A NCM (National Candidate Master), IA (International Arbiter), IO (International Organizer) and Canadian Zonal Chief Arbiter, he served as a Deputy Arbiter for the Anand - Kramnik World Championship Match (2008) match (1).
He was a Deputy Arbiter at Topalov - Kamsky Match (2009) and Olympiad (2008) , had the Principal, Sector and Senior Arbiter clearance at the Chess Olympiad (2010) and Chess Olympiad (Women) (2010) team tournaments, and was the Anand - Gelfand World Chess Championship (2012) assistant arbiter. After briefly serving as an assisting arbiter at the World Cup (2011) knock-out event, he was substituted onto the appeals committee. He was also at the FIDE Knock-out Women's World Championship (2012) and World Chess Championship Candidates (2014) in his role of arbiter.
During 2010, he was Chief Arbiter at the Canadian Open and the N. American Youth Chess Championship - and also hosts a regular series of Pro-Am Circuit tournaments through the Ontario chess season. He represents the Canadian Zone as its current official voting FIDE Delegate for another administrative Congress. He is the chief arbiter for the World Youth chess championship sections (age sections of U14 and above) at Montevideo, Uruguay(8) in 2017.
He achieved a Canadian National Candidate Master certification from Ontario results in 1998 (2, 3). In 2005, he tied 1st-3rd with Paul Leblanc and Tim E Knechtel in the under 2000 section of the Oktoberfest open tournament (4). He was editor of Chess Canada between 1992-4 when it was once known as en passant and currently edits Scholar's Mate (5, 6).
Hal has also become involved in the game of SCRABBLE (7).
References / Sources
(1) http://www.fide.com/ (International Chess Federation), (2) http://chess.ca/titleholders (Canadian Chess Federation), (3) http://www.chessontario.com/ (Ontario Chess Association - OCA), (4) http://chess.servegame.com/swocl/ne... (South-west Ont. Chess League - SWOCL), (5) http://www.chessexpress.ca, (6) Chess Canada Echecs, (7) http://www.hasbro.com/scrabble/en_U..., (8) http://chess-results.com/tnr297050.... (as with many of his past tournaments, he was involved in organizing arbiters together for the 2017 WYCC open and women's sections of U14, U16, U18 groups).
Kibitzing
