SOUTH AFRICAN JUNIOR
CHESS ASSOCIATION
OFFICIAL JUNIOR CHESS BODY OF CHESSA
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Sajca Report for the 14 April Chess Council Meeting
We were elected as the new Executive of SAJCA at the AGM, held in December 2006 at the Nationals. The following members make up the committee:
President: Mark January
Treasurer: Gary Oertel
Development: Michael Bornheim
Development: Pieter Nel
Secretary: Bridgette Brodie
Technical: Gunther van den Berg
Additional member: Africa MsimangEven though the old Executive did an outstanding job in the running of SAJCA affairs there appeared to be a number of indifferences between Chessa and SAJCA, as the new committee we are committed to the junior players of this country in all respects and undertake to work closely with Chessa, NACOC, SASSU and all other affiliates in order to continue with good work that SAJCA has always provided and performed for our junior players. We would endeavor to try and repair all bridges that have been damaged and hope that we would be afforded the opportunity of working toward the interest of chess and chess players.
International Participation 2006:
U16 Olympiad:
The U16 team went to Agri in Turkey. The team consisted of 6 players that ended with the following scores:
Ryan van Rensburg (3½/8)
Adam Earle (3½/8)
Anant Dole (2½/9)
Benjamin Hercules (4½/8)
Danie van Huysteen (5½/7)The manager/coach was Paul McAvoy. The definitive highlight was Danie’s gold medal – the first one that South Africa has ever achieved. A more detailed report was presented to the Chessa Council at the September 2006 meeting. The team manager/coach’s report is available on the SAJCA website.
2006 WYCC:
The tournament was held in Batumi, Georgia. Unfortunately the costs involved in this trip were more expensive than in previous years and this was because Batumi is off the beaten track and flights were difficult. The other problem was that the airport in Batumi was closed for renovation and had still not re-opened (despite the organisers assurances that it would be opened by the end of September - cows are grazing on it at the time) so the group was forced to fly via Tbilisi. The Team Manager investigated every possible routing to Tbilisi and each one had its own problems – i.e. connecting flights not corresponding which meant forced layovers in each case. Certain connecting flights only operated once or twice a week, which would have forced them to spend even more nights en route. On other routes which had less layover time they would have either had a problem of availability of sufficient seats or the connecting fares were very high. So, no matter which way they traveled they had to overnight and the majority of the group opted for a layover in Moscow.
5 days before the group was due to leave, their flight from Moscow to Tbilisi was cancelled due to the political situation between Russia & Georgia. They were offered a re-routing from Aeroflot to either Yerevan or Baku at no extra cost. However, flying via Baku would not have worked and the only option was to go via Yerevan and then take a bus to Batumi. Luckily Chris de Jager was in Yerevan and was able to organise a bus, which had to be paid for immediately. SAJCA paid for the bus as time was running out. Due to this re-routing the group lost a nights accommodation that had already been paid for in Tbilisi. The idea was to try and get a refund of this night’s accommodation from the tour operator or the travel insurance. The travel insurance would not pay because the cancellation was due to political unrest which is not covered. Despite all efforts up to the end of January this year, we were not able to get a refund for this accommodation, which means that we still have to resolve the issue of the cost of the bus. The team manager has approached SAJCA and requested that this cost be wavered because the cost of the trip itself was so expensive for the parents.
The officials were:
Team Manager: Bridgette Brodie
Coaches: Daniel Cawdery
Corno Klaver
Frans Vermaak
Edwin November
Johannes MabuselaWe would like to thank the manager and coaches for an outstanding job done under difficult circumstances.
This year’s tournament was smaller than in previous years, with the notable absence of Russia, Spain, Portugal, France, England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland and as such presented a very much stronger field. 787 players from 56 countries competed, at the 2006 World Youth Chess Championships. This was the first time that there had been an U8 section for both boys and girls and we were surprised by the numbers in those 2 sections. The number of titled players’ were as follows:
GM |
3 |
IM |
27 |
WFM |
19 |
WIM |
12 |
WGM |
4 |
CM |
11 |
IM |
15 |
WCM |
1 |
The following breakdown will give you an idea of the strength of the tournament:
Boys U8 |
82 players |
7 rated between 1500 & 1905 |
Boys U10 |
95 players |
23 rating 1700 plus with the highest rating being 2080 |
Boys U12 |
91 players |
26 rated above 2000 |
Boys U14 |
83 players |
40 rated above 2000 |
Boys U16 |
64 players |
52 rated above 2000 |
Boys U18 |
54 players |
48 rated above 2000 with 4 of them rated above 2500 |
Girls U8 |
47 players |
The only section where there were no rated players |
Girls U10 |
64 players |
Only 5 rated players, the highest being 2022 |
Girls U12 |
67 players |
23 rated players between 1619 & 2188 |
Girls U14 |
52 players |
15 rated above 2000 |
Girls U16 |
54 players |
24 rated above 2000 |
Girls U18 |
41 players |
30 rated above 2000 with 7 of them being rated above 2300 |
In the Girls U18 section alone, there were 3 WGM’s; 8 WIM’s 1 IM; 7 WFM’s and 1 WCM, which makes it probably one of the strongest World Champs ever and every half point/point we got was a hard fought battle, there wasn’t one easy game.
29 players represented South Africa and acted as true diplomats for our country. Despite coming from different regions, both coaches and players bonded reasonably well. The team spirit was evident at all times. Although mistakes were made on the board and we didn’t bring home any medals, our players were and are all winners in their own rights. They played their hearts out and were very well behaved and were proud ambassadors for South Africa. They had an experience they will never forget.
Due to the strength of these World Champs, we think it would be unfair to compare these results to previous year’s tournaments. Melissa Greeff was our top achiever with 6½ points which is an excellent score, followed by Angelique Hattingh on 6 and Marcel Roberts on 5½.
The recommendations from the Team Manager’s report are highly commendable and will be taken into consideration with our future planning.
The team manager and team coach’s reports are available on the SAJCA website.
African Juniors:
The tournament took place in Botswana and the coach was Jaco Nielson. The following players participated:
Heinrich Stander
Dewaldt Niemandt
Anant Dole
Carmen de Jager
Melissa Greeff
Suvania Moodliar.Melissa was undoubtedly our star, cruising to a full point’s victory and earning herself a title for her achievements. She is the youngest female title holder in South Africa which is something we are all extremely proud of – well done Melissa. Our girls did us proud by taking all 3 top positions. The boy’s came 3rd, 7th and 10th respectively.
One issue that is still outstanding is the fact that Daleen Wiid was stripped of her South African colours as well as the chance to participate in this tournament without due process being followed or having the opportunity to defend herself in a properly constituted hearing.
Nationals 2006:
At the September 2006 Chessa Council Meeting, Chessa decided that due to the fact that the previous SAJCA Executive was late with the submission of their financials statements, the financial control of the National tournament would be taken away and the funding would be placed into a separate account.
However, not only did they take away the financial control, but SAJCA has completely been sidelined in the operations of this tournament with all the decision making authority vested with the LOC or the Chessa officials. Decisions were made with regard to the format of the tournament itself as well as International Participation without any consultation with SAJCA or the Regions, or the players themselves. This resulted in mass confusion among the parents, players and officials at the tournament.
- Change of Format:
- The Teams Event was increased to 8 teams in the A section, playing a round robin over 7 rounds and the rest of the teams in a B section playing a Swiss. In the past the Teams Event was played over 5 rounds with 4 sections and promotion and relegation between the sections.
- The Individual Event was reduced from 9 rounds to 7 rounds and the age groups divided into A and B sections. The effect of this makes selection extremely difficult as it does not give you a fair reflection of the top player’s abilities and one mistake could cost you the title. Dividing the age groups into 2 sections takes away the dreams and aspirations of all chess players in the country as each child that enters this tournament, regardless of how good or bad they are, has dreams of becoming the next Champ and going overseas. Separating the players is going to result in a drastic reduction in the numbers at our Individual events.
- International Participation:
- At the start of the Individuals the Executive Director of Chessa, Mr Bernie Parkin, made the announcement that only 1 player would be going to the World Youth tournament and that the 2nd player would possibly go to another overseas tournament. This had a dramatic effect on every player in the hall and begged the question “what am I playing for”. Chessa’s reasoning behind this autocratic decision is mind boggling and in complete contradiction to the mass participation policy that Chessa has been punting for the longest time. Chessa has indicated that this is a government ruling in that it cheapens the S.A. colours, and that no other country takes as many players to World Youth. The table below proves otherwise:
Federation |
Count |
India |
73 |
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Armenia |
30 |
Iran |
32 |
|
Australia |
16 |
Mongolia |
17 |
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Azerbaijan |
53 |
Netherlands |
12 |
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Bulgaria |
13 |
Poland |
21 |
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Canada |
12 |
Romania |
12 |
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China |
21 |
South Africa |
29 |
|
Georgia |
174 |
Turkey |
23 |
|
Germany |
15 |
Ukraine |
16 |
|
Greece |
11 |
U.S.A. |
21 |
Furthermore, at the Youth Summit, the government’s representative, Mr Greg Fredericks, when questioned in this regard, had no knowledge of these allegations. If you consider the number of junior players that are playing chess in our country against the number of them that are going overseas the ratio is negligible. There other argument is that it would save costs by sending less players is inaccurate – by sending the 2nd and 3rd place players to a different tournament, means extra costs in terms of managers and coaches. The most important factor that must be considered is that the cost for the players going overseas is paid mostly by the parents and their opinions are the ones that count and not the opinions of administrators who are trying to further there own agenda’s. We must remember that we have been placed here to serve the interest of the players and not as supreme bodies that have the right to rule the world.
YOUTH COMMITTEE:
- The Youth Committee was appointed at the Youth Summit, to be a steering committee only, at the Nationals last year. Their one and only task was to investigate the way forward for all juniors in the country. This committee was not a constituted decision making body and had no authority with regards to running tournaments or making any selections. In fact, the President Mr Laurence Ball categorically stated during this summit that it was an information meeting only. They were not elected to make any decisions on behalf of SAJCA, Chessa or any other chess related committee.
- In January, without consultation, even prior to the committee meeting Chessa awarded the running of the closed to this committee, once again a SAJCA function.
- This committee is performing the same functions as SAJCA and as such is a duplication of functions.
- At the initial meeting of this committee the main purpose and function of this committee was to take away functionality from SAJCA and the functionality of the other 2 bodies, i.e. NACOC and SASSU was never addressed.
- One of the agreements achieved in this meeting was that the dates for the National tournaments at the end of the year would be discussed; however, SASSU has gone ahead and placed their dates on the calendar without any consultation.
- At the SAJCA Regional reps meeting, everyone present agreed that the Youth Committee should not exist and that each junior body be responsible for the running of their own organisation and should have representation on the Chessa Executive with full Executive powers, due to the fact that all decisions are supposed to be ratified by Chessa.
- This recommendation should be tabled at the next Chessa Council meeting for the constitutional amendment to take place.
- A disturbing fact was the number of decisions that purportedly came from the Youth Committee, but were never discussed with all members of the committee but rather in private behind closed door meetings with certain Chessa Exec members.
SA Junior Closed:
- It was very disappointing to learn that even after an agreement was reached in the December meeting between SAJCA and Chessa, at the whim of one of the Chessa Regional Representatives, the decision was overturned and the running of Closed was removed from SAJCA. This function was then handed to the Youth Committee. By the time the Youth Committee had met; SAJCA had made all the necessary arrangements and had the invitations ready to send to the players. At the meeting of the Youth Committee we got to the stage of agreement that Paul McAvoy would be the convener of the Closed. When Paul asked the committee if we could use Ms Brodie to continue the work that she had setup, the tournament was removed and handed to Tom Theunissen to do. This was a direct personal attract on Ms Brodie without any consideration for what was in the best interests not only of the tournament but also the players.
- Wild Cards; Mr. Paul McAvoy received the list of the wild cards from Chessa and was asked to make the recommendation to the youth committee. Note, again this was a SAJCA function, that was taken away. The main concern here was the fact that winners of the B Sections were automatically included as wild card. These players should never have been included as they were not even strong enough to be included in the A Section as is evident by G. Theunissen’s result of 1½ & L Boswell’s result of 4, however, only managing to achieve wins off players ending 21st and below.
- The Closed tournament is SAJCA’s most prestigious tournament and was treated as such in that all participants received personalized invitations and were timeously invited. This year, an email was sent to regions, requesting that they check the attached list to see if any of their players were on the list and then to inform them. This resulted in numerous players not even being aware that they had received an invite and were only informed at the 11th hour.
- In the past, 1 competent person has done the entire organisation for this tournament, very successfully. This year there was an LOC headed by Mr Tom Theunissen consisting of about 4 people and they battled. Where is the logic in this and why did our children have to suffer?
- With regards to the hotel – we fear that because of the way they were treated we have lost them as a sponsor forever.
- The arbiters for this tournament were not appointed without due process, i.e., there was no ratification by SACAA or by the Chessa Executive.
- A week before the tournament, neither of the 2 proposed arbiters had been officially invited to attend the tournament. Only after numerous queries was one of the proposed arbiters informed that he would be doing duty at the tournament.
- The proposed arbiter was also informed that he would receive R1 000-00 for the 5 days, R1 000-00 towards his traveling expenses plus free accomodation. Due to the late notification the cheapest flights from Cape Town to Johannesburg were R2 400-00. This meant that the arbiter would have had to pay, out of his own pocket, an amount of R1 400-00. When Mr Tom Theunissen was questioned about this, his reply was “that you were definitely not asked to perform this duty in any official capacity”, he then went on to say “that your services at this tournament is no longer required, we have somebody locally who is prepared to do this job on our terms and conditions”. Once again due process was not followed as the local people he was referring to were only asked on the Wednesday before the tournament started.
- We need to also point out, that Gunther van den Berg was never officially asked to be an arbiter at this tournament. He had followed due process by making application and at no stage had he received any confirmation of this application. Only on the Friday prior to the tournament did Mr Ball contact him and during their conversation the question came up about him being an arbiter. This was the first that Gunther had heard about this and informed Mr Ball that he had made prior arrangements and was unable to attend.
- In the past this tournament was run by one National Arbiter, who did the computer as well.
- Mr van den Berg was very annoyed by innuendos made that he had in fact signed off on the tie break system, when in fact he had no knowledge of this at all.
- There was a 7 way play-off at the end of the tournament. At the start of the play off, the players were informed that they would be playing 10/10 and that 10.2 would apply. This is completely in contradiction to the Fide Laws of Chess.
Managers and Coaches for International Events:
- Nominations of Managers and Coaches to Chessa was apparently done by the youth committee even thought this information was never circulated to the full committee for there input.
- Even though an email was sent to the Regions, requesting nominations, a number of the Regions complained at the SAJCA Regional Reps meeting that they had not received this communication.
- SAJCA was not even officially informed about this communication, even after we had informed the secretary of the change of contact details.
- It has come to our attention that certain proposed coaches/managers have no involvement with junior players from their regions at a national level.
Conclusion:
We would like to re-emphasize that the financial issues between SAJCA and Chessa relate to the previous Executive and can not be embedded in the new 2007 SAJCA Executive. We feel that if this Council is not satisfied with these audited financial statements as well as the additional information requested by Chessa, then Chessa should institute a full forensic audit into the financial affairs of SAJCA.
SAJCA’s only function is to look after the interests and functionality of Junior Chess in the country; admittedly the previous Executive was in contravention of the Chessa constitution with regards to the financial accountability to Chessa. However, this has been resolved and all audited financial statements have been submitted to Chessa. We must point out that Chessa has behaved unconstitutionally by meddling in the affairs of one of its affiliates and we hope that this situation has now been resolved so that we can get back to the business of chess. We furthermore wish to place on record that we acknowledge Chessa as the mother body of Chess and that this council is responsible for all governance with regards to chess in South Africa.
We thank you for your time
Mark C January
President: SAJCA