English Chess Forum

It seemes to me that there will be an increased worload for club treasurers and congress controllers.

Club treasurers will have to collect extra fees depending on what level of membership each player requires (of course, some clubs may choose not to bother, requiring their members to join directly via the ECF).

Congress controllers will have to check each entrant's membership status to ensure the correct entry fee has been submitted. Those who run congresses early in the season will have the most work as that's when there will be more 'bronze' members.

Clubs might not send their list of ECF members to the county/league until eof September, who in turn may not submit the league's/county's combined list and money to the ECF until mid October. If a player enters a congress in September he will consider himself an an ECF member but as he won't be on the database yet the congress organiser will think he isn't, unless he takes the player's word. Sean, as an organiser of a September congress, can you explain how would you handle this highly realistic situation?

Up to a point, Congresses have it easy. All they have to establish is that a player isn't a Silver, Gold or Platinum member. It's someone else (ECF Office?) who will have to take all the £ 6 Game Fees and decide whether they represent the non-member/Welsh/Scots tax or whether they represent an upgrade to the Bronze status of a member they may not even have the details of.

Although with all the renewal dates being 1st September, it is by no means obvious how you process a Congress entry received in August for a September or October event, other than on trust.

That's exactly what we have to do now.

Again, exactly as it is now apart from the fact that currently it happens at the start of every month.

At the moment we pay Game Fee direct to the ECF once a year, adjusted to take into account more or less games than was quoted the previous year.
I don't see why we need to get involved under the membership scheme. It is an individual membership scheme after all. For us it is more complicated because all of the clubs except one also play in one or more other leagues (London, Essex, Middlesex and/or Herts), even the club that doesn't has members that do.

How are we supposed to keep track?

Gary

I have 2 people who have entered Preston Chess congress on November 4th and say their NCCU MO membership has been payed but its not in the ECF list yet. I just decided to trust them.
(You can leave your front door unlocked here in the north and nobody takes anything! - at least they didn't seem to have done when we did it by mistake last week)

The current position with the anniversary method now used by the ECF means on average that only a twelfth of the entrants might be approaching a membership renewal date at the run up to a Congress. It's even less than that where players take out multi year memberships. Operating mostly in the South of England, e2e4 aren't going to be greatly troubled by late reporting MOs. By contrast Alex McF reporting last year on Scarborough commented that it was difficult to calculate Game Fee for that Congress because you had little certainty as to who was or wasn't a member. Under the ECF's scheme, Congresses running in MO areas might take a punt and assume everyone is a member regardless of published status. Get it wrong under the ECF's new scheme and it's £ 6 a head, assuming the ECF is well enough organised to check.

So if a scheme has everyone nominally renewing at the same time, events running shortly after the anniversary may struggle to establish a reliable membership status. We can see how slow the MO reporting is, from the slow build up of membership numbers this year. This isn't data that has previously been made public outside of graders and organisers.

The ECF will in effect try to fine the league, £ 2 per head per game if you allow non-members to play.

The funding document writes in a rather threatening tone:-



which refers to

The ECF can attempt to levy a fine but what would happen if the league refuses to pay it ?
Louise

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One assumes that, in submitting the grading file you are accepting the ECF's published grading charges. If not, don't submit the grading file. Legally speaking, if a league failed to pay the ECF could sue the league officers though I doubt it would come to that. More likely they would not grade the league, or in future require pre-payment before doing so.

Leagues have a four way choice
(a) enforce a partial or complete member only closed shop.
(b) pay the fines for allowing non-members to play chess.
(c) refuse to pay the fines and be thrown out of the ECF or subjected to legal action.
(d) remove the league wholly or partly from the ECF national grading system.

(d) is the option used by local leagues in Yorkshire and North West England for nearly twenty years.

Refuse to pay the fines and go to the press giving bad publicity to the ECF
Louise

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You might very well think that ; I couldn't possibly comment
" I don't call you Jonathan"
I'm not ashamed of anything I have done to make a living - I'm a survivor not a quitter

And then in the general public eyes, chess players look stingy by not paying the huge amount of £12 a year for an annual membership

I was hoping not to have this debate, but I suppose it was inevitable.

I agree with Alan. Certainly bad publicity for chess players. Frankly we are a sitting duck for the media if they can be bothered. But bad publicity for the ECF? Really? Just about every sport has a governing body, I imagine they would support the ECF.

Refusing to grade a competition, rather than, say, banning all the players who play in it as many sports would do, seems very mild indeed.

Andrew Butterworth, who with hisaggie take the entries for the Scarborough congress reported that a considerable number of players gave wrong details re ECF membership when entering. In most cases either they gave the wrong ECF membership number. So either they got it wrong or the ECF database is wrong. I'm in no position to know either way but it did cause considerable extra work taking entries. There is a certain amount of guess work involved as to whether certain players have joined but their details haven't been passed on to the ECF (Club Treasurer to MO admin to ECF can be a slow route). This could be a significant financial gamble for some congresses.

Both Blackpool and Scarborough (the two largest congresses in England) have expressed reservations about the proposals in particular the £6 levy on non-English players. It may well be that both events will expect the ECF to collect these £6 fees from the relevant players directly. Scarborough had 19 Scots plus one ot two from the IoM and at least one Irish player. When you also consider that the tournament has a large number of Yorkshire players, the £6 per head becomes a very significant figure.

The entry forms for Scarborough are normally produced in February. The ECF does not confirm its fees until April. Even a £1 change could mean a deficite of approximately £100 on budget.

Whilst we have reserves we don't want to fritter them away. From the Congress point of view the ECF chasing up 'bad debts' is a far more attractive alternative than a volunteer doing it.

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Clearly, the players get it wrong.

I took entries for the Birmingham Rapidplay, and they had the following errors:
(1) Paying the entry fee for the Open, rather than the Minor (which meant they paid more money than they had to).
(2) Not providing a postcode with their entry, which I've then had to chase up to post a prize to them.
(3) Incorrectly quoting their grade and/or grading reference. It wasn't even their standardplay grade, or last year's grade, but in some cases it was a random number that was roughly their grade but not quite.
(4) Confusing their grading reference with their membership number (which they thought were synonymous, but weren't)

Frankly, if the only error I saw on the forms was with ECF membership numbers, I'd consider myself lucky!

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