For many centuries, the strategic depth and complex tactics of chess have made it a favorite game of both casual players and serious competitors. Garry Kimovich Kasparov, the Soviet Russian chess grandmaster and former World Chess Champion who reigned from 1985 until 2000, celebrates his 60th birthday today, April 13, 2023. It is a notable event because chess fans are focused on the world championship showdown in Astana, Kazakhstan, but Kasparov quipped that the world championship match “should include the strongest player on the planet, and this match doesn’t.” The Norwegian grandmaster who broke Kasparov’s record in 2013 to become the highest rated chess player in history and the reigning five-time World Chess Champion (2013-2023), Magnus Carlsen, decided not to defend his world title against Russian grandmaster Ian Nepomniachtchi. Nepomniachtchi was the winner of the 2022 Candidates Tournament, an eight-player event that decides the worthy challenger to compete for the chess world champion’s crown. Consequently, Nepomniachtchi is playing the second-place finisher in the Candidates, Chinese grandmaster Ding Liren, in the 2023 world championship match. The last world chess tournament that did not include the strongest player in the world happened after US grandmaster and World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer refused to defend his title in 1975, and Soviet challenger Anatoly Karpov was named world champion by default. Just as Fischer suspected Soviet chess players cheated and was a vocal critic about match conditions, Carlsen also confirmed: “I believe that cheating in chess is a big deal and an existential threat to the game…. I also believe that chess organizers and all those who care about the sanctity of the game we love should seriously consider increasing security measures and methods of cheat detection for over the board chess.” Indeed, many other chess experts are concerned that cheaters are relying on artificial intelligence (AI) and bizarre schemes to communicate the best possible moves to humans playing chess over-the-board or online, which has made cheating much harder to spot. Of course, cheating scandals have long plagued all types of competitions, including the commercial marketplace, but we are only at the beginning of AI-assisted cheating. So, as we can watch and cheer when a new king of chess is crowned, we should also remember the importance of fair play in both chess and business, and remain mindful that we are not pawns for CPB/PF executives to push around in their quest to rule global CPG markets. Will the new king of the chess world be Russian or Chinese? Is the integrity of the game and the spirit of fair play still a top priority? Can we strike a balance between tradition and technology? Will PF ever promote Chessmen cookies as a fun snack for the hundreds of millions of chess players worldwide?  Will we see a New King or Another Pawn?

Exactly one week from today, DSD owners from around the country will be checking in at the Downtown Grand for the 2023 POAA Annual Convention and Leadership Conference. Fortunately, the agenda for the long weekend in Las Vegas includes plenty of time for informal discussions to follow formal presentations about hot topics, such as the latest CPB Snacks mMTI mandate and the POAA Shareholder Proxy Vote Initiative, but also new potential issues, such as the efficacy of PF’s new Collection Policy, which purports to be rooted in our consignment contracts. While there are certainly a handful of plausible circumstances where a PF consignee might owe PF a lot of money, it seems curious for a large-cap publicly-trade corporation to publish a new company-wide Collection Policy warning consignees that if PF cannot automatically deduct enough from their commissions earned every week, then the consignees must pre-pay for the weekly DSD orders. Can you think of reasons that DSD owners would owe PF more than $5,000 (other than highly questionable chargebacks for allegedly excessive amounts of stale or missing tickets)? If inventory is stolen, if would be covered by insurance – but do you believe those claims settle within the new policy’s 3 week time limit? Which provisions of your consignment contract establish the terms and conditions that require you to pre-pay for Consigned Products? Would your agreement still be a consignment contract? Will you participate in discussions about the new policy during the convention? Will you volunteer to serve in a POAA leadership position? If so, would you prefer to be a NEW KING OR ANOTHER PAWN?