Chess Prevention tax £ 8.33 a game

[Angus French]

A possible 3 free graded league games per player per league before becoming an ECF member is very good news for leagues,
players, clubs or the leagues will have to take responsibility to avoid the £25 fee

Three free games for non-members is IMO good. But clubs - and leagues on their behalf - will need to be watchful for fear of being charged £25 for non-members. And players may not be happy if they play 4 (or 5) leagues games and are charged £3.75 (or £3) a game.

Most of the £14k that's raised from game fee probably comes from occasional players in congresses...

I don't know where the £14K figure comes from but, according to the ECF's latest financial spreadsheet ('2. Memb' tab), income from Congresses was forecast to be £5.6K in 2015/16 against £8.25K from leagues and clubs and £3.6K from junior chess.

[Angus French]

What will happen to junior-only events? Currently these are charged Game Fee at 60p for each standard-play half-result and 30p for each rapidplay half-result.

[Martyn Harris]

The Board accepted the proposal to introduce three free games per subscription year and
abolish game fee. Leagues will be invoiced £25 for every non-member who plays more than
three games. It was agreed that a formal proposal should be put to the Finance Council
meeting.

A welcome development, allowing try before you buy and free use of otherwise inactive emergency substitutes, and should result in a reduction in the number of small invoices that treasurers receive and then seek reimbursement for.

1. Three games per league, not player. The issue of players playing three games or fewer across more than one league is not particularly significant financially.

A pragmatic way of handling a minor problem, though no doubt someone somewhere will complain that this is not fair to those who have access to only one league.

Pay per play for congresses to continue unaltered, but then it is difficult to come up with administrative or financial benefits for changing the principle.

No mention of what happens for non-members in club events. Is there some residual residual game fee or is there an additional free allowance of three games per player per club beyond which a £25 fee applies.

It does appear on the surface to be just a money grabbing exercise.

As a money grabbing exercise the proposal is poor.
Since

2. Players who play more than three games in a league can sign up for Bronze membership at any time before the end of the season. The £25 is only levied if they are still non-members at the end of the season.

the number of £25s to be collected will surely be small. Thus the gain is restricted to extra monies collected in membership fees from those playing more than three games but for whom game fee would have been cheaper, less loss of all income from those who would otherwise be paying game fee on at most three games. Difficult to see the net result being financially transformational.

If the system is for members to pay, I'd be happy to see membership enforced through grading by not grading the games of non-members.

I disagree with this since for me the grading system is not about my grade but about those of my opponents and resolving questions of eligibility.

[MartinCarpenter]

It might be fractionally more £25's than you think, but yes not a (effective anyway!) revenue raising measure.

Jon Griffith did a 'charge to ECF grade your league' calculator for the various Yorkshire leagues for 2015/16. Its here: http://www.chessnuts.org.uk/ny5/ecfgamefees.php

The Yorkshire league - which is 11 games/season and is ECF graded - had 56% members by players, 65% of games played by members. Non trivial numbers overall who would have been cheaper as bronze members, a few got >=25.

Mostly apathy/disorganisation rather than calculated direct refusal to join up I'd imagine but it did seemingly happen. You'd presume seeing it happen once will reduce its future frequency but.....

In terms of the non ECF graded local leagues, the % of games played by ECF members varies from maybe 30% to <10%, and there's getting on for around 10,000 games between all the leagues.