Yorkshire vs ECF disparity

[Dragoljub Sudar]

For this season only, couldn't the ECF treat the non-registered leagues as 'abroad' and agree to grade any games played in them by ECF members?

It certainly could, but why should non-registered leagues be given favourable treatment over registered leagues?

They won't be. The compromise for this season would be a recognition of those who have decided to become members. The non-members would not have their games graded. If an ECF member is able to submit games from an overseas tournament for grading why shouldn't he be able to submit his games in the unregistered leagues for this season only as a goodwill gesture by the ECF?

In previous years, an estimate of a December Game Fee payment was straightforward. You know the size of the league and the number of matches to be played. In the new environment, you could presume that all participants in the league would play at least 6 games, therefore your Game Fee estimate is zero.

No, because that assumes all participants will become members and in Yorkshire's case this simply aint gonna happen. Even if Yorkshire estimates a zero game fee, next August it will receive a large bill for those games played by non-members. I guess that Yorkshire intend to pay up as they have signed up, but with such a low take-up of membership there is a risk of them not doing so, and then it would become an issue. If you were in charge, would you sit back and wait to see what happens, or would you talk to Yorkshire now?

[Alan Burke]

Roger, I do agree with your comment of "why should non-registered leagues be given favourable treatment over registered leagues?"

However, I am not suggesting that such leagues receive favourable treatment and would actually advocate that games of non ECF members should continue not to be graded. However, those players who have remained loyal to the ECF surely deserve some support from the Federation in return for their financial contributions.

By allowing their games to be graded, the ECF would not be sanctioning the Leagues but just giving backing to their own members - especially as the terms of membership were certainly not made clear on the ECF website nor on or the application form.

The first comment about this situation on the ECF website was on 22 October, by which time many people had already paid to become ECF members whilst games in the affected leagues had already taken place. If players had known this consequence before the season began then some may have opted to play for teams in a different league where their games were guaranteed to be graded by the ECF. However, by the time this subject was made known, some had already made certain commitments to play for their current teams.

This whole situation should have been thrashed out before the season started not part way through it and that is why I think the ECF members involved deserve to be allowed to have their games graded for the remainder of this season.

[MartinCarpenter]

Because they wanted to *force* leagues to have nearly universal membership. Quite a rational position in general if maybe less so in Yorkshire.

The money situation in the Yorkshire league as it stands (which is rather relevant if they have to pay an estimate in mid December), is a bit over 2200 spread between about 210 members and a slightly smaller number of non members. So - unless a lot of those non members have a surprising change of heart! - you're looking at something like 10 pounds/head extra from the existing members to keep the league graded.

That may prove to be quite a hard sell.

The Leeds league seems likely to end up nearer 20 pounds/member which I can't really imagine being sustainable.

[Roger de Coverly]

A lot of this comes back to the stupid decision to make the game fee charge £2.
Why not make it simple.
No game fee.
Members get all their games graded
Non members are removed from the published grading list.

The ECF had several problems with this.

It would act as a popularity poll for their membership scheme, which is not universally welcome.

It would face the problem of how to handle the grading of games where member plays non-member. It would have to decline to grade the game as otherwise the grades of non-members leak as you would be showing their grades in the published calculations on the website

There are more players around without a grade, complicating the running of everything that uses rankings or restrictions

It needed the extra money.

Even simpler would have been to abandon the stupid idea of trying to make everyone a member, for leagues anyway.

There were long debates about this fifteen months ago.

[Roger de Coverly]

The Leeds league seems likely to end up nearer 20 pounds/member which I can't really imagine being sustainable.

They don't need anyone to sign anything, so they just pay a maximum of £ 12 per head using the on-line system. They have until 31st August 2013 to do this. Admittedly the ECF is asking for trouble early next season when it sends out large bills if it runs into a "can't pay, won't pay" attitude. It's no use threatening to withdraw grading services because not one, but two grading lists will by then have been published.

[Sean Hewitt]

The money situation in the Yorkshire league as it stands (which is rather relevant if they have to pay an estimate in mid December), is a bit over 2200 spread between about 210 members and a slightly smaller number of non members. So - unless a lot of those non members have a surprising change of heart! - you're looking at something like 10 pounds/head extra from the existing members to keep the league graded.
...
The Leeds league seems likely to end up nearer 20 pounds/member which I can't really imagine being sustainable.

What arrangements are in place in these two leagues for collecting the game fee for non-members? In my local league (Stockport) the AGM decided that the club the non member played for is liable to the league for the £2. I can't imagine members paying the game fee for non-members - which appears is what is being said here. Am I misunderstanding it?

[Sean Hewitt]

A lot of this comes back to the stupid decision to make the game fee charge £2.
Why not make it simple.
No game fee.
Members get all their games graded
Non members are removed from the published grading list.

This was considered by council, but was considered extremely problematic in terms of grading, keeping non-members grades secret, and in terms of encouraging membership take up.

[Sean Hewitt]

However, as I have already pointed out in this debate, if any prospective member had gone into the ECF website as follows ....

ECF website
Toolbar at top of home page - Click on "Membership"
Drop-down box - Click on "Online membership"
Online Membership System - Click on "here"
What do I get for my membership ? - "Free grading of results (unlimited) in ....

then no such comment about incuring game fees is shown ie That is NOT someone just pointing to one part of a webpage whilst ignoring another - the statement is just not there !.

However, that page does say
"Big changes are coming to the types of ECF membership available and the per-game fees for non-members. You can find out much more from the ECF website by following the link from the top of the Home page."

and

"If you play graded chess, depending on the local organisers’ regulations, there is also the option of paying an amount per game in club, league and county events and per event in congresses"

Therefore, this page does mention what happens re non-members. However, I have undertaken to clarify matters further for everyone's benefit.

It is worth remembering that the ECF, not the local leagues, who made the position clear by making a statement. The ECF does not want anyone to be confused. I think Andrew Z best sums up the current position

the choice for Yorkshire at the moment is whether we want to be part of the national chess community or not?

[Ihor Lewyk]

Hi Sean,

The Yorkshire league has recently sent bills out to the clubs to collect registration fees. The clubs are responsible for paying the actual fees and the estimated grading fees for non ECF members who have represented them this season. I'm sure our treasurer will be getting a lot of amended returns stating that certain players are indeed ECF members and the list is incorrect.

The club I play for, Bradford chess club, has a number of players who say they are members of the ECF but have not yet appeared on the Membership list on the ECF website. I am about to query this list as it will reduce our club's bill drastically. The bill to the club came to £251.

I also play in the Leeds CA league and I believe their bill will be collected in a similar way. Some clubs in the league insist on everyone becoming ECF members while others will collect game fee from those who are not.
Almost every club suffers from players being unavailable for matches and once all reserves are exhausted they inevitably need to twist arms to fill boards. Collecting £2 for these players seems a bit harsh especially when they are doing us a favour to prevent defaults. Most clubs are willing to pay for the £2 for this on the odd ocassion.

On another point Sean.
I think you need to concede that the information on the website is misleading just through the sheer volume of debate about it on this thread. I hope you can sort it out for next season.

[Sean Hewitt]

Hi Sean,

The Yorkshire league has recently sent bills out to the clubs to collect registration fees. The clubs are responsible for paying the actual fees and the estimated grading fees for non ECF members who have represented them this season. I'm sure our treasurer will be getting a lot of amended returns stating that certain players are indeed ECF members and the list is incorrect.

The club I play for, Bradford chess club, has a number of players who say they are members of the ECF but have not yet appeared on the Membership list on the ECF website. I am about to query this list as it will reduce our club's bill drastically. The bill to the club came to £251.

Hi Ihor - the membership list online should be up to date. If you think anyone is missing, Andrew Walker at the ECF office is pretty helpful. It would help if you could tell him how the person joined and when, as well as who they are. If you need any assistance just let me know.

I think you need to concede that the information on the website is misleading just through the sheer volume of debate about it on this thread. I hope you can sort it out for next season.

We'll have to agree to disagree on that point. There are 3 or 4 people on here that are contributing to the debate - mainly through selective quoting.

However, the ECF board want to be absolutely clear what members do and don't get (hence the statement that kicked this all off) and to that end I will undertake to review all of the web material. After all, even if something is clear, it can sometimes be even clearer!

[MartinCarpenter]

Well the money has to ultimately come from someone So hopefully yes, these figures will shock some of the clubs into getting organised about memberships and thus come down somewhat. Ultimately of course if there are principled hold outs it will be down to the members - through their clubs - to either cover those costs or give up on ECF grading the whole league.
(Or of course remove said players/clubs but I rather doubt you'd get much popular support for that in Yorkshire.).

I'm not worried about the top division - the clubs are big, (generally) well organised, have decent membership levels already and I'm fairly sure will get people to sign up/eventually foot any moderate bill incurred. Oddly enough the third division should be fine too - they play less games/season anyway and seem to be relatively healthy membership wise.

What is much more worrying is that the second division of the Yorkshire league currently has a total membership rate/game of about 45 per cent with about half the clubs comfortably below that. Hopefully that's still just apathy/disorganisation but I dunno. I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of them flat out refuse to pay either membership for their regular players or the larger associated fines. That'll be fun....

[Roger de Coverly]

Well the money has to ultimately come from someone So hopefully yes, these figures will shock some of the clubs into getting organised about memberships and thus come down somewhat.

Remind us how you financed the Woodhouse and associated competitions in previous years. Did you charge a levy for each player however few games they played and met the ECF Game Fee out of the proceeds? So whilst in the previous season for a ten match league, you had to find £5.80 per board, now someone has to find £ 12 per player or £ 2 per game if that works out cheaper. Actually I think Yorks ran an MO so it was £ 12 per player to the ECF or 58p per game for non-members.

[Ihor Lewyk]

Remind us how you financed the Woodhouse and associated competitions in previous years. Did you charge a levy for each player however few games they played and met the ECF Game Fee out of the proceeds? So whilst in the previous season for a ten match league, you had to find £5.80 per board, now someone has to find £ 12 per player or £ 2 per game if that works out cheaper. Actually I think Yorks ran an MO so it was £ 12 per player to the ECF or 58p per game for non-members.

During the time of the MO we simply had a 2 tier player registration. ECF members would have free registration to encourage players to join the ECF through the MO while non ECF members would be charged a fee of £6. At least I think it was £6 it might have been £8.
Players who only played 1 or 2 games were not charged a registration fee.

This season it has changed to: ECF members still have free registrations. Non ECF members will be charged £2 per game. The clubs are responsible for paying the fees.

[Mike Gunn]

The ECF Board discussed the grading of Yorkshire Leagues before the ECF AGM and afterwards (2 days ago, in fact). There has been no change of policy on this matter and I can confirm that what Sean has posted on this thread is consistent with ECF policy.

I am sorry if anybody misunderstood what Abdrew Farthing said at the Yorkshire AGM or if they think the statements on the ECF website mean something that they were not intended to. We will re-word those statements in the near future to avoid possible confusion.

[MartinCarpenter]

Fair enough

Interesting to split the numbers for the Yorkshire league down a bit.

The base estimated fee for the Yorkshire league is going to be ~2200. If that was immediately capped at 12 pounds/player it would fall considerably to ~1750. Being optimistic and assuming that all the people running over 12 pounds estimated cost were to ultimately become members (~80 people at the moment) the remaining fee excluding their membership costs would be about 800. In practice I'd be slightly surprised to see things that good.

That's on top of membership fees for a non trivial majority of the players, some of whom will be getting a lot of value for those via congresses etc but not all. Allowing for the odd default there's something like 1250 games a season involved. (Or 2500 person games.).

The thing driving the residual cost to remain so relatively high is a lot of people who are estimated to play just under 6 games a season. It'd make sense for them to be members if they might be going to be playing in other ECF graded leagues but of course that's much less likely in Yorkshire. (If you counted the Leeds league in you'd probably knock a little bit off that 800.).

Also of course very few of the 'random' reserves that get dragged in will be members.