jean might wish, or we can reap any number of other benefits of having many strong clubs.
I've recently been informed that in Europe and possibly elsewhere, clubs are robust and they in effect act as sponsors for big open tournaments, for strong players, as well as what we'd call class players, who play in these tournaments together, but with no class prizes. This is what permits the state of affairs - i.e. no class prizes - that Tom and (I think) Jean have advocated for a long time. Unfortunately they never mentioned that clubs in fact have played such a big role in how nations other than Canada or the USA manage to do without class prizes in typical tournaments. I had trusted that it was simply that only FIDE ratings had been used in such nations, and until recently there was no such thing as a class FIDE player.
In the CFC Handbook, in the past if not the present as well, clubs are in fact SUPPOSED to be taken into account when choosing CFC Governors, i.e. to try to have as many different clubs represented as possible. This condition may be being ignored, at least at times (e.g. the RA club in Ottawa has several Eastern Ontario CFC Governors) simply because volunteers are hard to come by in some provinces/leagues. However if an attempt to have more clubs represented by Governors was made, that might be a first step towards building stronger clubs, or even mega-clubs, in Canada. Clearly the founders of the CFC meant that Canadian clubs be the foundation of the CFC, possibly based on the European model.
Once many strong clubs are established, as in Europe, we can therefore then be in a better position to decide whether it's worth doing without class prizes, as Tom and Jean might wish, or we can reap any number of other benefits of having many strong clubs.
Enough for the Club championship 1st place :)
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