Inside CCC (The Cooperative Chess Coalition E-Newsletter) Issue # 14-7, August 1, 2014 Our Motto – “Competition OverTB; Cooperation OffTB” Our Goal – “A kinder, gentler World Chess Culture” __________________________________________________________________________________ A Recent Post on the CCC Facebook chess discussion group: CCC - Chess Posts of Interest (CPI) - by Ken Kurkowski, CCC Member (Canada): Rapport - T. Rogers, Politiken Cup saw this: 1. e4 c6 2. Nc3 d5 3. Qe2 de4 4. Ne4 Nd7 5. Nd6#!!! White is a GM, Black is rated 2011, not exactly a beginner. _________________________________________________________________________________ E-mail –cooperativechesscoalition@gmail CCC Facebook Chess Discussion Group: https://facebook/groups/cooperativechesscoalition/ CPI FB Chess Discussion Group Members - Current total: 3,351 CCC Twitter Account: twitter/coopchesscoalit CCC Membership: Bob Armstrong (Canada), Coordinator; Abbey Alo (Ghana); Joe Fatula (USA); Ken Kurkowski (Canada) The CCC Newsletter generally comes out on the first of each month. The newsletter is free. To subscribe, e-mail us (address above) CPI Co-Manager Reports [Note: this section is not mandatory on Co-Managers – we don’t need reports when there is really nothing for the co-manager to report! LOL But it is an opportunity for Co-Managers to encourage CCC in a certain direction, and to request subscriber feedback. Or for the Co-Manager to report on some CCC activity he has been pursuing, etc.] Bob Armstrong Co-Manager Report The summer time is a slow period for CPI on FB. I have noticed the posts by non-managers dwindling, and the same with the number of “comments”. But we will try to keep everyone up to date on CPI about the upcoming Chess Olympiad, and at the same time, the FIDE Presidential election, during the FIDE Congress held during the Olympiad. CCC did publicly endorse the Challenger, Garry Kasparov. Will he win? It is unclear to me…there are many propaganda competing claims from both sides. But…my prediction….Garry will lose a close one to the incumbent, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. Anyone else have a different projected result? If so, why? Issues: A. Current Issues Being Dealt With None – things are pretty quiet at the moment in CCC. B. Issues Recently Dealt With As part of our annual 2014 CCC Review, CCC recently reviewed its CCC FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) Sheet. I had made some revisions, and the revised version was passed (3 Yes; 1 Abstain). I have now started posting it, question by question, over the next few weeks, on CPI. We hope it may generate some discussion on some somewhat controversial positions taken by CCC. C. Ongoing Issues: 1. CCC FB discussion group, Chess Posts of Interest: i) Official Member Posts: I have been somewhat slack over the summer notifying the 3 co-managers of the dates of their official Member Posts. And the other three have not been great on checking their own diaries to see when they were on. But I have now notified member Joe Fatula that he is to post for August 1. I will be doing August 15 myself. The CCC members make official posts in order to make sure the board has a somewhat continuous flow of interesting chess topics. As well they make additional unscheduled ones. These posts are also to encourage a few more CPI members to post and comment. On Facebook, few generally post/comment. This is the culture of FB - many are merely recipients - happy to receive posts in their newsfeed, and read them, but few actually intend to post/comment themselves. So the fact that we do have a number responding shows we are making some progress, though definitely swimming upstream on this one. From a chess promotion point of view (CCCs first goal), however, I think CCC is having modest success, and can take the positive view that many CPI members are reading our CCC posts/comments, and enjoying them, though not responding. This seems also confirmed by our astronomical growth in 2013, and an ever-increasing newbie/day application to join rate from Jan. 1 to April 30! ii) CPI Member Growth - CCC Growth Target for 2014 CCC had grown in 2013, from about 600 members Jan. 1, to 1,232 by Dec. 31/13. That was a rate of about 50 new CPI members per month (quite phenomenal I think), or 1.6 new members per day! For 2014, the four CCC core group running the board decided to put their collective heads together to set a new 2014 Growth Goal, after consulting the FB group. So it started the CCC FB Growth Contest. CPI Members are asked to make a guess as to what will be the total group membership as of Dec. 31/14. This contest post is updated every Thursday night or Friday AM. At the end of June, the 4 CCC members will consider the guesses to that date, and then put out their own guess/goal. Since Jan. 1/14, CCC has been growing at a phenomenally increased average rate of application of about 14 new members per DAY (vs 1.6/day throughout 2013) from Jan. 1 to April 30! During May it has slowed down to 6 new applicants per day. Since June 1, it is 3 new applicants per day – still a steady flow. The growth of memberships increases the reach of our FB Chess Discussion Group posts, and thus helps fulfill our chess promotion goal. It also gives a bigger audience when we want to introduce debate on some chess improvement/reform topic (CCC’s second goal). As was decided in the second annual CCC review, started in May 2014 (we usually try to start it in April), we will simply continue our member posting schedule and continuing adding new CPI members and review the whole operation in April, 2015. 2. Reform Actions - CCC has a series of papers on possible chess reform topics that it has posted on the group page at various times. If you would like a list, or to view one of them, just contact me. Further, if anyone feels we have raised some other discussion issue on the discussion page, worth pursuing through some reform action, let me know. We will then discuss it. Readers’ Section Last Month’s Chess, etc. [This section will briefly highlight at least one interesting chess event from the prior month; it will also be used to present a chess study of interest that may have appeared on the discussion group, or may be from somewhere else.] The 2014 Canadian Open This was held in Montreal, Quebec, over 8 days, starting July 19. It attracted over 400 players…a record in recent history. I played (did not do well, but had a great “chess holiday”). I did a Blog for my U 2000 section – can be seen on the official Quebec Provincial Chess Association (FQE) Canadian Open website: echecsmontreal.ca/co/blogEN.html . Top Finishers in the Top Section (After Rd. 9 Final) First prize is $ 4,000. There were 42 registered players (one shown is actually in U 2400). Here are the Leaders: 1/3. - 6 ½ pts. – 3 players (pictures below, left to right) GM Tiviakov, Sergey (2656 – Netherlands – top seed) He won the championship in a three-way play-off. GM Van Kampen, Robin (2636 – Netherlands) GM Ghaem-Maghami, Ehsan (2586 – Iran) Our Readers’ WRITE [This section is for subscriber articles (screw up your courage, and have your say!), and feedback on CCC, this newsletter or the FB chess discussion group (e.g. If anyone has any thoughts on CCC’s 2013 progress, implementing our international mandate, promoting chess or raising reform issues; similarly for the start of 2014. CCC will publish the comments in the next newsletter. Or maybe you feel you dont know enough about an issue raised in the newsletter or on our FB discussion board to comment – then pose any questions. Or maybe you have suggestions for CCC directions in 2014? CCC is also happy to get feedback on how were doing, good, bad or indifferent. Keep in touch.] Conclusion CCC “Supporters” We want to thank our formal “CCC Supporters”, those who do not wish for various reasons to take out full membership, but want generally to support CCC in reaching its goals, and want their name associated with these CCC efforts: Canada (15): Steve Karpik , Scarborough CC (SCC) Secretary; Pino Verde – SCC member and one of the top Canadian correspondence chess players; Alex Ferreira, FIDE National Arbiter and University of Toronto Hart House CC member; Greg Beal – Annex CC (ACC) member; David Broughton – former Chess Federation of Canada (CFC) Executive member; Erwin Casareno – SCC member, and former club champion; Fred McKim – CFC Treasurer; Chris Field – CFC Governor; Haqi al Ganabi – SCC Member; Michael Perez – President of Southside CC, and SCC member; Hassan Pishdad – SCC Member; Victor Itkin – on Committee organizing one of the Canadian Youth Chess Championships; Will Rutherdale – SCC Member; Hazel Smith – former member of the Canadian Women’s Olympiad Team; Vlad Drkulec – CFC President. Thanks again to all for supporting CCC! Bob Armstrong, Inside CCC Editor/CCC Coordinator (Pic Below)
Posted on: Mon, 28 Jul 2014 10:50:09 +0000
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