CCI Biennial Meeting Lectures in St. Louis In Person and Online!

Hola! Received an email from Tom Gallegos of Chess Collectors International with an update on the arrangements made for the re-established CCI Biennial Meeting coming up soon in St. Louis.

Dear CCI Members and Friends,

We hereby announce that CCI’s 19 ^th Biennial will be what is called a “hybrid” event – part in-person, and part online.  We cordially invite you to attend, from the comfort of your own home.

PLEASE ATTEND OUR SCHEDULED WEBINARS, 9 am to noon, CDT, September 3 and 4, 2020.

It breaks our hearts that so many of our friends and fellow collectors cannot be with us in St. Louis for our meeting in September.  We’d been hoping to welcome as many as 60-80 of you on the originally scheduled date, back in May.  Now, with our September postponement date just around the corner, and the pandemic grinding on and on, it looks like the actual number of attendees will be much closer to 10.  (And we need every last one of these folks!)

With this in mind, we have decided to share as much of the conference as possible with the rest of you.  We know the morning lecture series is only part of the overall conference, but it's an important part.  These lectures, at least, can be broadcast as Zoom webinars.  Most of the lectures will also appear in our printed program (currently over 100 pages, and counting) which will be available to non-attendees shortly after the conference.  For a small donation to the club to cover costs, of course.

A few days to a week before the conference, you will receive a Webinar invite from our Zoom account.  This is not spam, though some of you may find it in your spam folders.  To register, please click on the link you will find in that invitation.  You will have complete flexibility to attend as much or as little of the talks as you wish.  The talks will hopefully also be recorded, so as to be available for posterity, just like the printed versions. They will be posted, either on our new CCI website, or possibly on YouTube.

We have a wonderful group of talks scheduled.  You will hear a great deal about the relationship between chess and pandemics; the French Enlightenment as it relates to chess history, and John McCrary of the USCF will speak about the evolution of chess rules.  We will even have Dr. George Dean presenting some of his 18 ^th century sets; and Allan Savage to enlighten us about Thomas Jefferson as a chess player, both of them speaking to you remotely.  We will also squeeze in a short business meeting on Friday.  Our latest revised schedule is as follows:

Thursday, September 3rd

09:00 – 09:15  CONFERENCE WELCOME – Tom Gallegos & Luann Woneis
09:15 – 10:15  HOW TO CHECKMATE A VIRUS (Keynote Address) – Luann Woneis
10:15 – 10:30  Fresh air break, and coffee
00:30 – 11:30  ENLIGHTENMENT – Tom Gallegos
11:30 – 12:00  CHESS MASTERWORKS OF THE 18 ^th CENTURY – Dr. George Dean

Friday, September 4th

09:00 – 10:00  THE EVOLUTION OF CHESS RULES – John McCrary
10:00 – 10:15  Fresh air break, and coffee
10:15 – 10:45  JEFFERSON AS A CHESS PLAYER – Allan Savage (online)
10:45 – 11:15  CAISSA, A POEM – Read by Tom Gallegos
11:15 – 12:00  CCI BUSINESS MEETING – Tom Gallegos & Gordon Clapp

Our timeframe for these talks is an estimate.  We will endeavor to stay on schedule, but you may find one or more sessions do not begin or end exactly on time, depending on what is happening in the room.  There will be a Q&A button for you to ask questions at the end of each speech.  The speaker will repeat your typed question, and will normally answer it verbally.

This means we will be scheduling TWO SEPARATE, 3-HOUR WEBINARS.  One for each morning, starting at 9 am.  However, you should only need to register one time, for both.  You may then attend as much or as little of the talks as you desire.

This is CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME.  If you are in another part of the country, please adjust for your time zone.  If you are in the UK, the talks will begin at 15:00 (3 pm) your time.  Most of the Continent of Europe will find the talks beginning at 16:00 (4 pm).

There is no cost to register and attend these two webinars.  If you have a reasonably up-to-date computer and an internet connection, you should be able to attend.

I’m afraid with only Luann and I running the system while also speaking, there will not be a tech support person to help if you have system issues either morning, but we will record these talks and post them later for those of you who are interested, but cannot attend the live version for whatever reason.

Luann and I have been taking a crash course in how to host webinars on Zoom, so our skills are still somewhat fresh, but we really think we can do this.  We hope the webinars will allow everyone to participate in our conference, at least to some extent.

The CHESS AUCTION at Link Auction Galleries is scheduled to take place the next day, at 10:00 am on Saturday, September 5 ^th.  That’s 16:00 (4 pm) for the UK; and 17:00 (5 pm) for most of the rest of Europe.  You will find it online at Link Auction Galleries.

The auction is one more segment of the conference that you can enjoy from the comfort of your own home.  Link has 267 lots of chess sets and other chess items ready to go.  Get ready to bid!

And ... "SEE" you in Saint Louis!

Best Regards,

Tom Gallegos and Louann Woneis
Organizers

Doing A Little Catch-Up:

Hola everyone!

It's a humid day threatening rain here in Milwaukee, but the stormy weather has given me a chance to do some catch-up at my poor, languishing Goddesschess blog.  As you know (or if not, I'm telling you now), I've been a member of the Chess Collectors International or CCI for many years.  I don't remember exactly when I joined, but I believe it may have been in the early to mid 2000's.  I receive the CCI magazines/news letters and the USA branch of the CCI also produces it own magazine that comes to me three times a year.

Recently I wrote about an exciting development - the CCI is going to be holding its biennial meeting in St. Louis, Missouri (USA) once again next year!  The first (to my knowledge) was in 2011, then in 2015, and now again next year in 2020.  Since I received the information, I've been thinking about possibly attending. I have a while before I need to make a decision.  I always like having those "whiles." 

The only CCI meeting I attended was in 2011, also in St. Louis.  It coincided at the time with the Kings v. Queens Tournament (also called "The Battle of the Sexes" Tournament) of American and international players being hosted at the St. Louis Chess Club, just a few blocks away from the hotel I booked a suite at for my friend of nearly 30 years, Georgia, and myself.  The chess club is right across the street from the World Chess Hall of Fame (and museum that features several new special exhibits, as well as shows and creative activities all year round.)  The Gift Shop at the World Chess Hall of Fame is something special - if you have a chance, visit it!

I went back earlier today to blog entries here from 2011 and refreshed my memories of the CCI meeting in 2011.  I did a summary in 2011 and in it I mentioned a few of the people I met as well as a special purchase or two I made at the CCI Auction that always closes out CCI get-togethers.

I met Duncan and Ann Pohl - Duncan is the current editor of the CCI-USA Magazine, and a most excellent job he does.  Mr. Pohl was one of the presenters in 2011; he started out a bit nervous, but soon got into the groove of his presentation on "vintage" American chess sets that don't cost an arm and a leg as many of the rare sets (or pieces) do that were crafted in the Old World, merely a couple of fingers or maybe a hand.  Yikes!  Both Duncan Pohl and his wife, Ann, were at a round table shared with  attendees (were there 10 or 12 of us - don't remember) including Georgia and I, at the CCI meeting at a lovely cocktail and dinner party.  I struck it off right away with Ann Pohl - such a lovely lady.  It was a lively group - the conversation hummed!

Mr. Pohl has produced a couple of books on American chess sets that would be of great help to a collector and of interest to any fan of the ancient game of the Goddess who wants to learn about American producers of chess sets, the materials used to make them, the rarity (or not) of such sets today, etc.  Both can be found at Amazon:

Chess Sets of the United States: Ready for Some Chess 'Tenite'? Paperback – May 14, 2014

Vintage Chess Sets of the United States Paperback – November 23, 2016

Later that evening after dinner, Ann Pohl introduced me to Rick Knowlton, who had also given a fascinating presentation at one of the CCI sessions.  We had a long chat about ancient chess and its origins, at least 30 minutes.  Among other things, Mr. Knowlton maintains a website on Ancient Chess (which I am particularly interested in).  He also did a "diary" online of his visit to St. Louis for the 2011 CCI meeting.  How wonderful then, to see that Mr. Knowlton and well-known chess historian Jean-Louis Cazaux produced a book (which you can find a Youtube video on), "A World of Chess:  Its Development and Variations through Centuries and Civilizations."  Also offered at Amazon. 

I also see that the BBC New program "The Forum" produced an episode by Mr. Knowlton and Mr. Cazaux that aired on April 19, 2019 and is available online in Podcast, "Chess: A Chequered History."

You just never know what these chess collectors and chess historians may get up to!