The 40 point Rule

General discussions about ratings.
Roger de Coverly
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Re: The 40 point Rule

Post by Roger de Coverly » Wed Apr 20, 2011 9:49 am

Alan Walton wrote: if players are only playing a couple of games a year, and decide not to pay membership the ECF aren't really losing that much (say approx £2 per player), so if one player pays £18 in this group it would negate 8 deciding not to bother, does seem to be that major problem
The ECF's costings though are based on raising 85%*9*18 from this group of players, so they become about £ 120 in the red.

You give up Game Fee, about £ 60,000 a year, you reduce Direct (ie full price) Members down to £ 18. Where are they projecting to make up the shortfall? From MO members by increasing their price to £ 18 and from non-members by increasing their previous Game Fee based amounts up to £ 18.
Last edited by Roger de Coverly on Wed Apr 20, 2011 10:03 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Adam Raoof
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Re: The 40 point Rule

Post by Adam Raoof » Wed Apr 20, 2011 9:55 am

Neill Cooper wrote:
Adam Raoof wrote:Neill, if the ECF aims to have as many juniors as possible on the grading system and in membership what approach do you think we should take to make that happen? Would it make a difference if juniors paid £10 a head to join the ECF?
Reply in http://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.php ... 172#p56172
[ps how can I cross reference an individual message?]
Neill Cooper wrote:
Adam Raoof wrote:Neill, if the ECF aims to have as many juniors as possible on the grading system and in membership what approach do you think we should take to make that happen? Would it make a difference if juniors paid £10 a head to join the ECF?
Adam. I think there are 3 groups here - individuals, junior clubs and schools. For individuals I think it might need to be about £5 for a 'Junior grading only' fee membership. For junior clubs I think you might be able to leave it for the time being, and the club can decide how important grading is. For schools have a school membership of the ECF of say £15 per year which would include 1 free entry in the National Schools Tournament and free grading of 1 team for a year [and nothing else]. For subsequent teams to be graded charge another £10.
A sensible idea - though £5 seems very cheap for individuals (aka parents)?
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Sebastian Stone
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Re: The 40 point Rule

Post by Sebastian Stone » Wed Apr 20, 2011 10:02 am

Roger de Coverly wrote:
Sebastian Stone wrote: Yes. This means there's a good chance that after September 2012 I'll never play rated chess again.
In the interests of market research, are you prepared to say why? I don't think it's exclusively financial given the number of games you played in 2009-10.
Since the only service the ECF provides to me is the grading of my games, that is all I am willing to pay for.
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Sebastian Stone
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Re: The 40 point Rule

Post by Sebastian Stone » Wed Apr 20, 2011 10:08 am

Adam Raoof wrote:
We haven't even begun looking at the way we might implement membership, and Council only voted to investigate this option. So make your own mind up when the time comes, but ignore doom-mongers.

One possibility (pay-to-play, which is what some other countries do) is that these excellent tournaments will simply charge you extra for playing if you are not a member - differential pricing already exists of course, for players who enter late, and they could put the entry fees up any time of course. This might mean that the entry fee is £5 extra for non-members, so it would cost you £10 extra to play over a year. (1)

If you play graded games with Sidmouth Chess Club, such as leagues, then the arrangement might be similar. It might be easier administratively if clubs register a list of members with the ECF directly, so that Leagues don't have that admin burden (rather like clubs enter leagues at the moment and the Leagues assume membership for all players, they don't have to check it with each club). The membership of Sidmouth might be £X for ECF members, and £X+£Y for non-members, with £Y being anything from a full priced £18 to an equivalent of the pay-to-play option for congresses above. Or clubs might have a separate lower membership for those only intending to play internal games and (for instance) an annual club championship (which the ECF might grade for free, as I think all clubs should be encouraged to have one for all members). (3)

If you played in the Paignton Premier you'd have to be a member already, as it's FIDE rated.(2)
(1) You mean an extra fee on top of the extra fee I already pay for not being a direct member?

(2) That is way above my level of skill I'm afraid. :lol:

(3) So you intend for clubs like Sidmouth to have the vast majority of their players have graded games for free (the internal club championship) and hope they'll pay the congress fee of £6 per player in order for their players to play 1 or 2 league games? Are you trying to kill the Exeter & District Chess League?
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Neill Cooper
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Re: The 40 point Rule

Post by Neill Cooper » Wed Apr 20, 2011 10:20 am

Adam Raoof wrote:A sensible idea - though £5 seems very cheap for individuals (aka parents)?
When you are talking of teenagers it is not necessarily parent's. And not all parent's could easily afford an extra £5. But yes, overall chess player's parents can normally pay more than £5.

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Adam Raoof
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Re: The 40 point Rule

Post by Adam Raoof » Wed Apr 20, 2011 10:25 am

Sebastian Stone wrote:(1) You mean an extra fee on top of the extra fee I already pay for not being a direct member?

(2) That is way above my level of skill I'm afraid. :lol:

(3) So you intend for clubs like Sidmouth to have the vast majority of their players have graded games for free (the internal club championship) and hope they'll pay the congress fee of £6 per player in order for their players to play 1 or 2 league games? Are you trying to kill the Exeter & District Chess League?
Obviously the ECF has to find a way to implement this scheme without doing that. ;-)

You already pay the ECF for your games to be graded, whether the games are played in congresses or in leagues!

Theoretically, when you renew your club subscriptions you will then become a member of the ECF, and that will cover your league games, whether you play one or one hundred games. (You don't get a cheaper club subscription because you only attend half the club nights in the year, or only play friendlies.)

Do you belong to any other membership schemes of any kind?
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Sebastian Stone
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Re: The 40 point Rule

Post by Sebastian Stone » Wed Apr 20, 2011 10:36 am

Adam Raoof wrote:
Sebastian Stone wrote:(1) You mean an extra fee on top of the extra fee I already pay for not being a direct member?

(2) That is way above my level of skill I'm afraid. :lol:

(3) So you intend for clubs like Sidmouth to have the vast majority of their players have graded games for free (the internal club championship) and hope they'll pay the congress fee of £6 per player in order for their players to play 1 or 2 league games? Are you trying to kill the Exeter & District Chess League?
Obviously the ECF has to find a way to implement this scheme without doing that. ;-) (1)

You already pay the ECF for your games to be graded, whether the games are played in congresses or in leagues!

Theoretically, when you renew your club subscriptions you will then become a member of the ECF, and that will cover your league games, whether you play one or one hundred games. (You don't get a cheaper club subscription because you only attend half the club nights in the year, or only play friendlies.) (2)

Do you belong to any other membership schemes of any kind?(3)
(1) Hopefully. :)

(2) This will, of course, depend what is decided at the clubs AGM.

(3) Chesswise, I am a subscriber on chess.com and chesstempo, whether I renew these or not I consider them to be more valuable than anything the ECF has or will provide.
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Roger de Coverly
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Re: The 40 point Rule

Post by Roger de Coverly » Wed Apr 20, 2011 11:20 am

Adam Raoof wrote: (You don't get a cheaper club subscription because you only attend half the club nights in the year, or only play friendlies.)
County match teams are often run on a match/board fee basis of £ x per board per match, sometimes collected for home matches only. Some 4NCL teams work the same way.

I'd agree that for clubs, friendlies, spectators and county individual games present a problem. Recording who played is much easier when you have on-line reporting of the league. If you sent a bill by email and could ask for settlement by electronic banking, even the collection aspect is simplified. John Upham suggested his local table tennis league worked like this, I don't know that anyone has tried anything like it in the chess world. I did notice that Essex collect league fees on a per game, rather than per team basis.

http://www.essexchess.org.uk/Files/Meet ... 0final.pdf

from which
Club affiliation fee £15.
Fee for affiliated leagues and other affiliated organisations £20.
Game fee of 65p per player per game in the Essex League, made up of ECF 50p and ECA 15p.
Individual subscriptions of £2 for adults and £1 for juniors.
Vice-Presidents’ subscriptions of £12

Sean Hewitt

Re: The 40 point Rule

Post by Sean Hewitt » Wed Apr 20, 2011 11:27 am

Sebastian Stone wrote:Since the only service the ECF provides to me is the grading of my games, that is all I am willing to pay for.
Fair enough. The charge for that will be a flat rate of £18 for all your games in future which in your case is about what you pay now so you'd see no change financially.

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Carl Hibbard
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Re: The 40 point Rule

Post by Carl Hibbard » Wed Apr 20, 2011 6:04 pm

Ian Kingston wrote:Any chance that this discussion could be moved to a more appropriately named thread?
We do seem to have wandered off a little :roll:
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Carl Hibbard
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Re: The 40 point Rule

Post by Carl Hibbard » Wed Apr 20, 2011 6:08 pm

Mike Truran wrote:I see that you've now made 2,730 posts. Perhaps it's time for you to stop as well.
Perhaps a touch too personal Mike, however you do seem to be repeating some of the same sort of points Roger or is that just my take on it?
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Roger de Coverly
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Re: The 40 point Rule

Post by Roger de Coverly » Wed Apr 20, 2011 6:27 pm

Carl Hibbard wrote: however you do seem to be repeating some of the same sort of points Roger or is that just my take on it?
Perhaps although I do try to stick to facts even if the interpretation placed on them is robust. It is, I think, a fact that directly the 4NCL makes no contribution to the ECF's finances other than FIDE rating fees (which are priced by the ECF as break-even). Indirectly, the requirement for players in the 4NCL to become ECF members has increased the ECF's sales and probably dramatically so. However if all club members are required to become ECF members, then the additional sales of memberships arising from the existence of the 4NCL will dry up apart from where 4NCL players are not already club members.

In countries like the USA and Canada, the compulsory membership is supplemented by per event rating fees.

You should probably close this thread - the winners and losers thread in ECF matters is a better place for this debate.

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Matt Mackenzie
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Re: The 40 point Rule

Post by Matt Mackenzie » Wed Apr 20, 2011 7:06 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote:You should probably close this thread - the winners and losers thread in ECF matters is a better place for this debate
Unless, of course, anyone wishes to return to the original topic :wink:
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Matt Fletcher
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Re: The 40 point Rule

Post by Matt Fletcher » Wed Apr 20, 2011 11:11 pm

I do have a query that's tangentially related to the original question.

I don't have a grade at the moment as I haven't played for a few years. My grading performance is about 180 over the 15 games I've played this season. Presumably this (roughly speaking) will be my grade when the list comes out? But if I play a 120 grade in my club championship and win, my grading performance will go down? I guess that this is one of the anomalies in the grading system that Roger referred to earlier (and I'll need to find my level over the next few years in any case).

Alex Holowczak
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Re: The 40 point Rule

Post by Alex Holowczak » Wed Apr 20, 2011 11:27 pm

Matt Fletcher wrote:I don't have a grade at the moment as I haven't played for a few years. My grading performance is about 180 over the 15 games I've played this season. Presumably this (roughly speaking) will be my grade when the list comes out?
As an ungraded player, your grade against graded players only will be calculated. This serves as the computer's internal estimate. Then, everyone gets graded together. When a graded player plays you, your grade for their calculation will be this estimate. You are graded at the same time, as if the initial estimating process had never happened.
Matt Fletcher wrote:But if I play a 120 grade in my club championship and win, my grading performance will go down?
Is it definitely graded? Not all Club Championships are. It's difficult to say given you're ungraded, because it is subject to my first answer.