English Chess Forum

ECF President CJ de Mooi has been very kind to give up some of his time and provide Yorkshirechess.org with an exclusive in-depth interview. We discuss everything including CJ’s early years, his time as ECF President so far, what he hopes to achieve in promoting British chess in the future and his interests outside of chess.

We’re sure you’ll quickly see that CJ has a lot of enthusiasm for making British chess as successful as possible and moreover that he is a genuine and sincere human being!

We hope you enjoy the interview!

Interview with CJ de Mooi

Andrew Bak wrote:ECF President CJ de Mooi has been very kind to give up some of his time and provide Yorkshirechess.org with an exclusive in-depth interview

A couple of points that came out, not exactly news, but confirmation of what had been rumoured.

On the FIDE Vice Presidents protest and subsequent CAS action, it was initiated by Kasparov who sought Federations to act for him and with him.

CJ expects to be involved with the 100th British, provided he is still President. I'm not sure what he was hinting, as surely the ECF Council is unlike the FIDE General Assembly and would evaluate candidates on their merits rather than on the funding on offer.

Roger de Coverly wrote: CJ expects to be involved with the 100th British, provided he is still President. I'm not sure what he was hinting, as surely the ECF Council is unlike the FIDE General Assembly and would evaluate candidates on their merits rather than on the funding on offer.

Perhaps funding might assist with his merits?

Andrew Bak wrote:

Roger de Coverly wrote: CJ expects to be involved with the 100th British, provided he is still President. I'm not sure what he was hinting, as surely the ECF Council is unlike the FIDE General Assembly and would evaluate candidates on their merits rather than on the funding on offer.

Perhaps funding might assist with his merits?

But only in the same way that Kirsan's preparedness to sponsor events assists with his merits - this is Roger's point.

We also learn that both he and Nigel Short wil attend some meetings at Istanbul, so Nigel will presumably miss various games for England even if he is on form.

Andrew, I very much like your website and its activities, and if you want to support CJ with a friendly broadcast in the run up to an election, that is up to you. But that is what this is, ie something akin to a Hello chat. Not a single precise question is asked - CJ is just asked to comment on very broad topics, allowing him to say what he wants, and to omit what he wants - and there is never a follow-up question. It is not an interview in any real sense, let alone an in-depth one. I was particularly perturbed that he was allowed to say that two persons were questioned by the police following Sheffield last year without further elaboration as to why he thought this worth mentioning (actually this too is news to me) and that he was not asked why he had not accepted offers of mediation with Alex and Lara.

...

First just let me say that this is my first ever audio interview of any kind, so any criticisms, both positive and negative are gratefully received for future improvement!

Jonathan Rogers wrote: Andrew, I very much like your website and its activities, and if you want to support CJ with a friendly broadcast in the run up to an election, that is up to you. But that is what this is, ie something akin to a Hello chat. Not a single precise question is asked - CJ is just asked to comment on very broad topics, allowing him to say what he wants, and to omit what he wants - and there is never a follow-up question. It is not an interview in any real sense, let alone an in-depth one. I was particularly perturbed that he was allowed to say that two persons were questioned by the police following Sheffield last year without further elaboration as to why he thought this worth mentioning (actually this too is news to me) and that he was not asked why he had not accepted offers of mediation with Alex and Lara.

I wasn't trying to be Paxman or Frost - I just wanted CJ to talk about some of the issues during his time as ECF President.

I don't think it's quite fair to say it was toothless - we found out some more details about the CAS case and he apologised for any error of judgment of his at Sheffield. Yes perhaps I should have elaborated on the questioning of two people by the police, but if the ECF board wants to find out more details about this, then I suppose they can ask at the next ECF board meeting.

James Byrne wrote: @Andrew, would you consider doing some player interviews as well. I use to really enjoy John Watson's Chess Talk on the ICC till it stopped last year. The format of his show was he'd basically ask them about their chess lives and other general chess questions like "what they're favourite books are" etc, really miss that show, always found it interesting to hear how players I like got started in chess. Some particular players I'd love to hear a interview from would be: Mark Hebden, Simon Williams, Luke McShane, Lawrence Trent, Stephen Gordon, Tryfon Gavriel (goes by the alias Kingscrusher on youtube), Christof Sielecki (goes by alias ChessExplained on youtube) and Nigel Davies.

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We'll certainly hope to do more in the future!

ERM, ERM, ERM. >< This interview plays very badly because every fifth word from our interviewer is erm!!

James Byrne wrote:I also found the stat about registered ECF members both interesting and disturbing.

I believe the stats which CJ gives are incorrect.

CJ says: "You’re looking at what?: high tens-of-thousands, maybe even low hundreds-of-thousands of people ... will play in maybe a Rapidplay tournament or a weekend congress every year" and then he gives a figure for ECF membership of 1,200.

Richard Haddrell’s stats, on the other hand, say that between 15,000 and 16,000 people play at least one graded game a year and this has been true since 2006.

The ECF membership list which I downloaded on 12 May 2012 (pre the introduction of the new membership scheme) has 3,717 entries.

An interesting contrast! Evidently, like his friend, CJ does not focus on details but prefers "the broad sweep". He'll be writing a book in a weekend next.

Angus French wrote:

James Byrne wrote:I also found the stat about registered ECF members both interesting and disturbing.

I believe the stats which CJ gives are incorrect.

CJ says: "You’re looking at what?: high tens-of-thousands, maybe even low hundreds-of-thousands of people ... will play in maybe a Rapidplay tournament or a weekend congress every year" and then he gives a figure for ECF membership of 1,200.

Richard Haddrell’s stats, on the other hand, say that between 15,000 and 16,000 people play at least one graded game a year and this has been true since 2006.

The ECF membership list which I downloaded on 12 May 2012 (pre the introduction of the new membership scheme) has 3,717 entries.

CJ's figure for people playing tournament chess seems easy to justify to me - competitors in the UK Chess Challenge plus people who have played at least one graded game is going to be in excess of 80,000 people, maybe close to 90,000.

On the other hand, not knowing how many members there are in the organisation he's President of doesn't reflect very well on him.

Ian Thompson wrote:

Angus French wrote:

James Byrne wrote:I also found the stat about registered ECF members both interesting and disturbing.

I believe the stats which CJ gives are incorrect.

CJ says: "You’re looking at what?: high tens-of-thousands, maybe even low hundreds-of-thousands of people ... will play in maybe a Rapidplay tournament or a weekend congress every year" and then he gives a figure for ECF membership of 1,200.

Richard Haddrell’s stats, on the other hand, say that between 15,000 and 16,000 people play at least one graded game a year and this has been true since 2006.

The ECF membership list which I downloaded on 12 May 2012 (pre the introduction of the new membership scheme) has 3,717 entries.

CJ's figure for people playing tournament chess seems easy to justify to me - competitors in the UK Chess Challenge plus people who have played at least one graded game is going to be in excess of 80,000 people, maybe close to 90,000.

On the other hand, not knowing how many members there are in the organisation he's President of doesn't reflect very well on him.

CJ's point was to look at how many people play a tournament game and how few join the ECF. The implication was that one would expect those who do one ought also to be interested in doing the other. That is rather undermined if it turns out that 80% of the figure given for those who play at least one tournament game turn out to be children in shorts who play chess as another day out with their schoolfriends (ie we surely don't really expect the majority of kids who play UKCC to join the ECF anymore than we expect them to join the national federation for table tennis or badminton if they happen to spend a day playing those games with their school).

Basically CJ seemed to suggest that the ratio of those who play the odd competitive game to those who join the ECF was until recently around 90:1 whereas if one excludes UKCC and looks at the figures given by Angus, the ratio was more like 4:1.

Lara and I are in Istanbul with a slow Internet connection so haven't had a chance of hearing the interview.

For clarification, I do not know who was interviewed by the police either. Indeed it is the first time I have heard anything about it.

If CJ De Mooi is going to be here perhaps he can arrange a meeting with us. I'm available most mornings.

Think creatively, Alex. This is the first time you've been in the same city together for a while. Seize the chance to pop along and interview him. You'll need to think up a few questions to ask beforehand; that may not be too hard. And you'll need a recording device to capture the moment. I imagine you'll not lack for a suitable website willing to publish the result. Just a thought

Jonathan Rogers wrote: CJ says: "You’re looking at what?: high tens-of-thousands, maybe even low hundreds-of-thousands of people ... will play in maybe a Rapidplay tournament or a weekend congress every year"

If you exclude exclusively junior events, I don't think the number of players actually playing Congress chess is that many. Richard Haddrell's stats give a total count of 68524 standard play games and about the same number of rapidplay (which I would suspect are mostly juniors). You see the same faces at Congresses all the time, so if the average number of Congress games was 20 per player, that's only around three and half thousand individuals. Several hundred would be Welsh, Scots, Irish or other visitors that you would not expect to become ECF members.

The budget spreadsheet is unconvincing as a reliable model, but for adults it had 1200 Gold and 3000 Silver with the corresponding Junior figures being 70 and 1350. 1200 is a plausible proxy for the number of players on the active International list plus part rateds.

Andrew, irrespective of the content of the interview, at least you have attempted to do something original for your website and you should be congratulated for that.

It does, however, seem a pity that all Dan O'Dowd can do is criticise your style of interviewing instead of at least praising your initiative.