English Chess Forum

IM Jack Rudd wrote:

Roger de Coverly wrote:

IM Jack Rudd wrote:
Council said no.

In my memory, the option was never put to them. "Membership" was always equated to a "one man, one sub" system.

Let's put it another way: they rejected options in which Game Fee was the primary method of funding.

(You really do not want to run membership schemes where fees are proportional to activity. The admin overload of doing that is ridiculous.)

The discussion has drifted quite a bit from the original post, however here is a suggestion: as it happens the ECF "real" members are those organizations and congresses represented at council; individual members are supposed to be represented through those organizations; why then don't you make this very clear also in the funding of the ECF: the ECF charges its "real" members for membership fees, in any way council finds appropriate; those organizations in turn source those funds from their members; wouldn't this be a much more honest reflection of the organizational structure of the ECF and wouldn't this allow individual players to chose their "chess provider" instead of being subjected to ECF council decision they have very little control about?

IM Jack Rudd wrote: (You really do not want to run membership schemes where fees are proportional to activity. The admin overload of doing that is ridiculous.)

Umm.. Seems to work OK for beer, gas, electricity, petrol, bread, games of putting, theatre visits, sausage rolls, taxi rides, trips to brothels, haircuts, bed and breakfast, the timed slalem run on piste 79 at Madonna di Campiglio, bridge evenings (as afore mentioned) and perhaps one or two other things also.

NickFaulks wrote: The world has moved on in the past 24 years, England hasn't.

What's your defence of the proposition that only some games in a tournament with rated players should count for rating? FIDE attempted to introduce the notion of defaulting players who were a second or two late at the board. If that's "moving on" , rejecting it is a better idea.

Michael Farthing wrote:

IM Jack Rudd wrote: (You really do not want to run membership schemes where fees are proportional to activity. The admin overload of doing that is ridiculous.)

Umm.. Seems to work OK for beer, gas, electricity, petrol, bread, games of putting, theatre visits, sausage rolls, taxi rides, trips to brothels, haircuts, bed and breakfast, the timed slalem run on piste 79 at Madonna di Campiglio, bridge evenings (as afore mentioned) and perhaps one or two other things also.

Those are mostly not membership schemes, they are sales of goods and services. Where, typically, the provider is also the organization being funded by the purchase. Chess in England doesn't work like that.

Roger de Coverly wrote:

IM Jack Rudd wrote: (You really do not want to run membership schemes where fees are proportional to activity. The admin overload of doing that is ridiculous.)

Please explain why. You collect from a few hundred organisations instead of several thousand or tens of thousand individuals. Is it not the case that the ECF Office is swamped during the membership renewal season?

You abolish the ECF giving any discount for members playing in Congresses. The calculation is simply (# of games) times (amount per game). That's easily available from the grading submissions. It was a totally false assertion that FIDE required an individual membership scheme for games to be FIDE rated.

Did not see this reply while posting my own reply to the same message.

My addition to your note is that the calculation does not even have to be so accurate. If you think calculating by number of games is too onerous then you could simply classify congresses in few bands by their size and charge each band a fixed predefined amount, regardless of the exact number of games played... that could be the ECF membership fee for each congress that I'm suggesting in the other post. Similarly for leagues and other organizations. Those entities all belong to the ECF council, why can't they decide how much each of them have to contribute to the ECF instead of passing the bill to someone else...

Paolo Casaschi wrote: individual members are supposed to be represented through those organizations; why then don't you make this very clear also in the funding of the ECF: the ECF charges its "real" members for membership fees, in any way council finds appropriate;

That was the BCF structure from around 1994 onwards. Those who demanded that the BCF be financed using a one person one contribution method, which included some directors, made every attempt possible to undermine and discredit this approach, not least making an interpretation of an ambiguous FIDE rule in favour of this.

Roger de Coverly wrote: where is the incentive to jump through the various hoops needed to be FIDE rated?

This is where I get confused. Other federations. with far greater international success than the ECF, don't seem to be troubled by these hoops. They just submit their tournaments for rating.

Paolo Casaschi wrote: Those entities all belong to the ECF council, why can't they decide how much each of them have to contribute to the ECF instead of passing the bill to someone else...

Congress organisers found it too much work, or failed to budget ECF fees when setting entry fees and prizes.

To be fair, the attempts of BCF and ECF Directors to undermine their own revenue collection method meant that the process had deep inefficiencies that they weren't prepared to address.

Roger de Coverly wrote:FIDE attempted to introduce the notion of defaulting players who were a second or two late at the board.

That idea died with Kasparov's presidential bid.

NickFaulks wrote: Other federations. with far greater international success than the ECF,

If you are talking weekend tournaments, what has "international success", whatever that means, to do with it?

NickFaulks wrote: That idea died with Kasparov's presidential bid.

Has Kirsan disowned his personal support for the idea then? It was first introduced in 2008 for Dresden, Kasparov's presidential bid was six years later.

Roger de Coverly wrote:If you are talking weekend tournaments, what has "international success", whatever that means, to do with it?

You think English chess has benefitted from cutting itself off from the wider world. Perhaps you're right and everything in English chess is rosy, I'm past caring.

IM Jack Rudd wrote: Where, typically, the provider is also the organization being funded by the purchase. Chess in England doesn't work like that.

Chess in England is run through Congresses, leagues and county associations. These are the providers. The notion that the ECF imposes a tax on these bodies to finance non-local expenditure such as a central staffed office and international teams is reasonable enough.

Particularly when the ECF gets involved in potentially expensive legal battles, it's worth asking how much or how little of the chess infrastructure would be destroyed if the ECF ceased to exist. I reckon very little, the priorities would be to reboot a grading or rating system, re-establish external relationships such as FIDE and re-establish national events such as the British Championship. Local leagues would continue without much difficulty other than an absence of up to date grades.

Roger de Coverly wrote: It was first introduced in 2008 for Dresden, Kasparov's presidential bid was six years later.

Kasparov's right hand man Ignatius Leong was the prime mover and enforcer. He is gone, hopefully not to be heard from again outside CAS proceedings.

NickFaulks wrote: Kasparov's right hand man Ignatius Leong was the prime mover and enforcer.

In 2008, he was Kirsan's and FIDE's prime mover and enforcer as chief arbiter at the Olympiad.