Chess Moves 2014 May-June, Chess, Chess Moves, ebook, pdf

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//-->Chess MovesThe Newsletter of the English Chess Federation | May 2014 editionIn this issue ---German prisoners playing chess, Querrieu, October 1916 - picture courtesy of the Imperial War MuseumNEWSGuildford retains 4NCL crownResults and the key last round matchanalysedECF Finance Council reportJunior ChessCongress Round-upFEATURED ARTICLESNot All Over By ChristmasBookshelf looks back to chess in 1914Time Trouble TalesThe tide of history is turned back at Riode JaneiroGary Lane’s Book ReviewsThe Chess Moves QuestionnaireColin Gardiner puts on the thumb screwsCONTENTSEditorial / News4NCLCongress Round-UpQ&ABook ReviewsBookshelfTime Trouble TalesQuote Unquote2-66 - 1414 - 1818 - 202122 - 2727 - 3030 - 31Junior ChessBatsfordGrand PrixCalendar31 - 333334 - 3536From the EditorThis will be the last edition of Chess Moves under my editorship. For personal reasons, I am stepping down.I should like to thank everyone who has contributed articles and annotated games to the magazine. I am grate-ful, too, to those readers who took the trouble to comment on Chess Moves; their encouragement always pro-vided a welcome boost of energy as deadlines loomed. Above all, I should like to express my appreciation for thehard work of the indefatigable Andrew Walker from the ECF office, who takes on the technical challenge of trans-forming a mass of material into a cohesive whole and unfailingly delivers a high quality product with every issue.- Andrew FarthingECF NEWSCalm reigns at ECF Finance Council meetingReport by Andrew Farthing, Editor of Chess Moves, previous ECF Chief Executive, and representative of theMidland Counties Chess Union, Worcestershire Chess Association and Worcester & District League (a typicallyhydra-headed attendee!)Over the past several years, three things could reliably be said of ECF Council meetings: (1) the meeting wouldoverrun its scheduled 6 p.m. finish; (2) important items appearing late on the agenda would be rushed throughat breakneck speed; and (3) substantive debates would be sidetracked by more personal squabbles and bad feel-ing.It is with some relief, therefore, to be able to report that at the latest Finance Council meeting on Saturday, 12thApril the meeting finished 25 minutes early, the agenda was completed without undue haste and the participantsby and large resisted the urge to rise to the bait of any contentious comments. A large slice of the credit for thismust be given to the meeting’s chairman, Mike Gunn, who steered a course through potentially choppy waterswith calm authority.Mike was helped in this endeavour by the Board’s decision not to debate the Chief Executive’s papers on Strategyand Transformation at the meeting but simply to use the occasion to open a consultation upon them, invitingwritten comments from members. Similarly, the proposal to establish a chess charity and to transfer all but£1,000 of the Permanent Invested Fund to it was withdrawn and replaced by a holding motion to extend the cur-rent trust deed for a further two years while consultations were heard. More on these matters later.Outstanding business from the AGMIn the past, discussion of matters arising from the previous meeting has sometimes been protracted. On thisoccasion, the principal issue raised related to the vacancy in the role of President created by Andrew Paulson’sresignation. Andrew Leadbetter proposed that the Board be instructed to appoint his predecessor, RogerEdwards to the role (seconded by Alex McFarlane). The Board’s preference was to assess potential candidates2for this and the vacant Non-Executive Director position created by Sean Hewitt’s resignation in accordance withdue process and make an appointment only when this had been done. After some debate, the proposal wasdefeated on a show of hands by 11-20.Following this, Julie Denning read a brief statement from the Sussex Chess Association (SCA) concerning thearchive of SCA papers which went missing while in the ECF’s care (as managers of the National Chess Library).The statement expressed gratitude for the Chief Executive’s intervention in allowing access to a storage area notpreviously searched but added that the search had proved fruitless and, with deep regret, the archive is consid-ered lost. The SCA’s distress at this situation was entirely understandable and undoubtedly shared by all present,who must have appreciated the dignified statement accepting that all that could be done to find the missing doc-uments had been done. The loss of these historical documents is sad indeed.ECF representation at the European Chess Union (ECU) General AssemblyOnline discussions prior to Council had largely focused on the resignation of the ECF President and the agree-ment reached between him and the Board that a proposal be put to Council to the effect that Andrew Paulsonbe designated the ECF’s official delegate to the ECU General Assembly, at which he would be standing for elec-tion to the position of Deputy President (nominated by the ECF Board).There was considerable anticipation to the effect that this could be a heated discussion, and it would be fair tosay that many delegates’ minds were focused on it. Sensibly, therefore, the relevant item was moved from 17thposition on the agenda to early in the meeting. Opening the discussion, the Board restated its sincerity in mak-ing the proposal. The Federation’s FIDE Delegate, Nigel Short, responded by referring to the “unprecedented”proposal to disenfranchise the elected delegate. He commented that passing the motion would, in practice, bea vote in favour of Zurab Azmaiparashvili for ECU President and noted that the deadline for nominations for theECU roles was still several weeks away (9 May) and that it was inappropriate to decide upon the ECF’s votingintentions before all of the candidates were known.The debate which followed remained civil and indeed rather subdued in tone. One sensed that Ray Edwardsspoke for many in the room in suggesting that the proposal to send Andrew Paulson as its delegate to the ECUGeneral Assembly was difficult to reconcile with the Board’s having passed a vote of no confidence in itsPresident. The majority of speakers expressed concern over the proposal, creating the impression that the votewould result in its defeat. Perhaps recognising this, in closing the debate, Andrew Paulson chose to concentrateon matters related to the confidence motion and the leaked draft agreement between himself and the FIDEPresident concerning the rights to the world championship and associated events, rather than make the case forbeing nominated delegate to the ECU General Assembly.The proposal passed to a card vote without prior show of hands. It was comfortably defeated: 79 votes in favour,153 against, with 30 abstentions.Financial mattersThe core purpose of the Finance Council meeting, as opposed to the AGM, is to consider the ECF’s financial posi-tion and to agree the budget for the coming year, setting membership and game fee rates en route.This year, thanks to the hard work of Chris Mattos, John Philpott and David Eustace (Director of Finance), com-prehensive financial reports had been prepared and circulated in advance, which greatly aided efficient discus-sion and provided reassurance that the Board was on top of the numbers.To summarise a plethora of information in a few short words:• The ECF achieved a surplus of about £11,000 for the 16-month 2012/13 financial year;• The current (2013/14) financial year is projected to achieve a surplus of £21,000, despite the fact thatit includes the expense of both an Olympiad and a European Team Championships (normally, they wouldfeature in alternate financial years);3• The 2014/15 budget produces a further surplus of £21,000, adding to the health of the ECF’s reserves.Some one-off factors influenced the outcomes in 2012/13 and 2013/14:The ECF benefitted in 2012/13 from receipt of £12,000 from the pension fund trustees of the late Martin Hawley.It had been expected that more than half of this might have been required to cover the venue costs of the RivieraCentre for the 2013 British Championships in Torquay, but in the event, the entry to the championships was sogood that none of the £7,500 earmarked to cover these costs was required.In the current year, the departure of the ECF office manager and the covering of the vacated role by an officialon an unpaid, voluntary basis created a better-than-expected performance on the cost side. Council was toldthat this would not be repeated in 2014/15, as a new (paid) office manager would be recruited to restore theoffice staff to budgeted levels.These one-off factors notwithstanding, the Director of Finance stated that the good financial results were in largepart a reflection of the success of the membership scheme, which had stabilised the Federation’s finances afteryears of uneven performances and deficits. This conclusion was echoed by the Chairman of the FinanceCommittee, among others.Financial decisions takenMoving to the meat of the agenda and the matters perhaps of most interest to members, Council decided thefollowing:• Individual members’ subscriptions are unchanged;• The minimum membership fee for organisations is unchanged;• Game Fee rates are unchanged;• An additional £5,500 was made available in the current financial year to supplement the InternationalChess budget, in order to allow the strongest possible teams – Open and Women’s – to be sent to the2014 Olympiad (in the event that funds raised from external sources fall short).The decision to freeze Game Fee rates for a further year represented a rejection of a proposal initiated by theHastings & St Leonards Chess Club to reduce rates for graded internal club games. There was little support forthis at the meeting (Sean Hewitt pointed out that only 54 people played only internal club games and that halfof these were from Hastings & St Leonards), and the proposal was defeated by 9 votes to 29 on a show of hands.The Game Fee decision also represented a rejection of the Board’s proposal of a 12.5% increase (i.e. for standardplay, from £2.00 to £2.25 per result). The Director of Finance stated openly that this increase had been proposedin order to encourage a still greater switch to individual ECF membership and that the additional monies raisedwere modest (less than £2,000). My own comment at the meeting was that the increase was largely meaning-less in its financial impact and too small to have a significant effect in accelerating the trend towards member-ship. As such, it appeared to fall between two stools.On this basis, the budget for 2014/15 was adopted with none against.Looking further aheadAs well as a budget for 2014/15, the Director of Finance had prepared projections for the following two years,reflecting a number of different scenarios. These centred on the policy with regard to support for the ECF’s inter-national chess activities and its intended timetable for achievement of a reserves target of £100,000.There was limited discussion of these scenarios. In conjunction with the plans for the establishment of a chesscharity and the transfer of monies currently held in the Permanent Invested Fund (within the British ChessFederation), I suggested to the Board that consideration be given to splitting the transfer so that sufficient monieswere passed to the ECF to meet its reserves target at the earliest opportunity. The rationale for this suggestion4was that it would liberate the ECF from the need to budget surpluses for the next few years, allowing room forinvestment in activities to develop and support English chess.As it was, by the time the Council meeting was briefly suspended to allow for an Extraordinary Meeting of theBritish Chess Federation(BCF), the proposal to set up a new charity had been qualified by the announcementthat approval for the transfer of funds from the Permanent Invested Fund would not now be sought. On thisbasis, it had been passed, since it was clear that without the switching of funds the establishment of a new char-ity was unobjectionable.The BCF meeting was noteworthy for the fact that up-to-date financial statements had been provided for all ofits constituent parts, a significant improvement on previous years. A proposal to renew the Permanent InvestedFund until May 2035 was modified by the Board to a renewal until May 2016, to allow time for consultation overmatters raised in the ECF Council paper on the establishment of a Charitable Incorporated Organisation. As stat-ed previously, the proposal to transfer all but £1,000 of the BCF Permanent Invested Fund monies to the newcharity was withdrawn, so the status quo prevails for a couple more years.Returning to the ECF Finance Council ...In advance of the meeting, Chief Executive Phil Ehr had prepared and circulated two papers for discussion andnoting, on Strategy and ‘Transformation’. In the event, attendees were told that the intention was now to openthese up for consultation, and written comments over the coming weeks were invited (no deadline was speci-fied). The papers are still available on the ECF website at http://www.englishchess.org.uk/about-2/ecf-council-and-board/.In brief, the Strategy paper proposes the following initiatives:•Initiative 1:Improve financial management and office performance;•Initiative 2:Compete in the Olympiad, European Team Championships and Youth Olympiad with thebest teams that funds allow;•Initiative 3:Correct shortfalls in secondary schools, women’s and seniors’ chess;•Initiative 4a:Transform and improve governance to enable charity funding of charitable activities;•Initiative 4b:Improve governance and transform to enable commercial practices and major sponsorshipof English Chess;•Initiative 4c.Transform and improve governance to enable access to funds dedicated to promotingsport.There is more detail in the paper, which interested members are encouraged to read. The final initiative reflectsthe assertion that the current ECF organisation is not “fit for purpose” and that a ‘transformation’ is required.This is set out in the Transformation White Paper, which includes the following suggested measures (intended fordiscussion purposes only):1. Rebalance representation at Council among players, arbiters, organisers, coaches and reporters.2. Permit directors and managers to be paid as a means to recruit and manage relationships with corporate sponsors and to raise standards for delivery of ECF-run championships and member services.3. Increase terms of office for Board members.4. Require conflict of interest certification for candidate Board members. Use registered charity standardsfor directors designated as ex officio charity trustees. Use company standards for other directors.Consider extending conflict of interest certification for other officials involved with selection of players,coaches, arbiters and organisers.5. Merge the Awards Committee and the Personnel Committee in to a single Recognition Committee.5 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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