ENG FIDE Ratings must be ECF Members

[IM Jack Rudd]

Is this a message that you should avoid, if possible, becoming ENG on the FIDE list in the first place?

Maybe. You'll make the lives of Sean Hewitt and Scott Freeman much easier if you do.

[Mark Howitt]

Leaving aside the "nonsense" I just have one question. If a player leaves the game for several years without being a member of the ECF, and gets "deregistered" as a result, and then returns subsequently, will they have to pay one year's membership to "reactivate" their rating or will they have to backdate several years' worth of 'unpaid' membership fees?

A good question. There is active (playing in FIDE rated events), deregistered (as a result of non-membership), and inactive (as a result of non-activity). If they are inactive there is no issue to resolve.

If they are an active player then they must be an ECF member. If we check membership once a year (say June / July, so as not to disrupt the 4NCL registration process), and discover that a player has been active that year but not been a member we'll expect them to join, and to make up the gaps in their membership. If they don't join, they become deregistered. This makes their FIDE rating inactive and has consequences, but preserves their rating history.

We'll also be contacting the organisers and reminding them of their duty to ensure that all ENG players are current members when they enter tournaments, but to be fair events make it quite clear that you have to be a member of the ECF to play if you are ENG. However I feel that the responsibility has to ultimately lie with the individual to ensure they keep their membership current. The action we are taking does encourage that responsibility.

In the future if someone becomes deregistered (active, but not a member) and wants to be reregistered, then all they have to do is (re)join the ECF. In that circumstance it seems reasonable that if someone has been active, does not pay their membership and becomes deregistered as a result, we would expect them to pay the outstanding membership, and become a current member, but not to pay the 'backdated' fees (the intervening time that has elapsed between deregistration and rejoining the ECF) - as there will be none to pay.

Currently we have a special situation, where there are a number of players who are not members but who have been active in FIDE rated events. We will not be expecting them to pay backdated memberships, but we do expect them to join the ECF by July 1st.

If you are not a member of the ECF and want to maintain your active FIDE rating, please ring the ECF Office (Tel: 01424 775222 ) and join before the end of June. Support the ECF, and help us develop chess in England for everyone's benefit.

I hope you get some commission from making every man woman and child pay this tax, otherwise you'd be very unpopular for no reward.

Afraid you won't get any from me though. If a significant number of FIDE rated English players aren't ECF members (and I thought years ago.... that they had to be anyway?) then how do you expect to attract newcomers to the game?

[Sean Hewitt]

If a significant number of FIDE rated English players aren't ECF members (and I thought years ago.... that they had to be anyway?) then how do you expect to attract newcomers to the game?

You ask them to join. One chap entered Gatwick but was not a member of the ECF. We emailed him and he said that he didn't know, but that he would join. When he arrived we gave him a membership form which he merrily signed. He even joined (and paid) for three years instead of one.

[Richard Bates]

If a significant number of FIDE rated English players aren't ECF members (and I thought years ago.... that they had to be anyway?) then how do you expect to attract newcomers to the game?

You ask them to join. One chap entered Gatwick but was not a member of the ECF. We emailed him and he said that he didn't know, but that he would join. When he arrived we gave him a membership form which he merrily signed. He even joined (and paid) for three years instead of one.

Does paying up for years in advance guarantee your membership even if there's a substantial hike in rates...?

[Stewart Reuben]

Richard >Does paying up for years in advance guarantee your membership even if there's a substantial hike in rates...? <

In case that question was serious, Sean answred it immediately above. Of course paying a 3 year membership is significantly cheaper than a 1 year one and guarantees no increase for 3 years. That is why life membership is owe very rare in any organisation.
But your question has jogged my brain seriously. I think I am right, we offer no incentive to people like Sean, or organisations, who get others to pay up for 'normal' membership. Could this be made to work without making things too complicated?
Stewart Reuben

[Mark Howitt]

Some devoted (current) chess players will pay... but in terms of promoting chess in England that's preaching to the converted. Well, if by preaching you mean getting money out of them. What happened to your tag line, "down with the chess prevention tax"? Paying a big game fee is bad enough, but if you're making everyone pay a membership, (where the benefits to them individually are not clear), you'll just lose more players.

[Mike Truran]

Stewart, there has never been any incentive offered by the ECF to organisations like the 4NCL or e2e4 to enforce ECF membership. Hence some of the annoyance over the years at being expected to act like unpaid tax collectors or enforcers.

[Roger de Coverly]

But your question has jogged my brain seriously. I think I am right, we offer no incentive to people like Sean, or organisations, who get others to pay up for 'normal' membership. Could this be made to work without making things too complicated?

Twenty years ago, perhaps a bit less, the Direct Member scheme offered commissions. When you signed up, you could nominate a club, county or probably even Congress to receive the commission. The problem is that inevitably, the Office had to write cheques for very small amounts and club treasurers had to cash them. Depending on the rules of the club, hand back the rebate to the player as well.

It was scrapped, not least in the interests of saving office time.

[Stewart Reuben]

Mark Howitt > "down with the chess prevention tax"?<
That was Sean's tagline, not mine.
Mine has always been: 'Value for money'. There is absoluely nothing wrong with charging money and it does not prevent chess taking place. For a non-profit organisation, like the ECF, it would make no sense not to give value for money.
To claim that the ECF has done badly by players or organizers in the 4NCL, e2e4, Hastings, Coulsdon, Gibraltar, the British, Paignton, etc. is a view that is hard to sustain. After all, they are successful. e2e4 came into existence precisely because Sean could see the advantages of the taxation system from the viewpoint of orgnizing ainternationally rated chess. Also the ECF arranged for a small subsidy for the events from FIDE.
So, if we go for universal membership, there should be some type of commission. And it shouldn't be so small that the sums returned would be ridiculously low and ridiculously costly to administer. Probably it shouldn't be money back, but to reduce future fees.

Stewart Reuben

[Mark Howitt]

Dam I might have stuck an affiliate link up (if I thought the package was value for money) until that last sentence . If you did that you'd only get ECF affiliates.

[Maxim Devereaux]

Maxim Devereux is a good example. Over his chess career he has received benefit. Some years more than others. Everybody who has a FIDE Rating has benefited from ECF Officers who have given their time, usually with no recompense. It is the wish of some of us that those English players should make a contribution.

Harry Lamb is a special case. This is not because of the above nonsense, but because he has contributed over the years valuably to English chess.

Membership of the national body for chess shouldn’t just be about that. It shouldn’t just be about “what does the ECF do for me?” but also “what can I do for the ECF?”

Stewart - it's totally ludicrous to suggest, as your second quote seems to, that this new "rule" will be flexibly enforced, based on the perceived contribution or otherwise of a player to "English chess" in the past. Legally speaking, I can't imagine this being defensible.

Since all these comments seem in some way relevant to or directed at me, I guess I should point out a few things.

I ran a one-off (though it was not planned to be such, but circumstances dictated it) closed GM norm (although I incorrectly described it a while back as an IM tournament - it did in fact allow the possibility to make GM norms) tournament in 2006, which I funded via my company to the tune of £5000.

What encouragement or benefit did I receive from the ECF for this venture to give English players opportunities they might otherwise not get? Waived FIDE or ECF fees? Help finding a qualified arbiter available to run it? Other assistance? Nope. Zero, zip, nada, nil, nothing : that's correct.

Further, maybe a few months afterwards, I received a letter from one of the directors of the ECF (I forget whom now, and am loath to specify a name without being certain) congratulating me on my tournament, and asking whether I would now like to contribute to sponsorship of the England team! Is it any wonder that I have a view of the ECF as largely parasitic?

To my recollection, even money it was suggested I and one or two others would receive from the ECF as a contribution to our costs when we went to the 2009 European Championship in Montenegro ultimately failed to materialise, but I did not pursue it, given the well-advertised shaky financial position of the organisation at that time.

Yet this isn't the first such instance in my experience of money not appearing. Dragging up ancient history (though people will have trouble verifying it now - there used to be a web page that listed it, but I think it has long since disappeared) in a long past Grand Prix season (I think it was 1999-2000) I won the Western regional award, to the tune of £100, but the ECF never attempted to contact me or pay me this money, and I was not bothered enough about it to ever try and get it off them.

Even if the membership fees I have paid over the years (I was for many years a Full Member, only downgrading last year) do not cover the rather nebulous benefits I have received, I still feel I have a strong claim to be a net contributor to the ECF and English chess, rather than an ungrateful and whinging beneficiary of their supposed largesse.

While circumstance forces me to be a member at the present time, I feel I can still justifiably be outraged by this high-handed "one size fits all, get in line or we'll kick you out" approach, whether I comply with it or otherwise.

[Mick Norris]

That's the second time that quote has been used as if the words were mine - I was actually quoting from a Notts document about the MO

The debate continues to be along the lines of "the ECF/BCF used to be crap, so we won't fund the ECF now" - I agree with the former, and note with interest that many people have been involved a long time and failed to do anything about it (was it really impossible or did you just not try hard enough?)

The simple position is that the ECF is no longer crap, and has some quality people involved with it (Andrew Farthing, Loz Cooper, CJ, Adam Raoof to name but 4) who give a lot of their time and effort and expertise - they need to be supported, or we sink back into mediocrity or worse

Do they do everything right? No
Are they prepared to listen, debate, and change? Yes

We need a national body, we need it solvent and we need it to work - we are not going to agree with each other all the time, so debate is fine, but put some thought into the effect on volunteers of the arguments you choose to make

If Max and Harry can tell us what we can learn from Norway and France (who both seem more successful than us) then great

[Roger de Coverly]

Even if the membership fees I have paid over the years (I was for many years a Full Member, only downgrading last year) do not cover the rather nebulous benefits I have received, I still feel I have a strong claim to be a net contributor to the ECF and English chess, rather than an ungrateful and whinging beneficiary of their supposed largesse.

Max I imagine, will recall the various half-truths that have been promoted by the ECF and the BCF before it on this issue.

When FIDE first made this rule change, it was presented that it had become a FIDE requirement that all Federations should run individual membership schemes and that therefore all rated players who were not already members would be required to join. Whether this was ever FIDE's intention, it seems fairly clear that it is no longer pursuing it, given the absence of direct member schemes round the world. So the BCF/ECF could have used any rule it wanted to define membership.

Moving on to the formation of the ECF itself, eventually it admitted that you could have "membership" of a CLG without having to be a Guarantor, but continued to insist on Guarantor status for Internationally rated players.

The ECF is fully at liberty to set its own rules, but did it ever asked Council to explicitly endorse the proposition that all English players taking part in an Internationally rated event should be required to be Guarantor members of the ECF?

[Stewart Reuben]

Maxim Devereux >Stewart - it's totally ludicrous to suggest, as your second quote seems to, that this new "rule" will be flexibly enforced, based on the perceived contribution or otherwise of a player to "English chess" in the past. Legally speaking, I can't imagine this being defensible.<
I never suggested anything of the sort. What I meant was that Harry Lamb does have some 'whingeing rights' as do you as a sometime contibutor to the well-being of English chess.
The value of the ECF to a player or organiser is very seldom financial. The Friends of Chess is a more likely vehicle for that. It is usually of administrative value. I did start a scheme where there was money available from the BCF to start up new initiatives. That came under my directorial remit. We dropped it after a few years because virtually all the requests for support were initiated by me, though not actually organised by me. The scheme was not fulfilling its purpose of bringing in new blood. FIDE had a similar system, again under me. Some British events benefited. Again it died off due to lack of interest among other organisers.
Stewart Reuben

[Sean Hewitt]

FIDE had a similar system, again under me. Some British events benefited. Again it died off due to lack of interest among other organisers.
Stewart Reuben

I have to say that that FIDE scheme is what allowed the e2e4 International all play alls to get started. Now that they are self financing we haven't asked for more money since the first event but it's very useful to have some seed capital.

Of course, if the existence of an event depends on the seed capital, then it will only ever last for a year or two. It has to be seen as a starter, nothing more.