ECF Membership Special Deals

[Andrew Zigmond]

There are a number of anomalies in the Membership Scheme. This is not the most serious by any means.

It may not be the most serious, but it's one of the nastiest. It's no great surprise that the ECF is unable or unwilling to express opposition to FIDE licensing proposals when its own activities are to an extent equivalent to and also the cause of such proposals.

Anomalies are inevitable in any such scheme. It's frustrating to me that ECF Council spends so much time trying to reword small print so it covers all bases. I'd rather Council time was spent discussing initiatives to grow chess and promote new iniatives while trusting elected officials to use a common sense (yes I'm aware I keep mentioning that) approach to anomalies when they occur.

[Roger de Coverly]

Surely membership of a national federation should be determined by residence and/ or a certain percentage of their chess activity taking place within their country of membership?

If you are using membership in a FIDE sense, it's also about which country you represent internationally for which a birth or ancestry qualification is relevant. Eligibility for international selection is only the concern of a small number of adults, but rather more juniors. For events seeking to offer title norm chances, diverse Federations being represented can tip the balance as to whether an event qualifies, so players registered with A, but living in B are an advantage to organisers in B.

The ultimate in closed shop Federations is the US of A, where you are required to be a USCF member for a calendar year even if only passing through for a tournament. The last ECF Board and membership advocates talked the voting membership of the ECF into imposing a neo-compulsory scheme. They and the rest of us, have to live with the consequences of their actions. If they adopt as a principle that you need to be a member of the ECF to play a game of graded chess in England, that should mean what it says and they should not duck out of the consequences, one of which is potentially double charging of anyone not ENG in status. The double charging was always there under Game Fee, but it was proportionate to activity in English events.

[Roger de Coverly]

I'd rather Council time was spent discussing initiatives to grow chess and promote new iniatives while trusting elected officials to use a common sense (yes I'm aware I keep mentioning that) approach to anomalies when they occur.

I fail to see how using volunteer or Office time to remove players from the International rating list has anything to do with growing chess. Although FIDE will no doubt attempt to increase its annual membership charge, it's currently 1 Euro per active rated player and it's to save this amount that the ECF asks for active players to be delisted if they fail to pay the ECF's £ 28 per year.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Guernsey had this exemption in 2012, but it will not have it in future."

Several years ago, when Payment for Grading, oops, Game Fee was a main source of funding, I assumed that Guernsey would not be graded by BCF. This was OK by me as I played a number of overseas players, who were estimated 1800 (150 then), and proceeded to wipe me out too often. Then mysteriously Guernsey was graded. I asked the BCF Grader why and he told me it was a secret and a deal had been done to continue grading it. People at Guernsey Chess Federation said they knew nothing about it. Then one year GCF got an angry letter demanding Game Fee. GCF said they didn't see why they should pay it, BCF said GCF were getting the games graded, GCF said, "we are a different Federation, we don't care about your internal grading system - we are not paying". So in theory B(E)CF would stop grading Guernsey (and after all, individuals could have their games graded if they wanted, and GCF told them that). However, ECF continued to grade Guernsey and I still don't know why. Well, maybe I can guess who did the deal. But if I play in Norway or Poland or Guernsey or Benbecula, I do not expect games to be graded by ECF unless arranged in advance.

So there is no reason why Guernsey should have the exemption, and indeed they have never asked for it!

[Greg Breed]

It's always been a useful dodge to become Welsh if possible for 4NCL purposes as WCU membership was cheaper than ECF Gold membership.

Seriously Roger, the lengths you go to to try and prove a point. I cannot imagine anyone ever doing such a thing just to save a few quid!

[Roger de Coverly]

However, ECF continued to grade Guernsey and I still don't know why.

That could explain why neither the Guernsey Chess Federation nor the Guernsey Congress ever seemed to be a member of the ECF or BCF for the purpose of attending and voting on Council. They could have used the third party membership approach like Blackpool/ Lancs but I don't know who had their voting rights.

The Guernsey Congress had I think always been part of the BCF grading system prior to Game Fee, a point confirmed by it being listed as a graded event in the 1988 grading list. It would have been my impression, perhaps wrongly, that it stumped up for Game Fee along with all other Congresses when this was first introduced around five years later. If it was given an exemption, that really should have been made public at the time. It was even awarded a qualification place for the British Championships although that may have been more to do with its membership of BICC.

Something similar may apply to the Isle of Man. There was a Congress last year, which was graded, according to the grading site, but they don't show up in the voting register for this April's Council meeting. Guernsey don't either. Jersey presumably will qualify for a vote and Dublin under the e2e4 consolidation, but the check was for results in the three grading periods ending 31st December 2012, so Jersey isn't there.

(edit) I knew I had seen the Guernsey issue raised before. It's in board meeting 52 as reported
under http://www.englishchess.org.uk/wp-conte ... ting52.doc

which says

AF took the opportunity to raise the question of an existing arrangement with the Guernsey International Chess Festival, under which Game Fee is only payable in respect of English players who are not ECF members, i.e. non-English players do not have to pay Game Fee. It was agreed to continue this concession for a further year.

So an example, if not of partial grading, of differential revenue collection. Inexact wording of course, since Game Fee is never a player liability, rather an organisation's liability as payment for its own ECF membership or participation in ECF grading. Organisations usually seek to reclaim this as part of entry fees but it isn't a player option to opt in or out of ECF grading unless under the discontinued Yorkshire arrangements.

[Roger de Coverly]

Seriously Roger, the lengths you go to to try and prove a point. I cannot imagine anyone ever doing such a thing just to save a few quid!

Given that a local club player turned Welsh in protest against the ECF's membership requirements for 4NCL, I can. Once Welsh, you are stuck with it, given FIDE's extortionate charges for changing back, but it does have the advantage of meaning he only needs to pay for Silver membership to the ECF even when playing a game or two in the 4NCL.

[John Philpott]

Roger de Coverly wrote

Something similar may apply to the Isle of Man. There was a Congress last year, which was graded, according to the grading site, but they don't show up in the voting register for this April's Council meeting.

An event only shows up in the voting register if it has applied for ECF membership, provided the £1 guarantee and been admitted by the Board. I can find no record of this having happened in respect of the Isle of Man Congress, so the event does not appear in the voting register.

The grading of this congress seems entirely in order as it has paid its Game Fee.

[Roger de Coverly]

An event only shows up in the voting register if it has applied for ECF membership, provided the £1 guarantee and been admitted by the Board. .

That's a valid point, that being a non signatory of the White Form disqualifies an organisation from guarantor membership. Shouldn't there be some mention of this on the Registration proposal as the need to establish voting rights is irrelevant if there aren't any? So presumably the Guernsey Congress or Guernsey Chess Federations have never become Guarantor members, which makes voting status not a guide as to whether they don't pay Game Fee as suggested earlier.

[John Philpott]

Roger de Coverly wrote

Shouldn't there be some mention of this on the Registration proposal as the need to establish voting rights is irrelevant if there aren't any?

The first page of the Council paper dealing with the registration scheme gives as one of the reasons for revising the existing wording of the Game Fee Bye Laws:

It only refers to organisations paying a Membership Fee, whereas the new scheme extends to non-Member organisations submitting results for grading or rating.

Such a non-member organisation does have the existing right under the Bye Laws to assign its payment or deemed payment of Game Fee to an ECF Member organisation, which can have the effect of increasing the latter's voting entitlement. I am not aware of the Isle of Man Congress having made an explicit assignment.

There are a number of leagues and congresses paying Game Fee which are not currently members of the ECF. As there is no real downside (the £1 guarantee surely cannot be that much of a disincentive), I would encourage such events to apply for membership. I was pleased to see that the Briant Poulter League has recently done so, and will hopefully be admitted to membership by the Board at its pre-Finance Council meeting.

[Roger de Coverly]

There are a number of leagues and congresses paying Game Fee which are not currently members of the ECF. As there is no real downside (the £1 guarantee surely cannot be that much of a disincentive), I would encourage such events to apply for membership. .

It used to be a necessity to discourage trivial membership of Council because of the costs of circulating all the material to the participants. But if you encourage membership for every club with a club championship of 15 games, isn't it likely that the net result will be even higher piles of proxy votes for those willing to do the legwork in terms of persuading clubs to register individually and harvest the resulting voting rights? If the minimum price of £ 58 had been set on the basis of 100 normal Game Fees, should not a minimum standard of 100 normal half games still be applied? Equally the standard for internal club games would be 300 half games and for internal rapid 600.

[John Philpott]

Roger de Coverly wrote

If the minimum price of £ 58 had been set on the basis of 100 normal Game Fees, should not a minimum standard of 100 normal half games still be applied? Equally the standard for internal club games would be 300 half games and for internal rapid 600.

The minimum membership fee is voted on by Council each year at its Finance meeting, and it would be possible for a figure other than the Board's recommendation of an unchanged £58 to be agreed.

There is also the case for arguing that the figure of £58 is too high. Under your suggestion the fee for an organisation like the Friends of Chess which does a lot of good in the chess world but happens to organise no graded activity would almost quadruple to £200, which strikes me as unreasonable. But why should it pay even £58 when an organisation that imposes a 100% membership requirement is paying nothing? It has been pointed out to me that if those attending the Friends of Chess AGM stayed on afterwards to play a rapidplay event between themselves and this was submitted for grading, most or all of the £58 could be avoided.

[Roger de Coverly]

There is also the case for arguing that the figure of £58 is too high. Under your suggestion the fee for an organisation like the Friends of Chess which does a lot of good in the chess world but happens to organise no graded activity would almost quadruple to £200, which strikes me as unreasonable.

That wasn't my suggestion. My suggestion is that it's nonsense that 15 games should gain a vote, rather that 100 standard games or more should be required. What you ask for an organisation to be an ECF member in the context where individuals are also members is essentially asking the price of a vote. Before the ECF started giving Game Fee exemptions to all and sundry, it made eminent sense for the voting rights to reflect the financial contribution to the BCF or ECF. If you are using the concept of voting rights being based on the number of games played, some sensible minimum to prevent de minimis events claiming votes is needed. So you could price "other organisation" membership by reference to the cost of Platinum membership as a benchmark.

In fact if you go back far enough, it was envisaged that the voting rights of Direct member representatives would increase as the number of Direct members increased. Personally I think that even if this hadn't been done at the time the BCF mislead itself and English players into becoming individual members to play FIDE chess, then it should have done so at the time of the first NMS scheme. In other words if Northern Congresses weren't going to pay Game Fee, then their votes should have been removed. Similarly for the 4NCL when it pleaded a special status and demanded Game Fee exemption.

It's absolutely right that the ECF should maintain a register of special deals and require one of the annual meetings to note the contents. So the Board or a representative of the Board are still free to withdraw or extend the deals, but only on a one year basis until Council have approved them as a permanent feature.

[Mick Norris]

The Cheshire and North Wales county are opposing the removal of their concessions

The ECF Membership paper doesn't propose removing their concession - it notes it, says it will be continued for the current year to end August, and invites Council to say whether they still want to have that, and the other, concessions in turn

As Andrew Z says up thread, it would be great if Council concentrated on positive ideas for the development of chess in England, rather than minutiae, but that's my experience of chess organisations in general (and non chess organisations too, as any of you will know who saw the Fans Forum at Bury FC broadcast on BBC Late Kick Off in the North West at the weekend omnishambles)

[Roger de Coverly]

The ECF Membership paper doesn't propose removing their concession - it notes it, says it will be continued for the current year to end August, and invites Council to say whether they still want to have that, and the other, concessions in turn

I agree the ECF paper is neutral on the continuation of concessions, but the CNW paper in response quotes the DoMM as follows.

In March this year, the acting Director of Membership and Marketing wrote to the Chester and District Chess League as follows:
“I write to inform you that although the bye laws of the English Chess Federation do not permit the
CEO to grant such an exemption, the ECF will honour this undertaking for season 2012-13.
Nevertheless, this exemption will not be extended as it appears to be discriminatory.
From 1st September 2013 WCU members playing in Chester & District Chess League will need to pay
for Bronze ECF membership or their games will be charged at the prevailing game fee rate.”