ECF Council Meeting 12 April 2014

[MartinCarpenter]

Good to hear It'd have some real benefits for keeping the Div3N grades a lot more accurate, Yorkshire juniors etc so definitely worth contemplating.

Various practical issues of course. Not enough digital clocks for the required universal incremements for one thing, although they'd be nice to have anyway. Also getting the money for gold memberships out of Yorkshiremen I think it has maybe been mooted before but rejected for whatever reason(s).

County chess really does look like it should be.

[Roger de Coverly]

County chess really does look like it should be.

Provided you can get it accepted by organisers and players that they might have to pay a match fee of as much as £ 28, with many players being required to pay £ 15.

[David Pardoe]

As Martin Carpenter mentioned, it might be interesting to see how the Yorkshire league responded to being forced into Gold Membership. That entails a huge (in percentage terms), increase in Membership cost for a typical ECF Bronze member. Up from around £13 to £28, i.e., over double the cost.

The ECF created the cheap rate Bronze category for league and club players, and I suspect they would have a difficult job convincing many players to up the stakes to Gold.
This would undoubtedly benefit the ECF coffers, and syphon off yet more funds for that perceived dubious FIDE body, with its dodgy East European connections, which have caused such angst for the ECF, due to the personal feuds within the ECF in recent months.
Incidentally, such things were forewarned about in the clearest terms last October, when AP was seeking election as ECF President, but these went unheeded by certain ECF and other big hitters, some holding significant block/Proxy voting power.
Why would we want to add credence to this perceived shower of jokers, by channelling yet more money into there coffers.
Surely our grading system has stood up well over the years, and retains considerable credibility within our chess community.
Yes, for the 2% of British players who actively participate in International chess events, there is probably an essential need for a FIDE rating.
So, particularly for players rated over 2200, FIDE rated tournaments are a must, but otherwise we are reasonably well served by the current ECF rating system.

[Mike Truran]

Rather than presume, you should look at the accounts. These only show modest amounts being paid to FIDE mostly as rating fees and the 1 Euro per active player as the ECF's membership cost.

[Adam Raoof]

What would really help me as an event organiser, and help the ECF too, is being able to offer memberships to new players for part-years.

It is hard for me to get a player to join the ECF halfway through the year when they have to pay the full price (and in practice only get half the benefit), but it would be much easier if they could join for a year and x months, or simply join for a calendar year. Concessions are made for the British - why not extend that to all events in July and August? It would also reduce the burden on volunteers like John Philpott, because he wouldn't have to generate so many invoices for events @ £6 a head for non-members!

[Roger de Coverly]

Yes, for the 2% of British players who actively participate in International chess events, there is probably an essential need for a FIDE rating.

It depends on what you count as "International chess events", but at a rough benchmark of 12,000 players with grades and 1,000 with active ratings, that's rather nearer 10% than 2%.

By siphoning off money to FIDE, I'm assuming you mean rating fees as otherwise the excess costs of Gold membership are pocketed by the ECF. At about one Euro per player per year and about the same per player per tournament, that's not going to make FIDE very rich, compared say to the 250 Euros it would want for turning an English player Welsh or vv.

[Roger de Coverly]

Concessions are made for the British - why not extend that to all events in July and August?

You are out of date, it was withdrawn for Torquay 2013.

You may have heard rumours of a row between an ECF Director and a Senior Arbiter at Torquay. This was about the withdrawal of the scheme.

There are lots of practical drawbacks to membership schemes inflexibly charging per head per year. Their advocates won't and don't listen when these are pointed out.

[Alex McFarlane]

At the instigation of the CAA.

This followed on from a well known dispute at a FIDE rated congress where no qualified arbiters were present. The CAA was concerned that because they had the FIDE NA title players would think those running the event had gone through some form of training.

I'm not sure that the CAA instigated this though as I believe you expressed similar reservations at a Board meeting beforehand.

With regard to my answer to Nick, it was clear from the question asked (which I should also have posted) that Captains could not perform any task normally assigned to an arbiter without being licenced. Whilst 10.2 decisions might be able to be covered by a distant arbiter things like flag fall, illegal moves and reconstruction would need to be carried out only by the players concerned with no outside assistance.
A captain calling flag fall in one match could negate the whole event from being FIDE rated especially if a player losing rating points, even in another team, reported the matter to FIDE.

On another point I believe that if you play in the British this year you can get an 'extended' membership. I was told this very recently.

[Adam Raoof]

Concessions are made for the British - why not extend that to all events in July and August?

You are out of date, it was withdrawn for Torquay 2013.

You may have heard rumours of a row between an ECF Director and a Senior Arbiter at Torquay. This was about the withdrawal of the scheme.

There are lots of practical drawbacks to membership schemes inflexibly charging per head per year. Their advocates won't and don't listen when these are pointed out.

I see - perhaps the message gets confused if someone who is anti-membership is the one pointing the drawbacks out!?

Obviously I am pro-membership, but I think if we were more flexible we could sell more memberships, and earlier. I don't want to collect £6.00 and pass it on to the ECF. I want non-members to join. Once they join the ECF gets their details and can use those to market ECF events.

At the moment the scheme is wedded to the dates of the league season, which makes no sense to many new players who just play in tournaments, and can start at any time of the year. It makes more sense to start a membership on the birthday of a player, and charge them pro-rata for the rest of the year that they owe. That way the ECF can send them a birthday card every year! It could also reduce the administrative burden, but this should all be automated by now.

[Mick Norris]

What would really help me as an event organiser, and help the ECF too, is being able to offer memberships to new players for part-years.

I think the problem is that bronze membership is backdated to 1 September, which means retrospectively that league/county games played earlier in the season become free of game fee

This contrasts with silver, which applies only from the day you get it and is not backdated

I'm not saying that this is wrong, but it does mitigate against what you suggest

[Matthew Turner]

Adam is correct, the membership scheme has been a financial success, but it really hasn't changed anything within the ECF. A membership scheme offers the opportunity for the ECF to have a closer relationship with members, be it marketing events, selling chess products or keeping members up to date on news. It is possible to send members a birthday card each year - I know, because I get one from the Canadian Chess Federation!
The ECF isn't interested in any of these things, so the result of the membership scheme is simply the ECF having more money to waste on non chess related activities.

[Roger de Coverly]

Adam is correct, the membership scheme has been a financial success, but it really hasn't changed anything within the ECF.

There's been no increase in the number of players, so if the ECF is making more money, it's because it has increased the price of chess to ordinary club players. That was the effect of the orginal NMS as well, despite the attempts of its promoters to claim it was cheaper.

It's not a necessity for a membership scheme to have per head charging, the EBU finances itself according to the number of sessions of Bridge played, so that obsessives who play several times a week pay more than those who just play once a month.

[David Sedgwick]

At the instigation of the CAA.

This followed on from a well known dispute at a FIDE rated congress where no qualified arbiters were present. The CAA was concerned that because they had the FIDE NA title players would think those running the event had gone through some form of training.

I'm not sure that the CAA instigated this though as I believe you expressed similar reservations at a Board meeting beforehand.

I feel that I need to clarify and comment on one point and comment on another.

The reservations expressed by Sean were not at a Board meeting, but when he and I were discussing the implementation of the scheme. (He was then the ECF Acting Director of International Chess.) I subsequently referred to this in my response to representations from the CAA.

We now have a viable scheme which I hope meets concerns expressed and, on a personal note, will avoid me having to spend over £100 of my own money attending the CAA AGM to defend the ECF approach.

On the dispute, I for one have only heard one version of events, namely that of the aggrieved player. It's easy to jump to the conclusion that the controller made an error and did so because he was unqualified. I would suggest that a degree of caution may be appropriate.

[Alex Holowczak]

County chess really does look like it should be.

Adam Raoof put the idea of FIDE rating the County Championship Final Stages to Council one year. To say that there was no enthusiasm for it would be an understatement.

[Adam Raoof]

What would really help me as an event organiser, and help the ECF too, is being able to offer memberships to new players for part-years.

I think the problem is that bronze membership is backdated to 1 September, which means retrospectively that league/county games played earlier in the season become free of game fee

This contrasts with silver, which applies only from the day you get it and is not backdated

I'm not saying that this is wrong, but it does mitigate against what you suggest

I understand. If I represented Silver members I would not be too happy with this. Do you have any suggestions about how we could solve this problem?

Or, look at this another way. I think that the problem may be linked to grading. I've never understood why I have to wait (a year in some cases) to get my league games graded. Now I have graded thousands of games in various tournaments I have a better understanding of the workload, and what can be done to automate it. If grading data were uploaded every month it would probably mean that Bronze memberships need no longer be 'backdated', and the membership requirements could apply to the date when the games are sent for grading. If you are a member, then no game fee. That way you can sell pro-rata Bronze memberships as well.