Membership Services

[Andrew Zigmond]

I think the ECF should post or email the magazine directly to its members.

It already does, or at least it does if you used to receive a postal copy and gave the ECF your email address.

Scrapping of the paper and posted edition of ChessMoves was one of the money saving measures introduced after the loss of the DCMS Grant. It was never obvious why ChessMoves was retained in the first place, given that it mostly consists of material that had already appeared and was still available on the website.

But it's not reaching newer members and that's my point.

Surely if the ECF wants to reboot their in house publication now is the time to do it. What I envisage isn't going to give Malcolm Pein any sleepless nights in terms of content but could be a very useful marketing tool for the ECF. And, to the best of my knowledge, junior players do not have a dedicated chess publication - there must be an opportunity here.

[Roger de Coverly]

And, to the best of my knowledge, junior players do not have a dedicated chess publication - there must be an opportunity here.

On this very site you will find
http://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewforum.php?f=26

The preparation of this magazine was scrapped as part of the money saving measures after the loss of the DCMS Grant.

[Roger de Coverly]

What I envisage isn't going to give Malcolm Pein any sleepless nights in terms of content but could be a very useful marketing tool for the ECF

I'm not sure I really see this. If it isn't a reason to join the ECF to get hold of copies, a publication only visible to ECF members doesn't help the ECF gain new members.

If the ECF are insisting that everyone be a member of the ECF as a condition of playing graded chess, then offering incentives to members is just a waste as it's a take it or leave it proposition anyway. If you want to promote the playing of chess, just remove the membership requirement.

[Andrew Zigmond]

What I envisage isn't going to give Malcolm Pein any sleepless nights in terms of content but could be a very useful marketing tool for the ECF

I'm not sure I really see this. If it isn't a reason to join the ECF to get hold of copies, a publication only visible to ECF members doesn't help the ECF gain new members.

If the ECF are insisting that everyone be a member of the ECF as a condition of playing graded chess, then offering incentives to members is just a waste as it's a take it or leave it proposition anyway. If you want to promote the playing of chess, just remove the membership requirement.

I phrased this a bit vaguely. It's not a marketing tool for the ECF, it's a marketing tool the ECF can offer to other companies. An ECF members magazine would probably have the highest readership of any chess publication in the country.

Offering incentives to members is hardly a waste. If ECF membership is `take it or leave it` then we should be glad that they're trying to sweeten the pill.

[Graham Borrowdale]

John Upham wrote:
There are many ECF members and (BCM subscribers for that matter) who do not and will not access the Interweb thingy and perhaps only receive email thingies. Reception of printed matter is their main means of attempting to keep in touch. I kid you not...

John, if you continue in that vein you will persuade me to cancel my BCM subscription. I kid you not...

[John McKenna]

"If I see one more shirttail flapping...woe betide the sailor;... the OOD; and... the morale officer. I KID YOU NOT."
(Humphry Bogart as Capt. Queeg in The Caine Mutiny, 1954)
In 1956 Bogart drew a simul game with Reshevsky. It is rumoured that Reshevsky was put off by watching the film the night before.

[Malcolm Peacock]

I would like the ECF to provide a standardised league management website template. This would compute league and knock out results and compile a league table. It would be able to provide team and player results for viewing and would automatically submit to the ECF for grading.

....... John Upham has such a template and many leagues use it. My point is that this should come from the ECF as it would simplify their own job and would require less in the way of volunteers to submit tedious grading updates with old fashioned methods.

Rather than re-invent the wheel here, there are others besides John Upham's template, as for example there is Oxford Fusion, run by Roger Thetford. I know he is prepared to re-develop his facilities that generate Grading Reports for the ECF which currently are spreadsheet based, so that it generates the pukka text files formatted for input to the ECF's system, as is done with Tournament Director and can be tweaked with Swiss Master.

We use Oxford Fusion to administer the results, league tables etc... for the Leamington League. Roger has built lots of features, including more recently identifying those players who are ECF Direct Members. There is a cost, which is largely the ISP costs associated with running a site of this nature. Why not get the ECF to stump up the cost for running a site for all League and League style events etc.... (as distinct from Congresses) whilst retaining John, Roger, or whoever else is in the field as the Developer.

We've all invented similar wheels. Being a grader, ECF grading was the first thing I did, and I recently added a report of games played by none-members to my system as well: http://www.popmalc.org.uk/sc/?q=clancs (Blackpool, Central Lancs, and Somerset Leagues). But the hosting costs are fairly trivial compared to the amount of time we will all have put in to develop the software. If there were a central system it would not need to generate a grading file at all - the grading system could take the data directly from it. It might have problems coping with all the local variations in league rules though.

There is also duplication of effort in the IT related to online congress entry, checking gradings/grading codes, ECF membership, combining postal entries with online, linking to Tournament Director. If the ECF had a system to handle online entries on behalf of a congress, there might be savings to be made with a larger number of paypal transactions.

[Roger de Coverly]

If the ECF had a system to handle online entries on behalf of a congress, there might be savings to be made with a larger number of paypal transactions.

UK tax rules make that a dangerous area to explore. The ECF has enough turnover to be required to register for and pay VAT, whilst most tournaments are below the threshold. As it stands, tournaments can demonstrate independence of the ECF without difficulty, less so if the ECF is or appears to be collecting money on their behalf.

[Andrew Zigmond]

Not so much a membership service but let's not forget that before all the controversies CJ de Mooi and Nigel Short took the ECF `on the road` by giving simuls up and down the country and promoting the game and the federation. There's no reason why the ECF shouldn't seek to repeat that. If nothing else it would allow ECF officials to gain the views of a much wider audience - ultimately this forum is dominated by a small hardcore and isn't overly representative of the chess community at large.

[Jonathan Bryant]

.... let's not forget that before all the controversies CJ de Mooi and Nigel Short took the ECF `on the road` by giving simuls up and down the country ....

Your memory is not serving you well here Andrew.


For a start the simul tours were nothing to do with the ECF - as our onetime President made clear at the time.

Neither was it "before" controversies. De Mooi's repeated promise to produce "full" accounts, and repeated failure to deliver anything remotely resembling accounts, full or otherwise, were a fairly clear warning of the financial shambles that would later surround the Sheffield Championships. It was also a fairly clear demonstration of somebody not always considering his word to be his bond/feeling an obligation to act in a straightforward manner.


That said, I do agree that a simul tour of a high profile (or even a low profile) GM is a good thing and I'm sure it was enjoyed by all who took part. No doubt it would be again.

[Neill Cooper]

I think a monthly email to all ECF members would be good. It should be brief (any reports could be hyperlinked to the ECF website) and possibly contain some material not published on the website. One thing to include in the first email would be a version of Sean's original post here, as you might get a wide range of responses.

The benefits of junior membership are described at http://www.englishchess.org.uk/?page_id=21054

[Paolo Casaschi]

I think a monthly email to all ECF members would be good.

Actually, I vote for the opposite: place up to date information on the ECF website, so if I want to read about English chess I go there as I please, but please continue providing the good service of not pestering members with unwanted emails.

[Andrew Zigmond]

I think a monthly email to all ECF members would be good.

Actually, I vote for the opposite: place up to date information on the ECF website, so if I want to read about English chess I go there as I please, but please continue providing the good service of not pestering members with unwanted emails.

Or when people join or renew their ECF membership have a box for people to tick if they don't want to receive regular updates by email.

And in reply to Jonathan Bryant's post above, fair enough - I wasn't as tuned to ECF matters then.

[Neill Cooper]

I think a monthly email to all ECF members would be good.

Actually, I vote for the opposite: place up to date information on the ECF website, so if I want to read about English chess I go there as I please, but please continue providing the good service of not pestering members with unwanted emails.

The email service would be optional. There should be an unsubscribe button on the emails and,as Andrew says, on the registration form (or an 'opt in' button there).

[Paul Buswell]

I think a monthly email to all ECF members would be good. It should be brief (any reports could be hyperlinked to the ECF website) and possibly contain some material not published on the website. One thing to include in the first email would be a version of Sean's original post here, as you might get a wide range of responses.

The benefits of junior membership are described at http://www.englishchess.org.uk/?page_id=21054

Yes, I agree: simple bullet points of major news/interest with links, and an easy unsubscribe option.

PB