CEO Report

[Dragoljub Sudar]

Retaining the Yorkshire grading system does give them an excuse not to have their games ECF graded, so get rid of that excuse and then see what happens. I imagine quite a few of the players will be unhappy if they don't get their games graded.

What % of players in those leagues also play in Yorkshire ECF graded events? What % of them have become or are likely to become ECF members? Surely many of those would like to see all the games they play counting towards their national grade?

Not sure I understand Neil's last point. Notts league fees are reduced from £50 to £12 per team as we no longer have to pay the game fee. So Sheffield's league fees don't have to rise from £8. It would still be up to each player whether they get ECF membership or pay £2 per game, just as it is for every Notts player, as ECF membership isn't compulsory to play in the Notts league or for the county at the MCCU stage. By becoming an MO we're merely offering our clubs a facility to submit their membership requests via the county rather than directly.

[Roger de Coverly]

The main thing I took from the CEO report is just how few responses there were to the consultation papers.

It wasn't exactly easy to consult. If comments had been enabled on the ECF site, it would have been possible to see what others were saying. But no-one was very interested, even posting the topics here failed to get much response, not even from ECF directors seeking to explain their thinking.

Personally I think that trying to split the ECF into two parallel bodies is not going to work because of the international dimension. FIDE works on the basis of one territory, one Federation, so one of the bodies has to rank above the other. Because international chess involves professional chess, I would have thought the professional body has to be the dominant one for international activities. You have to fit who is a member of what at both the individual and organisation level around that.

[Roger de Coverly]

Could the ECF not just stop grading the games of anyone who appears on the chessnuts site?

That's what it will be doing in effect. Only games played in events which sign up to £ 2 per game if a league, or £ 6 per head if a Congress will be graded.

[Roger de Coverly]

I meant in any competition. Either you play in renegade events or ECF graded ones, but not both

Which is what ETTA (table tennis) and the AICF (Indian chess) will do to you.

[Roger de Coverly]

[Just about any other organisation that considers itself a governing body too.

Which is why governing bodies can become a menace to the sport, game or pastime that they purport to promote. By insisting on monopolies to protect their revenue streams, they end up trying to strangle what they are supposedly trying to develop.

[Neil Graham]

Retaining the Yorkshire grading system does give them an excuse not to have their games ECF graded, so get rid of that excuse and then see what happens. I imagine quite a few of the players will be unhappy if they don't get their games graded.

What % of players in those leagues also play in Yorkshire ECF graded events? What % of them have become or are likely to become ECF members? Surely many of those would like to see all the games they play counting towards their national grade?

Not sure I understand Neil's last point. Notts league fees are reduced from £50 to £12 per team as we no longer have to pay the game fee. So Sheffield's league fees don't have to rise from £8. It would still be up to each player whether they get ECF membership or pay £2 per game, just as it is for every Notts player, as ECF membership isn't compulsory to play in the Notts league or for the county at the MCCU stage. By becoming an MO we're merely offering our clubs a facility to submit their membership requests via the county rather than directly.

Notts have signed up for a MO so consequently all games will be graded (either by membership or by £2) - Sheffield have no such scheme in place. They do not contribute to the ECF and I presume will continue not to contribute. At an Ashfield GM yesterday we resolved to charge a membership for this year of £14 or £26 if ECF Bronze membership required. Most of our members are already Silver/Gold members so won't require bronze membership.

[Roger de Coverly]

Notts have signed up for a MO so consequently all games will be graded (either by membership or by £2) - Sheffield have no such scheme in place.

Sheffield would need to join the ECF, but don't need to become a framework organisation. Either way they would expect their players to pay at least £ 12 to the ECF or Sheffield would have to stump up £ 2 per head per game. Alternatively they could presumably ask the Yorkshire county association to handle it for them. The only difference would be that the £2 bill initially went to Yorkshire.

[John Upham]

Which is what ETTA (table tennis) will do to you.

What do you mean by this?

The ETTA requires players to be licensed to play.


For example, see http://www.tabletennis365.com/SBL/clubs/details/235 and you will see players who are not permitted to play as they have yet to pay their ETTA membership fee.

This is enforced at all levels from British League to local leagues and rightly so.

[Alex Holowczak]

[Just about any other organisation that considers itself a governing body too.

Which is why governing bodies can become a menace to the sport, game or pastime that they purport to promote. By insisting on monopolies to protect their revenue streams, they end up trying to strangle what they are supposedly trying to develop.

Maybe they do end up trying to strangle what they are trying to develop. The fact of the matter is, they don't.

In cricket, when the Pakistanis were banned for their misdemeanours, how much grassroots cricket was effected by this? None of it was. There was nothing at all stopping the next generation from developing their talents.

By maintaining its monopoly, something like the ICC is able to demonstrate that young cricketers can aspire to be professional, and earn lots of money playing cricket. This is what helps a sport develop: A young player seeing that he can earn a living playing the game he loves. A chess example; we've seen David Howell go to University last year; presumably realising the former leads to financial security, but the latter is something he really wants to do. The same sort of thing is true of Luke McShane.

Chess in England isn't developing because young players realise that they aren't going to make a living out of chess, so don't bother trying, and relegate it to "hobby" status. Reasons for its non-development will not be the membership scheme, or whether you put additional time on after move n or when a flag falls.

Things like the ICC realise that banning players for certain reasons is not going to harm the development of their game, so long as the top of the sport remains professional.

[Roger de Coverly]

What do you mean by this?

The ETTA requires players to be licensed to play.

From http://etta.co.uk/our-sport/our-sport-o ... ship-faqs/
I read

Question 23: My league is not affiliated and I cannot play anywhere else as no affiliated
league is nearby. Can I become a member?

In an ideal world your league would affiliate and its members join the ETTA so that you can all enjoy the benefits of membership. However if your league did not choose to affiliate you would be in an awkward position as ETTA rules do not allow Competitive Play between affiliated and nonaffiliated players.

So if applied to chess, you could play either in the Sheffield league (or the other local Yorkshire leagues) or the main Yorkshire League, but not both.

Equally you would have a closed shop in the local chess leagues, which I rather fear is where the ECF would like to go next.

[Roger de Coverly]

Chess in England isn't developing because young players realise that they aren't going to make a living out of chess, so don't bother trying, and relegate it to "hobby" status.

They have to start playing in the first place. You may recall the revolt by the junior organisers against the notion that membership should be required to take part in a first event. Chess in England expanded much faster in the early 1970s than in most other countries and the resulting increase in Congress prize funds enabled Tony Miles and other contemporaries to contemplate being professionals. Marginally earlier generations such as Keene and Hartston could only have done it by combining playing with writing. Whilst the early 1970s BCF supposedly required players to be "registered" for league and county chess, it was pretty ineffectual and didn't act to prevent vast numbers of new players entering Congresses. By contrast in the USA, you had to join the USCF and buy your own equipment, so take up was slower.

There are successful games and pastimes that thrive without an obvious governing body. Isn't poker one of them?

[Alex Holowczak]

There are successful games and pastimes that thrive without an obvious governing body. Isn't poker one of them?

No: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internatio ... n_of_Poker

[Roger de Coverly]

No: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internatio ... n_of_Poker

Set up in 2009. Doesn't much of poker's growth date from before that? Have they introduced membership schemes yet to establish a monopoly position?

[Alex Holowczak]

No: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internatio ... n_of_Poker

Set up in 2009. Doesn't much of poker's growth date from before that? Have they introduced membership schemes yet to establish a monopoly position?

It was set up in 2009 as a federation, similar to FIDE. The national organisations listed there presumably pre-date the existence of IFP. (In the same way, the Home Nations' FAs pre-dated the existence of FIFA by about 40 years.)

I went to its website: http://www.pokerfed.org/

Where I saw this, dated 17th September, 2012: http://www.pokerfed.org/news/ifp-launch ... -programme

"IFP Launches Global Membership Programme"

The thrust of it seems to be that "Members will eventually achieve international and national rankings; qualify for their national team and the finals of the IFP’s World Championship of Poker, ‘The Table.’"

So yes, it looks like they're in the process of introducing a membership system.

[IanDavis]

To become part of the IMSA you need to have a governing body. To join it, as a full member, you have to satisfy WADA's conditions.