20th April 2019 NZST

NZCF 2019 Constitution Highlights

The New Zealand Chess Federation (NZCF) has a new Constitution published and effective from March 2019. New Supplementary Regulations that lead on from the Constitution have also been published. To spare everyone affected from the intricacies of every clause in these documents, we have got our legal team to do an independent review and summarise their findings in plain practical terms when it comes to participation in chess events.

These new documents have largely accomplished the main aim of simplifying regulations for everyone involved with playing chess competitively. After all, the main aim is to remove needless bureaucratic work that creates barriers to promoting and playing chess. Here are three highlights we found that greatly simplify and remove barriers to playing chess competitively.

1. Eliminate Annual Player Registration.

Most important practical improvement for every New Zealand chess player is removal of the requirement to be registered for the year and pay the fee. Cost to be registered annually and constant ongoing tracking of registered players by officials had been the biggest impediment towards playing chess competitively. With the elimination of player registrations, nobody needs to be affected by this pointless and needless system.

Effect of this towards individuals is that NZCF now no longer has direct transactions with individual persons. People now only deal directly with NZCF's member chess clubs without any parallel direct dealings with NZCF itself. Previously there were two parallel but separate dealings, eg. becoming a member of a chess club and registering with NZCF. Now there is only becoming a member of a chess club.

Chess clubs now just set their own conditions for people to become members. There are no more pass through charges like annual player registration fees that are collected on behalf of NZCF. A person would now just pay the chess club's membership fees without any additional NZCF charges since the chess club is no longer NZCF's collecting agent.

2. Boost Chess Clubs' Membership.

All chess players need to do to be eligible to play in more than one chess competition rated by NZCF per year is to become a member of an affiliated or associated NZCF member chess club. A welcome incentive to help boost membership for every chess club in New Zealand.

NZCF's membership fees system is now radically different but greatly simplified, very unlike the previous system where clubs have a fixed NZCF affiliate or associate membership fee and then need to constantly check that every person who wants to join the chess club has paid their annual NZCF player registration fee. Now there is just a simple NZCF affiliate or associate membership fee that is calculated at $10 per member of the chess club.

Now NZCF's Constitution recognises that the same person can join multiple chess clubs that results in all affiliated member chess clubs that a person joined increasing their voting power at NZCF general meetings. This makes a NZCF affiliated member chess club's voting power proportionally based on the club's membership numbers without any alteration.

It seems that the only class of NZCF members that lose out are people who are NZCF Life Members. The only practical advantage of being a NZCF Life Member is not needing to become a member of any NZCF member chess club in order to play in more than one chess competition rated by NZCF per year. Each NZCF member chess club now independently decides on how to treat everyone who wants to join it since NZCF member chess clubs are no longer NZCF collecting agents. NZCF Life Members are now treated according to New Zealand society's egalitarian ethos where titles and honours do not confer any practical advantages.

3. Simplify Event Organisation.

Chess clubs and officials who organise chess events now find their responsibilities imposed by NZCF reduced. The removal of the means and need to track whether players have met all NZCF conditions to play in chess competitions rated by NZCF means that chess clubs and officials have no NZCF enforcement work responsibility. This eliminates the cause of many disputes and negative reactions faced by officials who organise chess events.

Now all chess clubs and officials only need to be responsible for NZCF charges that are incurred by each individual chess event. NZCF charges for one event are no longer connected to other events. For example, there is no need to check if a player has paid annual registration fees at another chess event. NZCF has effectively made all charges contained within each individual chess event.

Chess event officials now practically only need to ensure players have paid entry fees before allowing them to play in a chess event. Through not having any direct financial dealings with chess players individually, NZCF has removed all the complications and extra work caused by pass through charges.

23rd February 2019 NZDT

14th Bay of Plenty Rapid

Congratulatons to the prizewinners:

Next edition of Bay of Plenty Rapid, New Zealand's first and longest running Fischer time control Rapid is already organised on an easy to remember date, 29th February 2020 (leap year day).

15th Bay of Plenty Rapid 2 details in Event Webpage.

11pm 12th January 2019 NZDT

Oceania Youth & Oceania Under 20 Chess Championship

Congratulations to all Medalists and Direct Title/Norm winners. More details in Official Webpage.

11am 30th October 2018 NZDT

Remit for 2019 NZCF AGM by North Shore Chess Club

A remit had been submitted on 30th October 2018 by North Shore Chess Club to be voted on at the 2019 NZCF Annual General Meeting.

The remit can be viewed in North Shore Chess Club's website homepage.

This remit would reduce NZCF annual player registration fees from the current $20 to just a nominal $1.

A very positive initiative by North Shore Chess Club to remove another unnecessary "tax" by NZCF. Keeping a single list of registered players nationwide online costs NZCF practically nothing. In terms of time, the automated player registration system was stress tested by the NZCF Secretary in 2013 and handled a 5 million player register in less than an hour. Number of players registered can easily increase 10 fold from the current less than 500 and it would take less than a minute a month to maintain the register.

Having a registered players list available online listing all registered players nationwide is of immense benefit to NZCF. Every chess player should be encouraged to be registered by making registration practically free. Just like it costs nothing to be registered in the electoral roll, there should not be a "poll tax" to be listed as a registered NZ chess player.

We encourage NZCF affiliated member clubs to vote in favour of this remit by North Shore Chess Club at the NZCF AGM.

10am 28th October 2018 NZDT

Remits for 2019 NZCF AGM by Mount Maunganui RSA Chess Club

Two remits had been submitted on 26th October 2018 by Mount Maunganui RSA Chess Club to be voted on at the 2019 NZCF Annual General Meeting.

Both remits are available for download in "Remits for January 2019 NZ Chess Congress AGM" section of Mount Maunganui RSA Chess Club's Frequently Asked Questions webpage.

1st remit is to remove $10 levy per team that participates in Interschool Regional Qualifying competitions. This levy was meant to be used to fund travel grants for teams to participate with free entry into the National Interschool Finals. Since travel grants are no longer provided and entry fees are now being charged for National Interschool Finals, this levy just serves as a revenue grab by NZCF.

2nd remit is to make NZCF Council meeting minutes published online. NZCF Council meeting minutes used to be published online to enable downloading by NZCF members to freely distribute to everyone. All decisions by NZCF Council must be made at a council meeting and the proof of which are the meeting minutes kept by the NZCF Secretary. Meeting minutes need to be published so that everyone affected by NZCF Council decisions would know about the decisions and that they were validly made. Since NZCF is a registered charity without any commercial or sensitive activity, there is no reason for secrecy and instead every effort should be made for transparency and accountability as a standard practice of openness.

We encourage NZCF affiliated member clubs to vote in favour of these remits by Mount Maunganui RSA Chess Club at the NZCF AGM.

18th Bangkok Chess Club Open

Asian Youth Chess Championship

Wellington Open

Latvian Rapid

Hawke's Bay Rapid

A-Grade
1st FM Ben Hague
2nd= FM Stephen Lukey and FM Daniel Gong

B-Grade
1st= Aaron Wang and Oscar Qin
3rd Kimberley Yuan

Junior-Grade
1st Finley Duncan
2nd Sean Molloy
3rd= Te Kaha Taiapa and Akuhata Keelan

Full results on Vega: A-Grade; B-Grade; Junior.

Bay of Plenty Rapid

A-Grade
1st FM Ben Hague
2nd Kirill Polishchuk
3rd= FM Mike Steadman, Noel Pinic, IM Paul Garbett, CM Helen Milligan (under2000), Richard Dare (under1900)

B-Grade
1st Laurens Goormachtigh
2nd Luis Angel Duran Rubalcava
3rd= Asheesh Gautam, Leyton Hackney, Simon Lyall, Neil Cruden, Timothy Ha, Philli Park-Tamati (under1600)
under1400 Jie Gong

Junior-Grade
1st= Aidan Morgan, Leo Kim, UOG Udala Nethmina Bandara
under12years Kevin Li
under10years Hannah Xu

Full results on Vega: A-Grade , B-Grade , Junior

Auckland Anniversary Weekender

1st with 6/6: FM Ben Hague
2nd= CM Alphaeus Ang, FM Bob Smith, IM Paul Garbett, CM Allen Fan, Gino Thornton, CM John Duneas

Under 1800: 1st CM Oliver Picken
2nd= Laurens Goormachtigh, Caroline Yan, Karl Holdo, Oliver Dai, Roy Seabrook, Stephen Peak

Under 1500: 1st Tom Fu
2nd= Sarah Yan, Jacob Barry, Philli Park-Tamati, Uday Jain, Aaron Wang, Isabelle Ning, Abraham Deng

Under 1200: 1st Kendrick Zhang
2nd Felix Xie
3rd Boyuan Zhang

Full results on Vega: Anniversary Weekender

2018 New Zealand Chess Champions

The MillenniumHotels.com New Zealand Open finished with the visting French GMs in 1st and 2nd places, but the more important local fight for the title of 125th New Zealand Champion was decided by a last-round battle. Alphaeus Ang won quickly, reaching 6/9, and was able to watch most of his challengers fall behind - Mike Steadman and Bob Smith lost to the Frenchmen, and Allen Fan was held to a draw by Australian GM Darryl Johansen. That left a fascinating game with Daniel Gong (on 5½) trying to hold off the challenge of Russell Dive (on 5). Dive eventually won, and shared the title with Ang.

Alphaeus is only 15 - the same age as GM Murray Chandler, back in the 1975/76 event, where Chandler scored his first Championship. A sign of great things to come? We can certainly hope so! In any case, it is clear that Youth is finally making a breakthrough against Experience in New Zealand!

Full details can be found in the dedicated NZ Congress 2018 webpage.

Results of the election at the NZCF AGM

Download the Minutes here (pdf document).

To summarise, we lost the election to the other ticket. The policies that we promoted that were expressed through remits from North Shore Chess Club and Mount Maunganui RSA Chess Club were also lost, although voting for the Mount Maunganui remit and the first North Shore remit (on registration fees) were tied and defeated by chairman Murray Chandler's casting vote.

The full details of the votes were as follows:

Election for Council (President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer, Councillors)
5 votes for us (1 Mt Maunganui, 3 North Shore, 1 Papatoetoe)
21 votes against us (5 Auckland, 2 Canterbury, 2 Hamilton, 1 Hawkes Bay, 2 Howick-Pakuranga, 2 Otago, 2 Upper Hutt, 1 Waitakere, 4 Wellington)

Mt Maunganui Remit, to require open tender process before NZCF can contract out events.
12 votes for (5 Auckland, 1 Mt Maunganui, 3 North Shore, 2 Otago, 1 Papatoetoe)
12 votes against (2 Canterbury, 2 Hamilton, 1 Hawkes Bay, 2 Howick-Pakuranga, 1 Waitakere, 4 Wellington)
2 votes abstaining (2 Upper Hutt)
Murray Chandler cast the chairman's vote to defeat the remit.

North Shore Remit1, to cut NZCF annual player registration fees to $10.
12 votes for (5 Auckland, 1 Mt Maunganui, 3 North Shore, 1 Papatoetoe, 2 Upper Hutt)
12 votes against (2 Canterbury, 2 Hamilton, 1 Hawkes Bay, 2 Howick-Pakuranga, 1 Waitakere, 4 Wellington)
2 votes abstaining (2 Otago)
Murray Chandler cast the chairman's vote to defeat the remit.

North Shore Remit2, to make NZCF tournament levies inclusive of FIDE rating fees.
10 votes for (5 Auckland, 1 Mt Maunganui, 3 North Shore, 1 Papatoetoe)
12 votes against (2 Canterbury, 2 Hamilton, 1 Hawkes Bay, 2 Howick-Pakuranga, 1 Waitakere, 4 Wellington)
4 votes abstaining (2 Otago, 2 Upper Hutt)

North Shore Remit3, to revert interschools levies back to $5 per team. No extra charge to teams for playing in national finals.
5 votes for (1 Mt Maunganui, 3 North Shore, 1 Papatoetoe)
17 votes against (5 Auckland, 2 Canterbury, 2 Hamilton, 1 Hawkes Bay, 2 Howick-Pakuranga, 1 Waitakere, 4 Wellington)
4 votes abstaining (2 Otago, 2 Upper Hutt)

These were the delegates casting the clubs' votes at the AGM.
5 votes, Auckland, Mike Steadman.
2 votes, Canterbury, Edward Rains.
2 votes, Hamilton, Murray Chandler.
1 vote, Hawkes Bay, Bernard Carpinter.
2 votes, Howick-Pakuranga, Stan Yee & Tony Booth.
1 vote, Mt Maunganui, Helen Milligan.
3 votes, North Shore, Helen Milligan.
2 votes, Otago, Leighton Nicholls.
1 vote, Papatoetoe, Helen Milligan.
2 votes, Upper Hutt, Anton Reid.
1 vote, Waitakere, Bob Smith.
4 votes, Wellington, Ross Jackson & Russell Dive.