A Vision for the Future

[Sean Hewitt]

I've read the EBU document in the link posted by Mick. With a bit of tweaking this system could be adapted to chess in a way so as to keep everyone happy. I particularly like the one off affiliation fee of £5. Since our club has a half price offer for new members joining in the year this would not be too difficult for our treasurer (hubby) to collect. If affiliation fees were per team administered by the leagues he would have little more work than at present (which is plenty -the treasurer has a tough job in any organisation and it is often hard to recruit a new one). I see several advantages:

A) Every club player is then a member, this answers the point about potential sponsors wanting to see a lot of people active in chess before being interested.
B) Membership is much easier to administer. No reminders, much less cash handling, fewer changes to the database each year. This would cut down considerably on staff costs as it would not be necessary to have a full time subscription secretary.
C) A clear list of benefits to clubs and their members. I particularly like the webhosting as our club would love to have a more flexible website ( we use communigate at present - good coverage but very hard to update and we have an enormous web address) and no one has the expertise to sort this out.
D) Counties could have a lot more control over where the money is spent which would be good and the NCCU would I suspect prefer that.
E) Funding for non club activities like encouraging juniors and internationals etc. could be kept separate from club activities with any contribution from general funds being endorsed by all members. This way people have a sense of ownership and are likely to be more generous.
F)Those people who like to be direct members at present so as to contribute to chess in general particularly junior and senior international chess could still make an extra contribution if a separate fund was set up for these purposes able to take individual donations. Has the ECF got charitable status? If so these contributions would be charitable donations and likely to be eligible for tax rebate.

Could we please give all this serious consideration?

Michelle,

I may have misunderstood the EBU document but it seems to me that they are having a £5 per player reg fee which each player pays when they first start playing, PLUS table fees (which seem very similar to game fees). If this is so, then I think alot of the benefits you envisage aren't really there.

In fact the only difference compared to game fee is that the cost is limited per club, which seems to favour big clubs. I don't think we would want to discriminate against small clubs in this way.

[Sean Hewitt]

William

We need to find something to replace gamefee its expensive to collect thats if the ecf acually do collect all the gamefee due to it

I dissagree, I think Game Fee is great. It looks like the EBU is going down this route as well.

I agree it is expensive and like Sean Hewitt said in other posts it is treated like a Tax and seems to increase year on year. This should not be so.

If it is difficult to calculate and difficult to collect then these issues could be fixed quite easily. These are only faults in the implementation of Game Fee, not of Game Fee itself.

I remember when Direct Membership was first rolled out at the British at Easbourne, it was lauded as the great new thing for British Chess, it never got much take up. Direct Membership then offered all of the incentives it offers now, however these are obviously not what the average player really needs.

I am not against a membership scheme per se, but you would need to come up with a lot of added value to make it a real success. Looking at the state of the ECF and English Chess in general it's difficult to see what you could really come up with?

It's that Chicken and Egg problem again, you need money to create added value to a membership scheme, but you need a huge take up in membership to generate money.

To be fair Paul, if you scrapped game fee you wouldn't need to add a load of value added services to make membership seem attractive. You could charge membership of no more than £10 per player (with the proviso that only members get their games graded) and the ECF would be much better off. Costs would come down, membership rates would go up (very few players are currently members) and the vast majority of players would join at those rates - as long as game fee was scrapped simultaneously.

[IM Jack Rudd]

We need to find a way for gms ims strong players to give local simuls and training sessions

That is a problem that can usually be solved by the application of judicious quantities of money.

[Paul Stimpson]

(with the proviso that only members get their games graded)

Well this is the bit I really object to!

I don't see this as workable at all, this opens up a complete can of worms in itself. By all means come in with a £10 membership level, but I rather suspect the gain in membership fees will be equally negated by the loss in Game Fee revenue.

Also I rather like the idea that the ECF revenue is linked to the amount of chess actually played in this country! I would hope that this is one way of making the ECF want to halt any decline in chess activity or at least be trying.

I always think that membership only proponents like yourself have already lost the argument when they have to rely on not publishing a players grade to make it all work! Surely you can come up with something better than that.

[Mick Norris]

Thanks for the link, Mick - very interesting.

Thanks also to everyone else who's replied so far (although I did get a bit of a sinking feeling when the free sets issue cropped up). Please keep the ideas coming.

Being useless at original thought, I find copying other ideas to be the right way to go!

[William Metcalfe]

I did come up with something better i said lower league and club fees come with membership.I am now paying less to play chess than i was 8 years ago i am now also a member of the ecf even you have to see those are posative things.Also our club membership has gone up we run more teams so more people are playing and enjoying competative chess.Our chess club is busy 12 months of the year once the league season finishes players play there internal club tournaments something they were not doing before they got graded

[Michele Clack]

Sean. I didn't say that chess needed to have exactly the same as the bridge scheme, but what the Bridge Union has grasped is the need to establish a direct relationship with the clubs in order to help them survive and to move bridge in general onwards. This applies in spades for chess (sorry couldn't resist the pun). Chess clubs are disappearing at an ever increasing rate and a lot of the proposals for bridge club benefits would be hugely helpful for chess. I used the example of webhosting. At least half of the people coming to us in recent years ( unfortunately not all that many) have found us via the internet and our website is pretty dire to be frank. I'm sure that with a better site we could entice a few more people to have a go at over the board chess.
The club Andrew belongs to is smaller than ours and I am sure he is aware of the problems in keeping club chess alive let alone revitalising it and I wish him well in trying to help the ECF improve things. I am not very hopeful, however. As soon as you mention game fee v membership weapons are drawn! I honestly don't think that you will ever get a full membership scheme alone to stick and obviously the Bridge people were having the same problem or they wouldn't have come up with this proposal. I also don't think that game fee as it stands is satisfactory. I take your point that a cap at club level would favour bigger clubs. I still think a club levy instead of board fees could work in some form or another. I also think that the £5 one off levy to join the ecf would be a good way to get the numbers up immediately (good for sponsorship) and get people involved with the ecf. The ECF would then have a window of opportunity to prove to people that they are worth having. People have said on here "What does the ECF do for me" and been shot down in flames. However, they make a very important point. How many people in general life regularly pay for something from which they derive no benefit? Why should chess be any different? You need to work with the grain of human nature to get results. This is what the people who are only interested in elite chess need to understand. Help chess to become much more popular and then there will be far more opportunities for elite players following on from that in the form of more prizemoney and more coaching work opportunities. Of course there are quite a few altruistic individuals about. That is why I suggest a separate fund for chess development not directly related to clubs eg schools initiatives and international chess. Some money from the general levy could go into that but the majority of the money from clubs needs to go towards helping clubs to survive in the short term or we soon won't have any chess in this country to worry about.
Who can remember when the Birmingham League had 10 divisions of teams of 8? One for Carl - who can remember the lovely clubroom that Evesham used to play in. Where is the nearest club to Evesham now? Quite possibly us 15 miles away in Redditch. Let's all get behind Andrew now whilst we still have the chance.

[Sean Hewitt]

(with the proviso that only members get their games graded)

Well this is the bit I really object to!

Why? I don't see why the ECF should calulate and publish a grade for someone who chooses of their own free will not to be a member?

By all means come in with a £10 membership level, but I rather suspect the gain in membership fees will be equally negated by the loss in Game Fee revenue.

Looking at the evidence from out MO in Leicestershire it suggests that revenues would actually increase. However, if you have different figures that we can consider please let us know.

I always think that membership only proponents like yourself have already lost the argument when they have to rely on not publishing a players grade to make it all work! Surely you can come up with something better than that.

An interesting view Paul. However, I don't understand how my position of not publishing grades for non members is any different at all from the current game fee scheme where, if you dont pay game fee, you dont get your game graded?! Both ideas link grading to payment don't they? To be fair, that seems a perfectly reasonable position. After all, isn't grading the only thing the ECF does that the rank and file players attach any value to?

[Roger de Coverly]

but what the Bridge Union has grasped is the need to establish a direct relationship with the clubs in order to help them survive

Particularly in the South, there are a number of weekend only players. These people play in congresses and the 4NCL but are either unable or unwilling to participate in evening club night events. So clubs, county associations and regional associations have little relevance to them. One of the objectives of the designers of the Game Fee system 20 years ago was to establish a generally accepted means for the BCF to capture a revenue stream from non-club and non-county events.

If I read between the lines of the Bridge document, they believe that there is a lot of competition bridge out there which is outside the auspices of the EBU and they want to bring it inside the fold. By contrast in chess, outside of some school events and Yorkshire, all competition chess is played under ECF auspices and the ECF receives a modest fee for each game.

[Michele Clack]

Bob I think to a large extent you are right. However chess is organised the ECF needs to develop a proper relationship with ordinary players and help them to carry on enjoying their support. The ordinary player should not be viewed solely as a source of income.

[William Metcalfe]

Now we are finally getting to the krux of the matter the relationship between the ECF and the ordinary player.This has to be the area where the ECF has the biggest problem and for the future the most to gain.As a rep i spend a long time talking to players the first thing they say is i only get a grade for the ecf or i am a cash cow so a few international teams get sent abroad.So what ideas have people got so the grass roots of our great game is made to feel wanted and apreciated

[William Metcalfe]

Roger your point about the 4ncl is not accurate to play 4ncl chess you have to be a member of the ecf as its a fide rated tournament

[Paul Stimpson]

I don't understand how my position of not publishing grades for non members is any different at all from the current game fee scheme where, if you dont pay game fee, you dont get your game graded?!

I don't see how as a player I get the chance to not pay game fee? If I go to a congress it's included in the entrance fee.

Also Direct Members don't have to pay game fee but this isn't enough of an incentive at the moment to increase membership.

Have it your way and members will be penalised because when they play in events they will be up against players with no published grade?

How would this really work! It's a knee jerk fix that hasn't been well thought out.

I agree totally with Roger, game fee mops up all those who would never join the ECF. Also players can turn up at a congress or two get a grade without paying out membership fee's. I think a lot of players like it like that.

The trouble for the ECF is that with the Internet it would be quite easy for someone to set up a rival rating system and cut the ECF out completely.

To be fair this is also a risk if the ECF overcharge on the game fee which is something that looks to be occuring. If the ECF turn game fee in to the golden egg then there is always a danger that someone will come along and do it better and cheaper whilst making a profit. What's the income per year for game fee at present?

I see on another thread someone has developed an online results service for congresses, how much of a step up from that would be the addition of automatically generating rankings? As software makes this task easier and easier this is almost a certainty to happen. Congresses upload their files to a central system for a small fee and their events are both published on the net and all games rated.

The ECF will lose out big time. Not publishing grades for non members will only hasten this process.

[Roger de Coverly]

Roger your point about the 4ncl is not accurate to play 4ncl chess you have to be a member of the ecf as its a fide rated tournament

My point was that there are players who do not form part of any traditional club structure.

In order to play in the 4NCL you now have to be an ECF member. This is at least in part because the ECF chose to interpret FIDE's phrase "membership of a national federation" in a very narrow sense. It does remain the case that if someone's sole outing in OTB chess was a single NCL game, then they (or their team sponsor) would have to pay the Direct Member cost which is somewhat larger than the game fee.

The NCL is sufficiently prestigious that the cost of a one-off appearance doesn't seem to be a deterrent. I don't think the Bucks league or the Cleveland league have quite the same pulling power.

The ECF recieves an Exorbitant fee for each game

48p a game, That's under £ 2.50 per head for a 5 round tournament and under £ 5 for a 10 round league. Anyway the ECF needs the money from the general player base to

(a) maintain the office in Battle to the required standard
(b) to run international teams
(c) to spend money on junior chess

[Paul McKeown]

Folks - surely whinging about Game Fee belongs in another thread?

This is after all a supposedly positive thread - A Vision for the Future...