Outcome of membership scheme

Debate directly related to English Chess Federation matters.
Roger de Coverly
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Re: Outcome of membership scheme

Post by Roger de Coverly » Thu Sep 06, 2012 6:06 pm

Mark Crowther on his twitter feed turns his attention to domestic issues.

Here's the link https://twitter.com/MarkTWIC, but the specific points are these:-
Turns out I might not have had to join the ECF for Yorkshire and Bradford league.There might have been some sort of last minute disagreement
I will be very cross if I don't get my Bradford League games nationally rated now I've paid for it. There is some doubt over Yorkshire too
The position of a while back was that the Yorkshire Chess Association would retain its ECF membership but the Bradford league wouldn't be joining. The consequence was that to play in Yorkshire's county league, players would need to be ECF members unless the County Association paid £ 2 per head per game to the ECF at the end of the season. No games in the Bradford league would be nationally graded whether played by ECF members or not.

Andrew Bak
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Re: Outcome of membership scheme

Post by Andrew Bak » Thu Sep 06, 2012 6:58 pm

Disclaimer: I wasn't there at the Yorkshire AGM

Andrew Farthing was asked specifically at the Yorkshire AGM whether games between ECF members played in the Bradford League (or other leagues that don't send their games for ECF grading) would be graded by the ECF as is currently the case.

Andrew said that there were no plans to change this position.

On this basis, Yorkshire agreed to sign the Framework Agreement - but as I understand it the situation has changed along the lines that Mark and Roger have stated.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: Outcome of membership scheme

Post by Roger de Coverly » Thu Sep 06, 2012 7:00 pm

Here's the latest from Mark
ECF have already reneged on what was presented to the YCA AGM... YCA EGM is in the works to either cave in .or to tell them to get stuffed"
I thought we knew months ago that the statement made by the CEO to the Yorkshire AGM that Bradford and other leagues could continue to be graded on a members only basis was incorrect. Had it been so, every county association could potentially have split its activities to hive off leagues to separate bodies and make ECF individual membership optional. Even the lesser approach of leaving independent leagues with optional membership could have been adopted.

Yorkshire only just seem to have noticed.

For the record, the 2011-12 position was that if you played in the main Yorkshire league, your games would be graded because the YCA was an ECF member and participated in the Game Fee scheme. For that matter, nearly all the local Congresses were ECF members. If you played in an independent local league, other than Leeds, your games would be graded only if one of two conditions was satisfied
(a) your opponent had to be an ECF member, either directly or through an MO probably Yorkshire's
or
(b) you were a member yourself either directly or through an MO.

If you look at the ECF grading site, results for Bradford and other similar leagues are in italics.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: Outcome of membership scheme

Post by Roger de Coverly » Thu Sep 06, 2012 7:11 pm

Andrew Bak wrote: Andrew Farthing was asked specifically at the Yorkshire AGM whether games between ECF members played in the Bradford League (or other leagues that don't send their games for ECF grading) would be graded by the ECF as is currently the case.

Andrew said that there were no plans to change this position.

On this basis, Yorkshire agreed to sign the Framework Agreement - but as I understand it the situation has changed along the lines that Mark and Roger have stated.
The point was that local (ie home counties) County Associations were debating whether to sign Framework agreements. No-one could see the point as it just seemed to be duplicating the ECF's membership sign up and made running early season Congresses more difficult. If however it could have enabled local independent leagues to be run on the basis of optional membership, there might have been some mileage. This was ruled out and the wording of the Framework agreement modified to clarify this.



The Forum knew about this almost immediately.

Andrew Bak
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Re: Outcome of membership scheme

Post by Andrew Bak » Thu Sep 06, 2012 7:24 pm

Perhaps this ought to go into the "Time Changer..." thread but I'll state it here.

I think that I am in a minority in Yorkshire but I wish that a Yorkshire grade did not exist as it just causes confusion and fallings out that are completely unnecessary - then people couldn't harp on and say "But what do I get from the ECF if I join?" that I hear all the time.

Having said that, Chessnuts is a superb and comprehensive grading system and I would love to see it implemented by the ECF, although I'm not sure whether it would work on a national scale.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: Outcome of membership scheme

Post by Roger de Coverly » Thu Sep 06, 2012 8:12 pm

Andrew Bak wrote:Disclaimer: I wasn't there at the Yorkshire AGM

Andrew Farthing was asked specifically at the Yorkshire AGM whether games between ECF members played in the Bradford League (or other leagues that don't send their games for ECF grading) would be graded by the ECF as is currently the case.

Andrew said that there were no plans to change this position.

On this basis, Yorkshire agreed to sign the Framework Agreement - but as I understand it the situation has changed along the lines that Mark and Roger have stated.
It's buried in a monster thread, but the CEO's statement was queried almost as soon as it was revealed what had been said.

http://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.php ... &start=562

There's also the membership FAQ
http://www.englishchess.org.uk/?page_id=18771
which says
7) The reference to “non-registered events” has been removed and with it the facility for the results of non-registered events to be submitted for processing and the results of ECF members only to be included in the grading calculation.

Sean Hewitt
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Re: Outcome of membership scheme

Post by Sean Hewitt » Mon Sep 10, 2012 7:46 pm

Sean Hewitt wrote:It's 4 weeks to go to the Leicester (H.E. Atkins Memorial) Congress and I thought it was worth looking at the effect of the big bad membership scheme on entries.

We have 22 entries at the moment, which is up from 17 at the same time last year. All of the entrants have the correct level of membership (silver) for non FIDE rated sections, (gold) for the FIDE rated open.

The proof of the pudding will be had in 4 weeks time of course, but it seems to have caused us no issues thus far.
3 weeks to go. 43 entries, up from 38 last year. This new fangled membership scheme is a disaster :lol: {Disclaimer for the humorously challenged - this is also a joke}

Paul McKeown
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Re: Outcome of membership scheme

Post by Paul McKeown » Mon Sep 10, 2012 8:24 pm

Gordon Bennett. :roll:

Can't we just wait for the outcome?

This is just querulous repetition.

Roger why not start your own blog? Everyone else here is just bored of this.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: Outcome of membership scheme

Post by Roger de Coverly » Mon Sep 10, 2012 8:29 pm

Sean Hewitt wrote: This new fangled membership scheme is a disaster
Congress organisers, other than rapid-play ones, were let off lightly under the new scheme. It's still possible to enter a Congress and pay only £ 6 more than an ECF member. That's in the context of a £ 25 entry fee. Congresses attracting numbers of Welsh, Scottish and Yorkshire players have already complained about having to add £ 2 to £ 3 to the entry fee for these players. A hard line approach to membership would require all these chess tourists to pay £25 to £ 30 to the ECF in addition to the same amount to the Congress organiser.

I suppose the other statistic is to ask how many entrants have said that "membership is in the post", in other words they are entering on the basis of paying the ECF through a framework organisation. For that matter, is there a list of signed up framework organisations?

The other key point is how many new players are attracted to chess or back to chess by the Congress. The answer is probably zero, but it probably was last year as well.

Sean Hewitt
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Re: Outcome of membership scheme

Post by Sean Hewitt » Mon Sep 10, 2012 10:33 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote:I suppose the other statistic is to ask how many entrants have said that "membership is in the post", in other words they are entering on the basis of paying the ECF through a framework organisation.
For Leicester (and High Wycombe for that matter), the answer is none. I've had one player pay the £6 pay to play fee. Everyone else said they were a member, quoted their ECF membership number, and are on the ECF membership list.

Matt Harrison
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Re: Outcome of membership scheme

Post by Matt Harrison » Thu Sep 13, 2012 5:24 pm

One outcome is that the introduction of the membership scheme means that I have joined the ECF. I only play the odd league game (often against D. Fault), but the online membership system made it easy to join when I was signing my son up for Gold membership.

Sean Hewitt
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Re: Outcome of membership scheme

Post by Sean Hewitt » Thu Sep 13, 2012 8:09 pm

Matt Harrison wrote:One outcome is that the introduction of the membership scheme means that I have joined the ECF. I only play the odd league game (often against D. Fault), but the online membership system made it easy to join when I was signing my son up for Gold membership.
Heretic :D

Roger de Coverly
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Re: Outcome of membership scheme

Post by Roger de Coverly » Fri Sep 21, 2012 12:14 pm

Yorkshire have elected not to sign a Framework Agreement.
http://yorkshirechess.org/who-keres/

They are in agreement with those in the South of England who would endorse:-
Now players can get membership via the ECF web-site or office as cheap or cheaper than we could offer under the Framework Agreement.
and
The Framework Agreement would require us to undertake considerable administrative and accounting work.

John Philpott

Re: Outcome of membership scheme

Post by John Philpott » Fri Sep 21, 2012 12:30 pm

The number of signed framework agreements is now up to 15. A list is being maintained on the ECF website at http://www.englishchess.org.uk/?page_id=21115

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Christopher Kreuzer
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Re: Outcome of membership scheme

Post by Christopher Kreuzer » Fri Sep 21, 2012 12:44 pm

John Philpott wrote:The number of signed framework agreements is now up to 15. A list is being maintained on the ECF website at http://www.englishchess.org.uk/?page_id=21115
Thanks. The bit from Roger about "South" seems not strictly accurate, as Surrey County Chess Association and Thames Valley Chess League are both "South". But for proper context, how many organisations are eligible to sign framework agreements, and how many would the ECF be expecting to sign up? All? A certain percentage? As many as want to? 15 out of 20 sounds good, 15 out of 100 less so.

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