Martin Benjamin wrote:
My impression is that there are many people like myself who don't like the membership scheme at all, but just get on with doing our best to make it work, without commenting on it or kicking up a fuss.
The impression I get is that AGMs attended as they are by the more committed players have felt unwilling to sacrifice the concept of involvement in national grading. Once that's accepted, you have little choice but to accept whatever conditions the ECF imposes. So if you sacrifice something, it's the potential involvement of less active players. They do this either directly, by banning non-ECF members, or indirectly by imposing financial conditions on their participation. For a league season of 7 months, you can categorise players by those who play once a month, twice a month, three times or more a month. The ECF are putting the price up for once a month and twice a month, but if it's for an activity they've enjoyed over many years, they may live with it. From a south of England or London area viewpoint, I reject the notion that the reason why a 7 a season player didn't play 14 was because of the extra Game Fee of around £ 4. As Martin points out, if a league only offers 7 games and you want more games, you just play in two leagues.
If you browse the downloaded grading list, you see a relatively high number of players playing a limited number of games. In order to establish how many, I extracted those playing 6 and under, removing juniors, players with international codes and those who'd played any rapid games. This left 1297 names, which is over 10% of the total. So the question comes as to whether the national chess scene can afford to drive them away.There's also the hidden count of players without published grades.
Under its membership scheme, the only way the ECF can increase its income is to sign up more players, or to increase the per head membership charges for existing ones. We may recall the Regan approach, that £ 13 per head was nowhere near enough to finance the ECF and that it needed to be in the £ 20 to £ 30 range, a view I believe, held by at least one of the current ECF directors. With the ECF giving away grading services to members for nothing, an increase in the games played and events taking place is of no financial benefit if it doesn't result in an increase in headcount.
(edit)I don't know whether it's serious or not, but the most public opposition is coming from the North. There's a discussion on the local North East forum.
http://peterleechessclub.co.uk/yabb/YaB ... 1338399208 (/edit)
Although the debate is started with a "not quite true" assertion
As people now know the ECF are implementing compulsary membership to get games graded.
I would have put it as
The ECF are increasing league Game Fee to £ 2 per game, and Congress Game Fee to £ 6 per head, but waiving it for ECF members.
(/edit)
