CFC members stats

[John Brown]

Re: CFC members stats

In relation to unfriendly chess clubs. In the 80's I joined the Weston Chess Club and we had the same situation as Windsor.
Juniors and new players were ignored and the club was not CFC rated. With the determination of Frank Thiele and myself we changed the club to a friendly CFC membership club that everyone was welcome. We were once the second largest club in the GTA behind Scarborough. I believe the Weston Chess Club is no more.

I do believe though that all clubs need to have junior/adult programs set up for younger children and adult beginners.
The biggest beef that older adults have about younger kids are they do not follow chess etiquette when they start playing in adult sections of a club.
It is very annoying to be in a club that you used to enjoy and then it is disrupted by kids being kids.
Mississauga Chess Club has the right idea but sooner or later the numbers will out grow the facilities or the older work horses will need a rest or step down. Then where do the new people find a place to go?

[Roger Patterson]

Re: CFC members stats

thinking about membership numbers and people's observations on the decline of adult membership and thought I would do a second take on this. Below is the ratio of adult to junior members. Not a completely accurate picture as it excludes life members (although most of those are not active) but anyway....

Huge variation in the ratio.

So what's up with Nova Scotia?

Total	Adult/Junior
AB	2.3
BC	1.0
MB	3.8
NB	2.4
NL	8.0
NS	30.0
NT	NaN
NU	NaN
ON	1.2
PE	0.9
QC	3.0
SK	1.2
YT	NaN
US	2.7
FO	3.5

[Vlad Drkulec]

Re: CFC members stats

Hi: How many different individuals opted for the non-member tournament fee instead of the CFC membership during the 2013/2014 CFC year?

Wilf Ferner

Vlad,

For year ended April 30, 2014 - Tournament fees:

Adult 159
Juniors 36
Total 195

Give or take a few.

Bob

[Wilf Ferner]

Re: CFC members stats

Hi: How many different individuals opted for the non-member tournament fee instead of the CFC membership during the 2013/2014 CFC year?

Wilf Ferner

[Felix Dumont]

Re : Re: Re : Re: CFC members stats

Sorry, I meant 1994 (Junior players).

[Bob Gillanders]

Re: Re : Re: CFC members stats

Born after Jan. 1 2014 :
768 and possibly others for which the FQE does not have the birthdate.

Felix, FQE has 768 members born this year? i.e.. less than 6 months old. :)
Is there a special FQE infant membership?

[Tom O'Donnell]

Re: CFC members stats

Back in August I directed a small round robin at a chess camp. I submitted the crosstable electronically, along with the means of payment. The tournament was not rated nor was my payment registered on my credit card. I emailed back about a month later, supplying the crosstable again, but ... nothing.

This evening I get an email from the CFC thanking me for my payment. I hope it is going to get rated now.

[Dave Love]

Re: CFC members stats

So maybe I can say that I'm one of the top 500 adult players in Ontario!

[Walter De Jong]

Re: CFC members stats

You might want to look at this thread although the data is a bit out of date. ( which considers activity. I have some graphs on number of tournaments too somewhere)

http://www.chesstalk.info/forum/show...activity-redux

Thanks! Your graphs answer my question well. (Not that I like the answer, though...)

[Roger Patterson]

Re: CFC members stats

I understand that annual membership numbers translate directly into annual revenue.

But they don't necessarily correlate with annual activity. Any easy way to compare, say, the number of tournaments organized each of the past two years, or the number of rated games played each of the last two years?

You might want to look at this thread although the data is a bit out of date. ( which considers activity. I have some graphs on number of tournaments too somewhere)

http://www.chesstalk.info/forum/show...activity-redux

[Kerry Liles]

Re: CFC members stats

Not great news at all. The decline in the CFC membership has to be related to the perceived value: since the demise of the printed magazine membership has declined.

Of course, the decline cannot be blamed solely on that one fact (the current online magazine is actually extremely good in my opinion, but there are some members who remained members largely for the printed magazine and when that vanished so did their interest).

The only(!) other service the CFC provides is ratings. Since there is an extra per-use fee for ratings, players who play in a lot of tournaments actually pay a premium to have all their games rated (over an above the membership fee). I have not seen any positive change in the worth of a CFC membership in many years. It has been a hard sell for at least 20 years.

I think the fundamental business plan is flawed since the CFC does not get involved in any promotional activity, any active pursuit of sponsorships or anything other than the politics of running the office and the FIDE relationship (such as that is).

I see writing on the wall.

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

Re: CFC members stats

I understand that annual membership numbers translate directly into annual revenue.

But they don't necessarily correlate with annual activity. Any easy way to compare, say, the number of tournaments organized each of the past two years, or the number of rated games played each of the last two years?

A rough estimate might be collected rating fees. Or go through crosstables.

[Walter De Jong]

Re: CFC members stats

Not great. Sad.

I understand that annual membership numbers translate directly into annual revenue.

But they don't necessarily correlate with annual activity. Any easy way to compare, say, the number of tournaments organized each of the past two years, or the number of rated games played each of the last two years?

[Gerry Litchfield]

Re: CFC members stats

Digging just a little under the base stats here, there is more orientation required to be communicated.

(A) The junior members rise in 2014 is the result of a political anomaly. In summer 2012 (fiscal 2013) the CYCC event organizer refused to collect junior memberships which cost CFC a count of 80 juniors negated from the stats that should have been in there on May 1st, 2013. The CYCC of summer 2013 (fiscal 2014) did collect the required memberships, thus the generous bounce of juniors in 2014.

(B) The annual memberships report date for is supposed to be May 1st. This year I noticed the stats did not get released until May 15th. An average week will collect about 15-20 new renewals, so I can only assume these stats are padded with the extra renewals collected in the last 2 weeks. Not sure why the rules changed or who authorized this. Our administration always adhered to the required reporting consistency. Had we been allowed extra weeks, we could have provided better numbers than actual as well.

A similar sudden drop of 100 adults also occurred in May 2005 when 118 adults dropped out, again in the first year after I was dismissed. I believe you are all under-estimating the importance of the administration required. No membership is automatic and these memberships do not belong to you without the required services. Instead we hear “spin” that players are un-happy with their rating (in 2005), or now possibly the weather !? (Remember the old Soviet Union… every year there was a “drought” in the Ukraine).

When we took over in 2009 then President Lavin was explained by us about all the shenanigans destroying the CFC and he told us that those things were not going to be happening anymore. That promise made to the members and all stakeholders was again broken last year with a very unorthodox RFP process.

You know it is a great shame Treasurer Fred McKim is not here on ChessTalk anymore because a year ago he told us the worst was over, we’d reached the turning point, he even told us that the new contractor was the greatest thing he had seen in 40 years! Now-a-days we have a more realistic President Drkulec who says if we follow his philosophy and stick together we can solve this in the end. Sorry, no one believes you anymore, and actually in the face of this rapidly deteriorating situation these comments look ridiculous. In the CFC office mass administrative deficits gather by the day, all while the internal democracy of the CFC is undermined by the new NFP template.

Your mis-calc on memberships;
The previous admin contract entailed a provision that if memberships collected dropped below a base level then we would actually have to pay the CFC back for that. This provided incentive to perform. With the new contract this provision was dropped by the people who “knew better”. We have to realize that without incentive the guy doing the admin is just going to sit there, or take a summer trip to India etc…

Again, a shame that once the new administration contract was launched last year, treasurer McKim never came back here on ChessTalk to see us.

Gerry

[Felix Dumont]

Re : Re: CFC members stats

By the CFC-FQE agreement, I believe the CFC could/should add the FQE numbers to its statistics... It might help boost the number of players and perhaps find new sponsors.
I did some quick statistics with the FQE public database (Louis might had more accurate data). I'm not sure how are the numbers calculated for the CFC (snapshot, total number in the year, etc.) :

Number of players in 2014 (either members, people who bought a tournament membership or foreign players who participated in a tournament in Quebec) : 1900.
Note that there is no life members (only a few honorary members).

Including :
25 From Haïti
37 Abitibi-Témiscamingue
47 Estrie
39 Laurentides
45 Laval
139 Mauricie
133 Montérégie
473 Montréal
152 Outaouais
142 Québec city
582 Unknown / Foreign / Other provinces

Born after Jan. 1 1994 :
768 and possibly others for which the FQE does not have the birthdate.

182 Women / 1718 Men (9.6% / 90.4%)

Note that quite a lot of players did not play any game. This is probably because they registered to get the magazine or because they have the intention to play in a future tournament (like the Canadian Open or the CYCC in Montreal). The number of "regular" members of the FQE as of today is probably more between 1150 and 1200 (versus perhaps 1000 two or three years ago, but I can't find the numbers).