08.19.18 An update from Maine Chess Association Interim President Michael Dudley.

FROM THE DESK OF THE PRESIDENT

12 August 2018

Dear Maine Chess Community,

Summer is coming to a close. As the days tick down, we can feel the heat (hopefully) subsiding, the days growing shorter, and the school year get closer.

It is a good time for chess.

My travels have taken me from Fort Fairfield to play in the Maine Potato Blossom Festival Chess Tournament, where Wyatt Hendrix put up an impressive tournament win, to Pittsburgh, where last year's representative to the National Girls' Tournament of Champions, Linh Nguyen, posted an impressive 3.5/5 at the Pittsburgh Open. (My tournament performance, by comparison, was hardly worth a boast.) Just yesterday, Roger Morin completed another Houlton Open featuring strong players from Aroostook County and New Brunswick, and in Kennebunk, Phil Lowell held his own tournament at Owen's Farmhouse. The diversity of events our players have the opportunity to attend is excellent!

Tonight, the MECA Policy Board welcomes new interim Secretary Bill Hartt of Hermon High School. Bill has accepted the position and will serve until our elections in December 2018. Bill comes to the job as one of our strongest scholastic players, and with a desire to get involved in making a difference in Maine's chess community. Welcome, Bill!

The Policy Board engaged in the important work of refining the nomination protocol for our scholastic tournaments, and toward finalizing a Maine Chess Player of the Year format with an exciting tournament lineup. The Policy Board voted to continue to work on this tournament schedule and prize structure offline, so that new meetings do not need to be called for every new revision of the proposal. It is my goal to finalize the new Maine Chess Player of the Year lineup for 2019 sometime in the next month.

Last, but certainly not least, please consider attending the next Maine Chess Association membership meeting, which has been scheduled for Saturday, December 1, 2018, at a location to be determined imminently. Please also consider coming to the tournaments on offer this month, which take place in Bangor at John Bapst Memorial High School on Saturday, September 8, in Saco at the Hampton Inn on Saturday, September 15, and in Houlton on Saturday, September 22. See ChessMaine.net for more information about those events!

I end my letter with a renewed call for your support. Whether you write to me with your hopes for the future of chess in Maine, renew a past membership or purchase a new one. (My thanks to Oisin O'Searcoid of Bonny Eagle Middle School, as he is MECA's newest member!) I also hope you'll attend a tournament or consider a further donation to MECA. I am grateful for your presence in what is definitely the best place to play chess. Together, as one might expect Mainers would, we are chess the way it should be. I look forward to hearing from you, and to continuing to work to make Maine's chess community even stronger. See you over the board!

Sincerely yours,

Michael Dudley
President, Maine Chess Association