Why CFC denying talented juniors to represent CANADA at World Stage???

[Bob Armstrong]

Junior Programs - What Weight in Overall?

I'm not talking about someone at the CFC sitting down and writing a cheque to Mark Bluvshtein which obviously rarely if ever happened; I'm talking about how many resources and man hours were poured into running youth programs, or giving juniors a shot at the Olympiad team "for future benefit", only to result in a fantastic talented player ending up leaving the game (I want to make clear I am not trying to pick on Mark - he did nothing wrong in any way).

The whole point is that the model that junior supporters seem to believe ("create another Fischer, and a Fischer boom will happen again") is completely flawed. The CFC has had a few extremely talented players come along in the past 20 years who have scored exceptional results both nationally and internationally (I would count Lesiege, Charbonneau, Bluvshtein as the most prime examples), and all that has resulted is a long slow decline in membership. Focusing on developing juniors is not the road to health for the CFC.

Hi David:

I don't know if you attribute to CFC more of a junior chess role than it actually plays:

1. CFC generally does not use any general revenue funding for junior programs ( they are all self-sustaining );
2. The outsourcing contract time ( ED Gerry Litchfield ) attributed to juniors is quite low ( likely 5% - especially composed of the WYCC event );
3. There are significant volunteer hours spent on juniors by the Youth Coordinator executive member; but CFC has significant youth membership, and they must be serviced.
4. Governor volunteer time on juniors is not inordinate, given they are a significant part of CFC membership ( eg. amendments to Handbook on CYCC, Junior Championship, etc. )

It seems to me that the bulk of CFC funds and resources goes to member services and adult member retention.

Whether CFC does a good job on this is an open question. We are losing members - to what degree is this due to factors beyond our control - people have less time to commit to weekend tournaments; internet is providing stiff competition to OTB chess; etc.?

The CFC has just instituted both a long-tem planning committee, and a membership drive committee, to look into member retention/recruitment - maybe they will develop strategies to start membership climbing.

Bob, GTCL CFC Governor

[John Coleman]

Re: Why CFC denying talented juniors to represent CANADA at World Stage???

Vlad are you now Chairman of this committee or have I misunderstood your post ?

Vlad is the chairman of the long term planning committee.

[Bob Armstrong]

CFC Long-term Planning Committee Members?

sorry - deleted & moved to separate thread

[Peter McKillop]

Re: Why CFC denying talented juniors to represent CANADA at World Stage???

Red Herring.

David is not saying that the money spent on Juniors is causing loss of CFC membership. For you to imply David is saying this is disgusting but typical of your argument methods. ...

I guess I'm missing something, too, because it sounds to me like that IS what David is saying.

This sounds like pursuing a losing strategy and hoping to make it up with volume. Can you show any data correlating between:

Increase in junior participation ---> Increase in CFC adult membership?

In fact, I believe (though it could certainly be argued that there are many external factors) that the correlation is negative, which to me makes sense: the CFC uses time and resources on players who are going to be short term members of the federation, and that takes away from the resources available to spend on the long term valuable members, and further, I believe many adult players are none too excited about playing the next 10 year old junior prodigy on his way to winning a few CYCC/WYCC trips; I've certainly heard this feedback from many adult members over the years.

So, in that sense (as usual) we disagree - I believe that the focus on junior members and programs is causing the CFC to lose members.

[Bob Armstrong]

Re: Junior Programs - Dubious Effort?

An interesting point has been made by BC Gov. Paul Leblanc, Rating Auditor, re effort in junior chess that is dubious:

" The CFC subsidizes Youth Chess by allowing tournaments that are comprised of 100% juniors to be rated for 50 cents per player and by not requiring the participants to purchase memberships of any sort.

This loses money on the rating side and forgoes income on the membership side. The return on that investment is nebulous ..."

Bob

[Kerry Liles]

Re: Why CFC denying talented juniors to represent CANADA at World Stage???

I guess I'm missing something, too, because it sounds to me like that IS what David is saying.

Like so many other threads, this one is rapidly hitting the ridiculous... technically, the CFC wastes ALL of its money - it all depends on what someone might interpret as the point of the CFC. There can never be a consensus on the exact goals of the CFC, but if we presume some vanilla statements like supporting chess tournaments and rated play and participation in FIDE as a member zone - there is a lot of baggage that goes along with that.

The argument made about supporting Juniors (as a money-losing proposition) could just as easily be applied to Seniors - they too have a "best before date" that in their case is caused by old age/death as opposed to outside distractions or interruptions to their career caused by life in general.

I think the CFC long term planning committee should identify a set of annual project for the CFC: the CYCC/WYCC, the Canadian Closed(s), the Canadian Open, Olympiad Team(s) when relevant, etc. and decide how to deal with all that and promote chess as an intellectual activity and support local clubs.

The CFC spends SO much time and effort arguing about tactics when there is no STRATEGIC plan or vision... surely chess players ought to understand what is wrong with that picture?

[Fred McKim]

Re: Junior Programs - Dubious Effort?

An interesting point has been made by BC Gov. Paul Leblanc, Rating Auditor, re effort in junior chess that is dubious:

" The CFC subsidizes Youth Chess by allowing tournaments that are comprised of 100% juniors to be rated for 50 cents per player and by not requiring the participants to purchase memberships of any sort.

This loses money on the rating side and forgoes income on the membership side. The return on that investment is nebulous ..."

Bob

This is correct. This is a program that is aimed at junior chess players to introduce them to CFC play and encourage them to eventually become members.

The actual cost to the CFC is unknown, and is impossible to even estimate without questioning some of the present organizers. It is quite likely these organizers would simply switch over to holding CMA events if this program wasn't in place.

[Tony Ficzere]

Re: Why CFC denying talented juniors to represent CANADA at World Stage???

Jean the project was derailed when CCN editor at the time, Tony Ficzere, bacame unavailable to work on this, as we had hoped to have something by the Canadian Open.

We are going through an interim editor now, with a permanent editor in place by December.

It's something we'd still like to see happen, and perhaps if they're not the right person for the job, we can come knocking on your door.

I might be willing to do the 2010 yearbook. If the CFC is interested, they can contact me and we can discuss.

[Roger Patterson]

Re: Junior Programs - Dubious Effort?

This is correct. This is a program that is aimed at junior chess players to introduce them to CFC play and encourage them to eventually become members.

The actual cost to the CFC is unknown, and is impossible to even estimate without questioning some of the present organizers. It is quite likely these organizers would simply switch over to holding CMA events if this program wasn't in place.

junior events switching over to the CMA does NOT imply that the percentage of them that eventually become long term CFC members goes down.

[Fred McKim]

Re: Junior Programs - Dubious Effort?

junior events switching over to the CMA does NOT imply that the percentage of them that eventually become long term CFC members goes down.

Again, that is something that would be difficult to measure and I didn't intend to imply that.

However, I think trying to get players interested in the Provincial or Regional YCC events is more likely, if they are playing CFC tournaments of any type, rather than if they are playing in CMA or unrated tournaments.

[Jean Hébert]

Re: Why CFC denying talented juniors to represent CANADA at World Stage???

Jean the project was derailed when CCN editor at the time, Tony Ficzere, bacame unavailable to work on this, as we had hoped to have something by the Canadian Open.

We are going through an interim editor now, with a permanent editor in place by December.

It's something we'd still like to see happen, and perhaps if they're not the right person for the job, we can come knocking on your door.

Fred,
You pretty much confirm what I am saying. The CFC always find a way to get "derailed" even on the smallest details. When it figures out the right train to get on, the train may well be gone.
For people who actually want to DO things instead of talking about doing things, dealing with the CFC is a backbreaker.

[Zeljko Kitich]

Re: Why CFC denying talented juniors to represent CANADA at World Stage???

Like so many other threads, this one is rapidly hitting the ridiculous... technically, the CFC wastes ALL of its money - it all depends on what someone might interpret as the point of the CFC. There can never be a consensus on the exact goals of the CFC, but if we presume some vanilla statements like supporting chess tournaments and rated play and participation in FIDE as a member zone - there is a lot of baggage that goes along with that.

The argument made about supporting Juniors (as a money-losing proposition) could just as easily be applied to Seniors - they too have a "best before date" that in their case is caused by old age/death as opposed to outside distractions or interruptions to their career caused by life in general.

I think the CFC long term planning committee should identify a set of annual project for the CFC: the CYCC/WYCC, the Canadian Closed(s), the Canadian Open, Olympiad Team(s) when relevant, etc. and decide how to deal with all that and promote chess as an intellectual activity and support local clubs.

The CFC spends SO much time and effort arguing about tactics when there is no STRATEGIC plan or vision... surely chess players ought to understand what is wrong with that picture?

There would have had to have been some specific charitable goals filed with Revenue Canada when charitable status was first applied for and granted.

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Why CFC denying talented juniors to represent CANADA at World Stage???

I guess I'm missing something, too, because it sounds to me like that IS what David is saying.

The quote from David that Peter includes came several hours AFTER my post and at that point David made the statement that I wrote he hadn't intended to make (DOH!). At the time of my post, David had not made that statement, but Jean had already tried to attribute that statement to him.

So I was correct to criticize Jean for a red herring, but then David decided hours later to turn that into an actual statement. And then you, Peter, turn that against my criticism of Jean. Ahhh, what a wicked web we weave! :D

Now that David has actually made this statement - that money spent on Junior development causes (indirectly) loss of CFC adult membership - we have to address that.

One could easily just give blanket agreement to David's assertion. After all, if money is spent on Juniors and they leave the game during their University time and never return, that money could have been spent on adult members in some fashion as to keep them in the game.

I would argue, and I hope David responds to this -- and perhaps Vlad Drkulec as well, seeing as he's the new chair of the Long-term Planning Committee -- that the CFC doesn't need to spend gobs of money on adults to keep them in the CFC. I have already put forth proposals for action items that would keep adult membership strong and maybe bring in new adult membership. However, these proposals are being seen I believe as too "out of the box" for conservative CFC decision makers and will likely never see the light of day, but nevertheless here they are summarized:

(1) more support for chess variants (chess960 and others, perhaps even pioneering some variants that lead to more dynamic, creative play rather than the stifling, opening-memory-oriented play that is emphasized now). Why does chess have to be JUST standard, classical chess? Obviously we don't want to include games that just aren't chess at all (checkers, anyone?), but if poker allows some variants and it succeeds, why can't chess use the same strategy? The only requirement would be that variants do require a certain level of mental skill for success, as opposed to blind luck. I haven't seen a good argument against this yet. And comments about "fairy chess" don't rate. Chess itself is a fantasy game, anyone with a "fairy chess" argument is in an alternate reality already and probably needs professional help.

(2) more emphasis on brilliancy awards for tournaments rather than placement awards. Reward creativity equally, if not more than, productivity.

(3) offering of an alternative section in tournaments for non-ELO ratings, so that prospective members may elect to not pay ratings fees and instead play in a separate low-cost section where the ratings are "roll your own", until such time as they are confident to enter the ELO sections. And for senior members, these non-ELO sections offer them the chance to just play and not even worry about ratings or have to pay for them, which means they still come out to events rather than having their memberships lapse.

http://www.chesstalk.info/forum/showthread.php?t=5442

Items (1) and (3) might require spending of small amounts of money. Maybe the CFC needs to think a little more like a corporation, in which the adage "you have to spend money to make money" is a guiding principle. But again, I don't think it's huge amounts these items would require.

Bob Armstrong is arguing to David that not much is being spent on Junior development by the CFC anyways. So perhaps it's not so much a diversion of current spending (on Juniors) as it would be some minor new spending to test new directions at maintaining and growing adult membership.

[David Ottosen]

Re: Why CFC denying talented juniors to represent CANADA at World Stage???

One could easily just give blanket agreement to David's assertion.

Agree! :D

I would argue, and I hope David responds to this -- and perhaps Vlad Drkulec as well, seeing as he's the new chair of the Long-term Planning Committee -- that the CFC doesn't need to spend gobs of money on adults to keep them in the CFC.

The CFC doesn't have gobs of money or time resources at the moment. However, I would argue that they should be focusing it on those adult members. I can count a few instances in my time as a CFC member where I emailed the office, and received an unsatisfactory response or no response at all.

Web site updates, rating updates, communication with clubs, major event planning - all of these things are things the CFC could be spending time doing, instead of using massive amounts of resources to determine what the exact final financial determination was of the CYCC. There is little effort on the CFC's part (in my view) to determine what their long term valuable members want, and then to find a strategy to implement those desired features.

15 years ago, this was a near impossible feat - the geographic diversity of Canada made it very difficult to gather any significant data from the membership. Nowadays, an internet survey can be done quickly and cheaply to determine what the membership really cares about. IMO this should be priority one of the long term strategy committee - how can they devise a strategy if they don't even know how to win the game?

I have already put forth proposals for action items that would keep adult membership strong and maybe bring in new adult membership.

I don't understand what your listed proposals require from the CFC. Any local TD could implement these and see if they work or not.

[David Ottosen]

Re: Why CFC denying talented juniors to represent CANADA at World Stage???

The CFC spends SO much time and effort arguing about tactics when there is no STRATEGIC plan or vision... surely chess players ought to understand what is wrong with that picture?

Highly agree