What is wrong with the ECF ?

[andrew martin]

This is the place to make it clear. If the ECF is so ineffectual, please say exactly why. No snide remarks, just facts, opinions and detailed solutions. Make sure you also take into consideration all the good things the ECf does.

If you criticize someone in office, make it clear who is going to take their place. If you dislike aspects of policy, give alternatives.


If we are going to improve our performance as a federation we need your help and feedback.
Thanks, Andrew

[Carl Hibbard]

This is the place to make it clear. If the ECF is so ineffectual, please say exactly why. No snide remarks, just facts, opinions and detailed solutions. Make sure you also take into consideration all the good things the ECf does.

If you criticize someone in office, make it clear who is going to take their place. If you dislike aspects of policy, give alternatives.


If we are going to improve our performance as a federation we need your help and feedback.
Thanks, Andrew

It appears that this is officially not the place the make things clear

[Sean Hewitt]

If the ECF is so ineffectual, please say exactly why. No snide remarks, just facts, opinions and detailed solutions.

If we are going to improve our performance as a federation we need your help and feedback.

Thanks, Andrew

Yesterday's decision to attempt to stiffle debate shows that the ECF dont want to know what members and players think. It's an incredibly stupid decision - and smacks of an ostrich sticking its head in the sand. It wont work, of course, but for the ECF to even think that this is a good idea is unbelievable and epitomises all that is wrong with that body.

[Neill Cooper]

This is not a recent problem. All the successful major development in English chess in recent years (such as 4NCL, UK Chess Challenge, EPSCA, NYCA, new tournaments such as Liverpool International) have, as far as I am aware, taken place outside the BCF/ECF.

Perhaps it is the nature of things that the national organisation has to continue to run existing events and teams, so there is less chance of creative thinking.

[JustinHorton]

I think it's not entirely clear to anybody, perhaps not even the ECf themselves, what the organisation is for and what it's trying to achieve.

I think it's true that most positive things in recent years have come from outside the ECF, but I don't think that, in itself, is a criticism. It might even be true that the ECF's role in many things should be to take a back seat, let people get on with it, and so on. That's fine. I don't think it's there to run the entirety of English chess, or to try to.

What I would like is for the ECF, without being laid into by all and sundry, which does no good to anybody, to tell us what they think they're for. Just as a first approximation. Without waffle, and not at excessive length. What they think they're for, what they think they're not for.

It's a changing world and we need that discussion to happen. In the right way, if it be at all possible.

[Chris Majer]

Justin writes:

I think it's not entirely clear to anybody, perhaps not even the ECf themselves, what the organisation is for and what it's trying to achieve.

I think it's true that most positive things in recent years have come from outside the ECF, but I don't think that, in itself, is a criticism. It might even be true that the ECF's role in many things should be to take a back seat, let people get on with it, and so on. That's fine. I don't think it's there to run the entirety of English chess, or to try to.

What I would like is for the ECF, without being laid into by all and sundry, which does no good to anybody, to tell us what they think they're for. Just as a first approximation. Without waffle, and not at excessive length. What they think they're for, what they think they're not for.

It's a changing world and we need that discussion to happen. In the right way, if it be at all possible.
I think it's not entirely clear to anybody, perhaps not even the ECf themselves, what the organisation is for and what it's trying to achieve.

I think it's true that most positive things in recent years have come from outside the ECF, but I don't think that, in itself, is a criticism. It might even be true that the ECF's role in many things should be to take a back seat, let people get on with it, and so on. That's fine. I don't think it's there to run the entirety of English chess, or to try to.

What I would like is for the ECF, without being laid into by all and sundry, which does no good to anybody, to tell us what they think they're for. Just as a first approximation. Without waffle, and not at excessive length. What they think they're for, what they think they're not for.

It's a changing world and we need that discussion to happen. In the right way, if it be at all possible.

I suppose a first order approximation is provided by the company MEMORANDUM OF ASSOCIATION which says:

3. The Company's objects are:-

3.1. To encourage the study and practice of chess in England and for the purpose of these objects England shall be deemed to include such part of North Wales as is within the jurisdiction of the Cheshire & North Wales Chess Association for so long as it shall so remain.

3.2. To institute and maintain British Chess Championships.

3.3. To promote national and international chess tournaments in England.

3.4. To secure the interests of English players (being those players who are entitled to represent England under the statutes and regulations of Federation Internationale des Echecs for the time being in force) in foreign chess tournaments and matches.

3.5. To support the Braille Chess Association and other chess organisations which are members of the Company and whose jurisdiction includes England unless and until in each such case separate equivalent English organisations shall be established which are members of the Company.

3.6. To secure the interests of English problemists in foreign tournaments and tourneys and to encourage English problem composers and solvers by instituting tournaments and tourneys and for these purposes support of the British Chess Problem Society shall be within the scope of this object unless and until a separate English Chess Problem Society shall be established which is a member of the Company.

3.7. To arrange such contests, meetings, etc., as may be deemed desirable and provide and present trophies for competitions to suitable organisations in England.

3.8. To provide assistance in relation to chess to British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies, which are not for the time being members of Federation Internationale des Echecs, if requested to do so.

3.9. To maintain and increase a fund, known as the “Permanent Invested Fund”, to be permanently invested in the name of trustees in accordance with an approved trust deed.

3.10. To maintain a system for grading the results of games of chess players participating in its own competitions and in the competitions of member organisations.

3.11. To make the Company’s services available without discrimination on grounds of colour, creed, disability, impairment, occupation, race, religious or political affiliation, or sexual orientation and to promote equal opportunities in a positive manner.

Much of this text goes back many years.

[JustinHorton]

Chris - I'm sure it does! But the world has changed much (the form in which we are communicating comes to mind) since we played each other in Hertfordshire chess in the Seventies and I think it is time for a no-holds-barred rethink.

One thing that I think about, for instance, is that chess needs to be publicised a lot more now, and we all need to think about how that can be done. Going back a long time, there used to be a fairly well-established and recognisable chess community (though we would not have called it that). If you were interested in chess, you went dowen your local library and asked if they knew where the local chess club was (which I remember doing in Stevenage, thirty years ago) and you went and found it and that's how you got your chess. And then there was the boom in English chess and so it was very visible anyway.

And now, pretty much everything's changed. Yet there are, I tell you, lots of people who play chess casually, or who are interested in it because they played a bit a t school - but they have no contact with chess at all, they may not even know that such things as chess clubs exist. And there are many, many people who play casually on the internet and they quite likely don't even know that the world championship is going on right this minute.

I think these people are an audience and a future. I can't tell you how to tap that audience - but it's what we should be thinking about. Perhaps.

[JustinHorton]

Whats wrong with the ECF?- Martin Regan spelt it out months ago but concluded they organisation could not be radically changed while the current 'sytem' prevailed.

This might or might not be right but as stated, it seems to me to be a tautology: what's wrong with the system is that the system is wrong. Which may be true but doesn't necessarily help!

I don't much go for ECF-bashing because I think that most of the problems with English chess lie outside their hands to resolve, and frankly are hard enough even to address: they're a product of the partiuclar culture in which English chess struggles for recognition. (As an illustration, my local paper, serving a province with a population of about 220,000, largely rural, will probably mention chess more in any given week than the BBC news site does in a whole year. And this is not a hotbed of chess, if any such thing exists.)

That said, that's the situation people are in,whether we like it or not, and therefore the situation in which we have to work, and I'm not sure that all ECF people are ready to recognise that and to think about what we might do to address it. I don't think otther people screaming at the ECF will help either. But I think we do need to think very hard about the nature of the hole we're in and how we might start trying to climb out of it.

[Gary Cook]

Maybe we should ask if the ECF stopped existing would the majority of players notice? Personally with the exception of the grading list I think not