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Dark Knight / Le Chevalier Noir
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Well, certainly I am out of the loop to see the more recent years of chess events and geographically there can be vast differences in approach anyways. All I can say on that is when we were attending events, Ontario and BC organizers and players seemed to take an adversarial role rather the cooperate. My observations are somewhat dated. There were events in Ontario that went an extra mile to accommodate juniors or families better and we were always looking for those.
That being said, I still do question the overall model for juniors transitioning to longer chess controls and the social aspects of that process. If you think you've got a good handle on it, and numbers are growing, well, good for you.
I would agree with Paul's assessment. I recall last weekend, playing in Guelph tournament, that the atmosphere at most tournaments in recent years had become much more cordial and friendly. Interactions between adult players, organizers, kids and parents, much improved, and how this is not adequately reflected by posts on chesstalk.
I know some organizers have been experimenting in entry fees and sections, to try to lure non-tournament casual players, into their first tournaments. I think this is great!
Does anyone know the extent to which it is working?
Some organizers have a "Recreational Section", and there is low entry fee, or none, when the newbie buys the annual CFC membership. Have I got this right? What other strategies around registration are being used?
I am going through the list of Quebec members with an expiration date of "No Expiry". I assume that includes Life and Honouary members.
Here is one that can be removed:
Lemelin, Roger (died 1992). He was editor for "La Presse" and did much for chess in Quebec.
Under Ontario, who is "handbook 441. Adjust rating" who has no expiry, and the two players starting with "zzz"? Are players such as Tom Carlton and Alex Knox still with us? I know that Paul Rispler died in 2013.
Perhaps others could go through a province that is familiar to them and list those that are known to be deceased. This could change the membership counts slightly.
I know some organizers have been experimenting in entry fees and sections, to try to lure non-tournament casual players, into their first tournaments. I think this is great!
Does anyone know the extent to which it is working?
Some organizers have a "Recreational Section", and there is low entry fee, or none, when the newbie buys the annual CFC membership. Have I got this right? What other strategies around registration are being used?
Bob A
Hi Bob,
It's hard to say to what extent it is working. I know at Hart House a few years back we chose to adopt this idea where... an unrated player only needs to pay CFC membership and the entry fee for the tournament is waived, while the participant is not eligible for prizes (unless playing in the Crown Section). The reason we do this is simply because, a new player can be easily intimidated by having to pay $70 entry fee and an additional $48 CFC membership, especially when most of them are expected to be amateur level. I suppose we could check on our unrated players' progress and see what tournaments, if any, they have played since. I know for a fact that some people at Hart House tournaments take advantage or even wait to play their first tournament with us, not to have to pay an entry fee. Several of them are however, UT students, and most do end up playing elsewhere after.
In tournaments played at clubs, the likely place for an amateur player to start playing, there may not be an entry fee, but there's a club annual membership, and all these fees combined add up. For us at Hart House, we have an average only 2-4 unrated players each tournament, which is not very much. It is easy for us to absorb a couple of players and not affect the prize fund, but in comparable tournaments with only half the players, or 30% of them being unrated, this model would perhaps not work.
I remember a couple of organizers having an amateur entry fee, which was substantially lower than the full entry fee. Not sure how that worked but I can see some problems with that. Players playing up (majority of juniors - which may also mean majority of players - given the chance) would happily take the amateur/ recreational deal since attempting to win a prize is clearly not their main goal. If this was to become trendy, it would also significantly take away from the total monies collected and therefore significantly affect the prize fund as well as the organizer's financial logistics. If this alternative were to work, it would have to be a minor discount I think, of say $10 or $20 discount to not be eligible for prizes, which some people would be happy to take but I imagine most would take the gamble. If the discount was so small though, it would defeat the purpose of having it.
I might add, this 'option' of paying more, or less, based on whether you can play for money might violate some laws in the AGCO - Alcohol & Gaming Commission of Ontario.
Again... since in my opinion the CFC ratings are by far the main (to many members, the only) benefit of being a member of the CFC, I go back to the same topic. We should scrap CFC memberships, and just pay higher rating fees (instead of the $3.00 + 13% HST). New members (and soon enough, everyone) won't even know what the difference would be.
I agree with Alex. It is really hard to ask a new player to cough up $25 or $38 for a membership in an organization he/she isn't even aware of when they show up to pay $60 or $80 to enter a tournament.
Victoria Chess has been giving free tournament memberships to new players who meet certain conditions. It probably helps a little but the same issue comes up at the next event for that new player.
Several years ago we eliminated annual provincial dues in BC in favour of a $3 head tax at tournaments and it has worked out very well. Easy to administer, easy to audit, transparent to the players.
You just need to wrap your mind around the fact that everyone who plays in a tournament is a "Member".
To apply this to the CFC, one would have to exempt Life Members who have pre-paid their dues and figure out how to deal with juniors who pay a lower membership fee. Another benefit would be to get rid of tournament memberships that can also be confusing to new players.
The Southwestern Ontario Winter Open offered a discount to new CFC members who purchased a full year membership. The discount of $16 was the difference between a tournament membership and a full year membership for a US junior (a major target market in Windsor). The tournament resulted in 30 new full year CFC members, most of them Michigan juniors.
Of course, it would have been nice if the almost $500 this cost had come from some sort of CFC initiative to attract new members instead of the tournament budget, but it's still an (eventual) net win for the tournaments as players who have a full year membership are more likely to return for future events.
Under Ontario, who is "handbook 441. Adjust rating" who has no expiry, and the two players starting with "zzz"?
Handbook section 441 allows players to request their ratings be adjusted based on FIDE USCF and FQE ratings under specific circumstances. Instead of just changing the rating without explanation, a “tournament” cross table marked 441 is created to document the adjustment.
Duplicate profiles for a member are sometimes accidentally created. Where possible, I will then combine these two profiles and the abandoned profile will get a zzz as a prefix to the name to avoid that number being used. I would prefer to delete these profiles, but that may cause some technical difficulties.
Thank you to those who have advised me of deceased members. The members database has been updated.
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