The USCF Correspondence Chess
Workshop
Wednesday August 9, 2006
by J. Franklin Campbell
(posted 16 August 2006, minor corrections 17 Aug.)
USCF CC Committee Chairman Harold Stenzel & Director
of Communications Joan DuBois
(Unless otherwise noted, all photos by J. Franklin Campbell)
Conducting the USCF Correspondence Chess Workshop were
Harold Stenzel (the Chairman of the USCC correspondence
chess committee) and Joan DuBois (long time USCF cc contact
and the person cc Director Alex Dunne reports to). Some
other attendees were Jim & Helen Warren from APCT, Ruth
Ann Fay (representing the ICCF-U.S. office), Mike Nolan
(USCF programmer and database guru), Daniel Lucas (USCF
publications director and editor of Chess Life), and
a number of other interested parties, include me. Unfortunately,
cc director Alex Dunne, who serves as TD for all USCF
cc events, was not in attendance.
Jim Warren, Helen Warren and Ruth Ann Fay
USCF Programmer Mike Nolan reported on the plans to
incorporate cc events into the USCF web site. He described a
4-phase program.
- All events in the past moved from old database into the
new database used by the web site. This phase is completed.
- Add data for on-going events so current crosstables can
be displayed. There are currently approximately 1830 events
in progress.
Hopefully this will be finished within a few weeks after this
meeting.
- Enter recent results to the new crosstables to bring them
right up to date.
- Rate all new results using this updated database. It is
estimated that this final step will be completed within the
next 2-3 months.
USCF CC Workshop, Director of Publications/CL Editor Daniel
Lucas at left, USCF Programmer Mike Nolan standing
The plan is to make the same facilities currently available
for OTB games also available for cc games. In a later meeting
Mike Nolan said results from OTB tournaments are often rated
by the time the player gets home from the tournament (depending
on how rapidly the TD sends his report after the event finishes).
Joan DuBois passed along an estimate by Alex Dunne that approximately
2/3 of USCF games are still conducted by post, a number that
surprised me a bit.
Chess Life has stopped carrying Alex Dunne's cc column
"The Check is in the Mail" as part of the overall plan of reducing
the number of columns. Chess Life editor Daniel Lucas,
after working with a special consultant on publications, announced
that Chess Life was "column heavy". The plan
is to make the magazine more interesting with a greater number
of feature articles, which requires a big reduction in the regular
monthly columns. The biggest number of complaints were about
the cancellation of GM Larry Evans' Q&A column, which resulted
in about 200 email complaints. I believe Alex's column cancellation
was the 2nd greatest cause of email complaints. I just received
the third issue of Chess Life (August 2006) since the
editorial change and didn't see any noticeable correspondence
chess content in that particular issue. The second issue (July)
contained a lengthy article by Alex Dunne titled "Women
in Correspondence Chess".
[Note: it seems that Dunne's column may continue to be available
on-line. The August 2006 column has now been posted, though
there is no certainty that future columns will continue. You
can find a list of columns available at: http://www.uschess.org/cc/alex_intro.php]
Chess Life editor Daniel Lucas responded to my
questions about coverage of correspondence chess in the magazine.
The Alex Dunne column "The Check is in the Mail" has been cancelled
as part of his overall scheme to overhaul the structure of the
magazine. It was considered "column heavy". The new design of
Chess Life has far fewer regular columns, I believe considerably
less than ½ of the former count. The emphasis will be on feature
articles, and this extends to correspondence chess. His plan
is to have a major cc article on a quarterly basis, but there
won't be much "for the record" stuff like crosstables and games
results. This will be left to the web site, which is considered
a better place to provide this sort of information. I suggested
that without any announcements correspondence chess enthusiasts
would come to the same conclusion I had made ... Chess Life
was removing regular cc from its pages. I anticipate that he
will make his plans clearer in future issues. For now I can
pass along these plans for feature articles on cc we can expect
to see in Chess Life:
- USCF Absolute Championship tournament update by Alex Dunne.
- US Championship full tournament report when the event concludes
(possibly referring to the 15th
USCCC Final with one critical game remaining).
- Susan Polgar article on openings, comparing those played
in cc to those in OTB.
I asked about USCF events using chess servers, and there certainly
is some interest. I understand that ICC (the Internet Chess
Club) is a potential provider for server play. It appears that
little is known about the ICCF server, but perhaps Alex Dunne
would have provided better information on that. At a later time
I did ask "ZEK" of ICC about their cc support, and he admitted
it wasn't very strong at the moment but may be improved in the
future. ICC does have a cc component but it needs to be improved.
I came away from this meeting with a more positive view of
USCF cc than I had before. The work Mike Nolan is doing bringing
cc events into parity with OTB events on the USCF computer was
very impressive and speaks well to USCF support for correspondence
chess.
USCF Web Site Workshop and Publications Workshop. I'll
combine the information from both meetings here. Work continues
on the new USCF web site. The old web site is still fully available
with pages being reformatted for the new site. There are currently
about 25,000 old web pages, but only about 6,000 need to be
incorporated into the new site. It is said that in many cases
old pages reflect a single chess position in a game so one game
uses many pages. At any rate, many of the old web pages are
now obsolete.
USCF programmer Mike Nolan, CJA webmaster/APCT columnist
Franklin Campbell
& USCF web site editor Jennifer Shahade (left to
right)
(photo by unknown)
The new web site editor is Jennifer Shahade, well known
for her success as a chess player. I came away with a very positive
impression of Jennifer. She was posting daily reports on the
US Open with photos and games in replay format. The look of
the new web site is great and the content is excellent. Go to
the web site http://www.uschess.org
and click on the "Chess Life Online" link at the left to see
her reports. On this CL Online page you can also click on links
to see her personal BLOG or read GM Joel Benjamin's new on-line
column "Ask GM Joel", which effectively replaces the old Larry
Evans Q&A column previously in the magazine. Evans' column will
not be brought back to the magazine, despite a couple hundred
emails from readers, but another Evans' column on The Best Move
will return.
CJA meeting (part 2) to hash out new bylaws. Left to right,
CJA President Jerry Hanken,
CJA Secretary/Treasurer Randy Hough, CJA Webmaster J.
Franklin Campbell,
CJA Bylaws Chairman Dr. Ira Lee Riddle, CJA member Arlen
Walker
(photo by Daniel Lucas)
Chess Journalists (CJA) Annual Meeting. My main reason
for going was to attend this meeting. I am webmaster of the
CJA site and, if the new bylaws are accepted by the membership,
I'll be an officer of this organization. CJA also announces
the winners of the annual CJA Awards for the best journalism
at this meeting. Everything went well, I got to meet a lot of
people for the first time (including CJA President Jerry
Hanken, Secretary/Treasurer Randy Hough and Bylaws
committee chairman Dr. Ira Lee Riddle), the bylaws changes
were discussed and a final version was accepted for voting by
the membership, and the awards were announced. Here are a couple
key winners:
- Chess Journalist of the Year … Peter Tamburro
- CC Magazine … CCLA's Chess Correspondent
- CC Web Site … The
Campbell Report
President's Reception, USCF President Bill Goichberg
and wife Brenda Goichberg
President's Reception. On Friday evening the USCF President
Bill Goichberg provided a reception, which gave me an
opportunity to put on my tie and meet some of the movers and
shakers in USCF. I got a nice photo of Bill and his wife Brenda,
met Harold Winston, a former President and a founding
member of CJA in Atlantic city in 1972 (it was called Association
of U. S. Chess Journalists at that time), and met new USCF Board
Member Sam Sloan, who seemed quite a nice fellow to me at that
time. I asked if he has some specific things he hoped to achieve
in his one-year term and he said he did. It was certainly a
pleasant evening and the various chess people I met were friendly
and passionate about chess. Overall I was quite impressed and
believe USCF supporters have every reason to be optimistic about
the future of chess in the USA. One interesting incident: someone
was showing home movies of the US Open in Chicago in 1963. One
of the players shown was Victor Palciauskas, the 10th
CC World Champion.
USCF President Bill Goichberg (left) and CJA Webmaster/APCT
Columnist J. Franklin Campbell
(photo by Jerry Hanken)
Main playing hall, 2006 US Open Chess Championship, Oak Brook,
Illinois
© 2006 J. Franklin Campbell. All rights reserved.
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