English Chess Forum

By headcount they aren't - look at the grading stats. So drive them away and you are down to a rump of serious players. As Adam notes, even at the moment I seem to keep on playing the same people, even in Congresses.

People playing < (say) 5 games are a majority?
>5 could be covered with a reduced membership or concessionary (for e.g. students).

I honestly don't see what the problem is.

Who says that you'll drive them all away anyway?

Of course not. Those playing more than 30 are a minority though. If I can be bothered I'll sort and sum up the games played from the downloaded grading list, so we can see the distribution.



Pure speculation of course, but if you told someone, it would cost £ 18 for a single game of chess, you might expect the reply, no thanks. If it was £18 but covered your next 30, you might be prepared to accept. Somewhere between the two is the cutoff point at which you drive people away.

Ok, it's not strictly speaking £ 18 for a single game, but it is £ 18 for the combination of the single game plus the right to play say 29 more at no extra cost. If you don't want or need that right, the package is priced too high.

Exactly, so, say £5-8 for up to 10 games. Over that £18.
Would encourage people who play ~10ish games to play more, and people who play less not to badly disadvantaged.
Maybe make 1st game free as an incentive? (You can't get a rating based on one game anyway!)

I don't know how you are going to find the 11th game and default him or invoice him. I think you are always talking about up front costs, rather than end of season payment. If you were talking about end of season, you could bill by game count.



No, but you can keep an existing one.

Over the years, I've had enough conversations where people have told me about the money demanding BCF/ECF to know that the goodwill factor towards the ECF isn't that high. The goodwill factor was particularly diluted when all players on the international list were required to become ECF members in order to play in the 4NCL. At least one person turned Welsh in protest to get a lower rate and support Welsh chess instead of English chess.

When 80% of the ECF's Income is always going to be spent on the Office, International and Junior , there's never going to be much left to "give value" to the average players.