Massachusetts Chess Association
Board of Director Meeting Minutes
Tuesday, July 14, 2020, 7:00pm
Virtual Meeting
ATTENDEES: Oleg Poliannikov (President), Bob Messenger (Treasurer), Andrew Hoy (Clerk), Paul Arond, Jeff Caruso, George Mirijanian, Nicholas Sterling, Robb Stewart, Latanya Sweeney, and Yi Wang.
1. Memberships
Since the last meeting, we lost 16 members and gained one prison membership. The Board had a discussion about how to extend memberships in order to compensate existing members for a lack of over the board tournaments.
MOTION: Extend memberships expiring after March 2020 by six months (AH/JC).
VOTE: Passed, 9-0
2. Online Events
The Board had a good discussion about potential online events including:
? Instruction for beginners, specifically given by scholastic volunteers
3. Spiegel Cup and Girls Championship
Both events were successful and well run. The online format was certainly not ideal, but in the circumstances both events were well received. Several parents had concerns that their children’s opponents were cheating, but these allegations were unfounded, and the video was carefully reviewed. The Board wishes to thank Nick Sterling, Prathiba Yuvarajan, and Andrew Hoy for making the events successful.
For future online events, sticking to around 40 players works well for monitoring purposes. The TD can be more proactive in reaching out to players and parents during games to adjust cameras in order to alleviate cheating concerns from other parents. The Board will consider online qualifiers in the fall for the start of the scholastic year.
4. Executive Session
MOTION TO ADJOURN