4. Executive and Officer reports

[Christina Tao]

4F. Youth Coordinator reports


1. Championnat-d-echecs-en-ligne-par-equipes-de-la-francophonie-2024, Jun 22-23, 2024
AIDEF Online Tournament, hosted on Tornelo
We have two Canadian Teams and One Team Quebec
https://chess-results.com/tnr959745....et=YES&flag=30
Canada Team 1 player list:
1. IM Johnathan Han
2. FM Aaron Reeve Mendes
3. FM Richard Qinghe Zheng
4. WCM April Yunwei Zhong

Canada Team 2 player list:
1. Raymond Gao
2. Youhe Huang
3. Ryan Yunhui Zhong
4. Ankita Jain

Quebec Team player list:
1. GM Bator Sambuev
2. GM Thomas Roussel-Roozmon
3. WGM Maili-Jade Ouellet
4. Prince Eric Jr Guipi Bopala
5. Manon Leger

There are total of 39 teams in the tournament and I am very proud to announce Canada Team 1 ranked 4th place after 11 rounds.


2. World Cup U08, U10, U12 in Georgia, Jun 22-Jul 3, 2024
This is a brand new tournament and 48 talented players from around the world from each age category are invited to this prestigious tournament.
We have 12 youth players travelled there and round 1 started on Jun 23
This year all players will play on DGT boards, super fancy. Youtube introduces the playing hall :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=de...ChessBaseIndia

You can watch live games here
https://lichess.org/broadcast/fide-w...und-1/DRDjIQ45

Team player list:
U08O Elliot McCallum
U08O Zhihan (Samuel) Xu
U10O Raunak Amit Ramesan
U10O Aaroh Mutyalapati Modith
U12O Zeming Yin
U12O Daniel Joshua Lee
U08G Anne Gao
U08G Elizabeth Nagnibedovsky
U10G Florence Zixin Xu
U10G Ashley Fu
U12G April Wang
U12G Joanne Wangluo

This tournament is in action right now at Georgia.


3. PanAmerican Junior U20 @Chile, Jun 23- 30, 2024
We have 3 players attending this event. They all arrived at Chile and this tournament is in action right now at Chile
Open: https://chess-results.com/tnr954059.aspx?lan=1
Girls: https://chess-results.com/tnr954058....&art=0&flag=30
1. FM Richard Qinghe Zheng
2. WCM April Yunwei Zhong
3. Ryan Yunhui Zhong



4. Canadian Youth Chess Championship at Laval Quebec, July 9-12, 2024
CYCC official website : https://cycc2024.my.canva.site/
CFC Chess Forum post: https://www.chesscanada.info/forum/s...C-Laval-Quebec
I had been working diligently with CYCC organizer, clubs from across Canada, and players in question to ensure the players are all validated and eligible to play in CYCC.
This year we adopt a new rule. CFC allowed the players to register first and get qualified before Jul 1, 2024. This way, more players can benefit from early bird discount as many regional qualifiers are run very later in the year.

CFC has created a weekly updated Qualified List so parents can check if players are on the qualified list.
CFC has also created a one-time Pre-Qualified List. This list has top 10 players from each age category base on Mar 1, 2024 rating. These players are all pre-qualified into CYCC.


On Jun 25, we had 658 players registered into the CYCC and we have an new breaking breaking number for this year.


5. PanAmerican Youth Chess Championships, Orlando Florida, Jul 15- 20, 2024
This year, even PanAm Youth is in USA, but the registration has to go thru the Federation.
Official website: https://new.uschess.org/pan-american...ionships-xxxiv
CFC Chess Forum Post: https://www.chesscanada.info/forum/s...rlando-Florida

Official player list:
U08G Elizabeth Nagnibedovsky
U08O Zhihan Xu
U10G Rucha Deshpande
U10O Zhu Edison
U12G Ashley Qian
U12O Zhu Elber
U14G Anaïs Chloé Fiset
U14O Neil Moses
U16G Lucy Gao
U16O Lefan Yang
U18G April Yunwei Zhong
U18O Tymur Keleberda


6. North American Junior U20, Calgary AB, Aug 14-18, 2024
Official website: https://najcc.com/NAJCC/Home/Home
Registration is open for all Canadian players.


There are tremendous amount of works involved in setting up each team. Even I am overwhelmed with this workloads, I am still very happy to see Canadian youth are shining in all international stages.

Finally, congratulation to all players and thank you to all parents who support your children on all these chess journeys. CFC also thanks to all organizers who run tournaments to provide the best environment for our young players to grow.


Christina Tao
CFC Youth Coordinator

[Spencer Martin]

Congratulations and Thanks to everyone who helped get the Candidates tournament up and running. It would have been a real stain on Canada and indirectly the CFC is the visas hadn't been issued.

[Vladimir Drkulec]

Congratulations and Thanks to everyone who helped get the Candidates tournament up and running. It would have been a real stain on Canada and indirectly the CFC is the visas hadn't been issued.

Quite true. Fortunately we got the government's attention and got the visas.

[Veronica Hitchlock]

Hi all! Sorry I'm a bit late to the party, I was away camping over the weekend.

For those of you who may not know me, I'm Veronica and I joined the Board earlier this year as the Women's Coordinator. I'm a law student entering my final year at the University of Ottawa and I've been an active organizer in university chess since 2019, serving as President for the past three years and now as the Alumni Advisor for the incoming 2024-2025 executive team.

To give a brief summary of what I've been up to over the past few months:

• Researching Safe Play programs and working on preliminary drafts of a Code of Conduct
• Had an Op Ed published in the Globe and Mail about Women's Chess
• Working on a CFC Women's Instagram page called CFCQueenside
• Developing a women's training initiative with JTM
• Outreach to women chess players and organisations both in person and online
• Organized a letter to the Minister of Immigration regarding Candidates visas on behalf of the university chess community
  (Concordia Chess Club, Queen’s Chess Club, University of Ottawa Chess Club, Hart House Chess Club (University of Toronto), Dalhousie Chess Club, ChessBlitz YorkU (York University), Western Chess & Go Club (Western University), Carleton Chess Club, McGill Students' Chess Club, University of Waterloo Chess Club, Brock University Chess Club, and University of Montreal Chess Club)

My main goals moving forward are to get a solid Safe Play framework in place and to attract more women to the game by fostering a healthy community, something I've found has helped support the growth both overall and among women in university chess. I also hope to look into organising more women's events focused on converting online players to in-person clubs and tournaments, as many young women I've spoken to have mentioned nervousness about how they'll fit in at clubs as a barrier.

[Vladimir Drkulec]

There are tremendous amount of works involved in setting up each team. Even I am overwhelmed with this workloads, I am still very happy to see Canadian youth are shining in all international stages.

Finally, congratulation to all players and thank you to all parents who support your children on all these chess journeys. CFC also thanks to all organizers who run tournaments to provide the best environment for our young players to grow.


Christina Tao
CFC Youth Coordinator

Thank you Christina,

The AIDEF online team tournament was something that slipped through the cracks but with the cooperation of AIDEF president, Patrick Van Hoolandt (who gave us an extra day and even a few more hours
to assemble a second team after the deadline slipped) and Christina's contacts we were able to field two teams. Christina acted as team captain. We thank Laurent Freyd, the chief arbiter for his patience with us as well.

There were some complaints about details of the Pan Am tournament in Orlando, Florida. This is a very expensive tournament. In a previous edition of this tournament in Chicago, players were allowed to register directly and there were 58 Canadians playing. Initially they were not going to allow this option because this is a tournament being organized directly by the USCF. They could only offer direct registration to USCF members because of the way that their website and credit card payments are set up. The original plan was that the CFC was going to collect the funds from the individuals playing (if we had 100 players playing this might venture into the realm of $600,000 Canadian with the CFC assuming a lot of additional headaches including currency rate risk which would not be insignificant and having to chase everyone to collect payments. We have also had some large bank transfers go astray for a few days and it is a problem. Most tournaments involve payments of around $10,000 to $30,000. If payments temporarily go astray it is not usually a big deal as we have plenty of cash to cover the shortfall. For a 100 player event where families are involved we could not assume that risk.

Christina is being run a bit ragged because we are getting many new players and parents and they don't consider the effects of their behaviour on the rest of the team or on the officials. Everyone's entry is delayed when there are delays in paying and you might not get your first choice in a hotel since the teams are grouped together. There was a tournament with just seven or so players which really caused her problems collecting the required fees and required half a dozen or more emails to get everyone to pay. Christina does not have that kind of extra time when it should have been handled with one email.

After talking to the organizers of the tournament we ascertained what the issues were. Given that most of the players likely were already USCF members, we simply decided that the Canadians should be USCF members and thus we did not have to chase people and collect large sums of money from the parents and players and then hope that the currency did not shift against us. They could pay directly to the USCF through the website. The alternative was to limit entries to official players or just not to participate.

As things turned out, the tournament conflicts with the Canadian Open and getting there from Montreal is not simple so we didn't get the numbers that we might have feared. Players could register directly with the USCF fees being $20 US for juniors. Not ideal but much simpler for the CFC which does not have the resources to deal with something like this where numbers and expensive accommodations worked together to make this a very concerning situation. The solution was not ideal but the best in the circumstances.

[Olga Mushtaler]

Thank you to everyone for your special input into CFC during these months. Your leadership, each of you in different areas, has been exceptional. I appreciate each of you and the unique contributions you bring to our team.