English Chess Forum

Although some of it was took up with the usual stuff such as reelecting the committee, and appointing a club president, the main couple of points from the Brewood Chess Club AGM were:

We are going to be applying to enter the Dudley League Division 3 next season. If you are reading this from Birmingham Checkmates, Halesowen, Mercia, Warley Quinborne, Boldmere, or Kynoch Chess Clubs I look forward to the games next season.

Also the membership of the club were in favour of having our own internal club championship matches graded for what will be the 1st time ever in the clubs history.

For any members of the above clubs your sure to get a warm welcome if you have an away match in Brewood. See you next season!

David Blower wrote:We are going to be applying to enter the Dudley League Division 3 next season. If you are reading this from Birmingham Checkmates, Halesowen, Mercia, Warley Quinborne, Boldmere, or Kynoch Chess Clubs I look forward to the games next season.

I look forward to making you one of our victims in Dudley Three.

David Blower wrote:Also the membership of the club were in favour of having our own internal club championship matches graded for what will be the 1st time ever in the clubs history.

This is a positive development; I guess you'll all be ECF members anyway, so it's at no cost to the club.

Alex Holowczak wrote:

David Blower wrote:Also the membership of the club were in favour of having our own internal club championship matches graded for what will be the 1st time ever in the clubs history.

This is a positive development; I guess you'll all be ECF members anyway, so it's at no cost to the club.

Cue RdC, stage left

I'll be a stand-in -
Alex H>... guess you'll all be ECF members anyway, so it's at no cost to the club.<
If there is really to be no cost to clubs as a consequence of the impending 'compulsory membership?' - changes why is their divided opinion about that between two club secretaries in my local area? Has one of them misunderstood something because ECF membership of club members will automatically mean no cost to the club. There's got to be a potential financial gap in there somewhere for some clubs.

John McKenna wrote:I'll be a stand-in -
Alex H>... guess you'll all be ECF members anyway, so it's at no cost to the club.<
If there is really to be no cost to clubs as a consequence of the impending 'compulsory membership?' - changes why is their divided opinion about that between two club secretaries in my local area? Has one of them misunderstood something because ECF membership of club members will automatically mean no cost to the club. There's got to be a potential financial gap in there somewhere for some clubs.

You can have unlimited club internal game grading for nil cost if the players playing the graded games are ECF members.

John McKenna wrote:Has one of them misunderstood something because ECF membership of club members will automatically mean no cost to the club. There's got to be a potential financial gap in there somewhere for some clubs.

They are both in a way right.

The club could insist as a condition of being selected to play in its matches or to enter its club championship, that players go to the ECF website and become members at whatever level they wish and disclose to the ECF whatever it asks for. In those circumstances if the ECF doubled the membership cost, it would be at no cost to the club.

On the other hand, the Bronze cost could be added to the Club membership fee. In those circumstances the club is responsible for passing on the club data and money to the next level in the chain. That's usually how they worked in the areas that became MOs under the existing arrangements. Obviously, if the ECF puts its price up, the club has to as well, unless it has other assets it can use to subsidise ECF membership.

Depending on your local charging, a fee would currently paid by a club to a local league to cover the league's Game Fee costs. The simplest way of structuring this is usually to express it per team as an entry fee. Again depending on the league, this can be reduced as the abolition of Game Fee will reduce the league's cost. What isn't made clear is that unless your club plays in several leagues with the average player playing around twenty games, that the saving in Game Fee isn't going to amount to the £ 12 or £ 13 that you or the club have to pay the ECF. Existing Direct Members of the ECF incur no additional costs and should save on the implied Game Fee contained in the club sub.

I agree with Roger that what isn't clear is if club players - who have never been ECF members and play less than the av. 20 games (Sept. to May inclusive) - will join the ECF themselves. If the club sec. decides not to do it for them the fear is that such players could be lost to the club together with their valuable sub. So more work for the poor old sec.
Alex H's "guess you'll all be ECF members anyway" is the nub of it. It is, indeed, exactly that - a guess.
All the best to David Blower & Brewood CC.

John McKenna wrote:Alex H's "guess you'll all be ECF members anyway" is the nub of it. It is, indeed, exactly that - a guess.

I know their club secretary. He's switched on to things like this, so will know all about what's going on at ECF level with regard to membership.

Thanks for clarifying that, Alex. Not all clubs and their officials are as switched on and can be in the dark to some extent about what is going on. When told of the discussions going on here about the coming changes the reply is often - life is too short to spend in prolonged discussions. They'll do it on a wing and prayer when the time comes.

That should read... when I told the club officials about the discussions... the reply was - life's too short...

We will all become members of the ECF individually next season. Whilst there was some discussion of people not being members and then paying individual game fees for games that people took part in next season, it was felt that overall it would just be easier for everyone to be individual members (plus of course you get a £1 discount online.) As club championship matches are covered by the ECF membership anyway, it was felt we may as well get our own club championship matches graded for free.

David Blower wrote:As club championship matches are covered by the ECF membership anyway, it was felt we may as well get our own club championship matches graded for free.

Have you given any thought to the effect of this on the local grader? I've graded one of the local leagues and a couple of club's internal games for a number of years. I might baulk at being asked to grade the internal games of all the clubs in the league though (about a dozen), particularly as they'd all probably want them doing at the same time.

Yes it was given some thought. Its only an "in principle" thing at the moment, but nevertheless it was passed by a large majority present at the AGM.

I would have thought 35 or 42 results in a season would be the expected number of results as due to the increase in membership it was voted to change from an "all play all" system, to a Swiss system, depending on if we have 5 or 6 rounds.

One thing is for sure though, I would have thought it would be better for the club as the grades we all get would be more accurate relative to each other, as well as the increased number of games for all of us, and it will give the club championship a lot more creditability, as well as some better prestige. The increase in membership has resulted in the club agreeing to join the Dudley League, and it was just generally felt by everyone that more competitive chess would be better for everyone.

It can of course mean that new members looking to join the club can get a grade a lot quicker with 4 rather than 3 teams in the winter, and the club championship graded.

The local graders question is obviously going to be an interesting one. I wonder how many other clubs will also have internal club championship matches graded, for the 1st time, as it will now be at no cost to the club, whereas before a game fee applied. (Perviously I was for instance only had my games graded through the league fee (which I would expect to be reduced,) and only one member of the club was an individual member of the ECF.)

David, your local grader won't even have to do any work if you use one of the many pairing/admin programs out there to run your tournament. If you have 30 players or less, Vega is free, and compatible with ECF grading software!

http://www.vegachess.com/tl/index.php/H ... glish.html

I think that all Club Championship games should be graded!

I am doing well in my own club's internal tournament this year and it is slightly annoying that when my new grading comes out in July it won't take those results into account.

Having said that, in previous seasons I was often delighted to know that my games would not be submitted for grading!