Membership scheme- a question

[Alan Walton]

The way I look at it is, and I think Paul Cooksey came up with the point, that clubs themselves should cover the cost "occasional players", whether this is through upping the club membership fee (current members) to cover the cost or charging the individual directly that's down to them

Normally new players will seek out their local club first and not normally go via the ECF directly, therefore the Clubs should have some contingency to embed these players, once the player is 100% committed (I would normally say after 5 games) then you explain the membership system in place (whatever it is at that time) to continue playing

This would give a new player the impression that ECF membership or £2/game wasn't necessary for graded games; once (s)he's hooked you reveal the awful truth.
This approach has merit if you're making the best of the ECF membership system; the new member may of course wonder if the ECF has ever considered the much simpler system of charging a small fee ( say 48p ) per graded game.

It will only give that impression to the player if you don't explain membership to him, I would expect any well run club to do this, clubs should be flexible with new members and maybe cover the first few games free of charge. It is a clubs interest to bring in new players so putting aside £20-£40 per season for new players seems sensible.

It seems that discussion always come back to the amount people want to pay, some people think £12 for league chess is too much, some think its fine. My view is approx £1 per game is a fair level (assumption 12 league games a season)

3Cs as a club are promoting the current membership scheme as a good thing and compulsory to play league chess for 3Cs, so any new member will be explained the details of the scheme and if said player doesn't agree then he can go elsewhere, I would have to admit it is very rare that our club has new adult members being sent up predominantly as a junior club

And to the original comment on the thread, I think if a congress is specifically closed to a group, either club / league / county association then I would say Bronze membership should suffice

[Bill Porter]

once the player is 100% committed (I would normally say after 5 games) then you explain the membership system in place (whatever it is at that time) to continue playing

It will only give that impression to the player if you don't explain membership to him

some people think £12 for league chess is too much, some think its fine

Paying 5p and implicitly approving eg a dubious legal action against FIDE undertaken in my name without my knowledge etc etc would be 5p more than I'd be prepared to pay.
I was born in Scotland so you can put that down to Scottish meanness if you like.

[Roger de Coverly]

And to the original comment on the thread, I think if a congress is specifically closed to a group, either club / league / county association then I would say Bronze membership should suffice

The ECF Board have now made a statement on this.

http://www.englishchess.org.uk/?p=21692

The Board decided that, provided the event is explicitly (i.e. on the entry form) restricted to players from within a single county, it falls within the ‘county/league/club’ framework, for which Bronze membership provides exemption from Game Fee on a player’s results. This applies even though the event may take the form of a congress. The Board’s reasoning was that the restriction to players from a single county met the spirit of ‘local’ competition which Bronze membership was intended to cover.

The same principle applies to congresses which are explicitly restricted to members of a particular league within a county.

The problem with this is that many counties still have a framework in place to offer individual membership of the county association to players from outside the county. It doesn't help the Congress if it wants to attract non-ECF members to the Congress, but offering county membership for free or a nominal cost would enable Bronze members to take part without paying anything extra to the ECF.