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...why should a government even care to promote chess...
Kevin,
To find for yourself a good enough answer to that question I would suggest you and to anyone interested by the matter to read "Chess for Success" by Maurice Ashley. You will find in this book all the answers that you need to sell chess to anyone, including government officials. It is a "must-read".
To find for yourself a good enough answer to that question I would suggest you and to anyone interested by the matter to read "Chess for Success" by Maurice Ashley. You will find in this book all the answers that you need to sell chess to anyone, including government officials. It is a "must-read".
Thanks Jean. If Amazon has it I may order it sometime.
I would be interested to know how Maurice would distinguish chess from other board games of pure skill that might try to make a similar request to be promoted by the government. Perhaps he might argue the government should promote all such games (Go, shogi...) except that they are not as popular worldwide as chess, as I have written.
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Murphy's law, by Edward A. Murphy Jr., USAF, Aerospace Engineer
actually it does increase membership, in a perverse sense. ""Some"" of those who were paying tournament memberships will buy full memberships now. Of course, the remainder just stop playing.
Recent losses in adult membership disproves this theory. Instead of allowing these casual players to play in local tournaments we are telling them that they are not welcome. I propose that we drop the price again to $10 (heck I would lower it to $5) but only allow it to be used once per year. This would bring back these players to at least one tournament a year instead of skipping all CFC events and only playing in the many non-cfc events.
Recent losses in adult membership disproves this [Roger Patterson's] theory. Instead of allowing these casual players to play in local tournaments we are telling them that they are not welcome...
Depending how long the tournament membership has been at $20, or on anything else that may possibly affect adult membership levels, I don't see how Roger's theory is disproved in a tight logical sense. However my gut tells me that you are absolutely right about making casual players feel unwelcome. The CFC is desperate for revenue above all else. It ought to be desperate to acquire members AND tournament particpants (including non-members) - revenue will follow from that. Instead it is trying to maximize membership and revenue as quickly as possible by trying to 'force' casual players to become members. Greed is not always good, even in business.
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Murphy's law, by Edward A. Murphy Jr., USAF, Aerospace Engineer
I propose that we drop the price [of a tournament membership] again to $10 (heck I would lower it to $5) but only allow it to be used once per year. This would bring back these players to at least one tournament a year instead of skipping all CFC events and only playing in the many non-cfc events.
I have reservations with parts of this proposal [before I'd say why, here's what it says in section 3 of the CFC Handbook concerning tournament memberships:
"375. Tournament Playing Fee: A tournament fee for first time players in CFC events, for foreign players, and for players whose name does not appear on the last Annual List, of $10.00 may be paid in lieu of CFC membership. The player will then receive a rating, one copy of the magazine, and an invitation to join the CFC. [see Motion 90-9, as amended, GL, September 1990, p.1-12]"
This is of course at least somewhat out of date, since aside from the change to a $20 fee (btw, it's as of May 1 this year - see the membership & rating fee link on the CFC website) there is a webzine now, and I don't know if a tournament fee gives a tournament member access to the member's access zone of the webzine at any time.].
I'd say put the tournament fee back to $10, yes, but not to $5 unless someone can make a convincing argument - though see my next paragraph - why putting it to $5 would at least double the number of casual players taking out tournament memberships and at the same time not possibly tempt too many CFC [adult] members to not renew, but instead to take out a tournament membership after taking a year off CFC rated chess - though I don't know if tournament memberships are necessesarily a reason the CFC has been losing more adult members in recent years.
I'm not sure why the tournament membership ought to be usable only once, as the above proposal states, unless it also assumes too many CFC [adult] members might be taking advantage. The CFC would be cutting itself off from rating fee revenue that a casual player would generate by playing in more than one event (as an aside, rating fees are too high, discouraging the membership/tournament participation [and organizers], but that's another topic). If you make tournament memberships usable only once a year THEN having them at $5 seems much less problematic.
Last edited by Kevin Pacey; Friday, 5th June, 2009, 10:21 PM.
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Murphy's law, by Edward A. Murphy Jr., USAF, Aerospace Engineer
We can still let non-CFC members play in CFC rated events.
FIRST:
All you have to do is create two different tournaments in one event.
Sort of like having amateurs play with the cash participants.
Except in this case what you do is run your standard tournament with CFC memberships, tournament fees, Cash Prizes etc.
The second tournament would be all players who just want to play chess.
No CFC memberships needed, no tournament fees collected just an entry fee to play chess.
They get no rating points, if there are players with old CFC ratings then they can be used as a base. Charge an entry fee that will cover the costs of these extra players ( ie. room rent, trophies for winners or whatever is required).
This will give you an idea who wants CFC Memberships and tournament fees and who wants to just play chess.
SECOND:
The only way you will ever talk Government into supporting chess is to either hold a chess tournament for MP's or stage a live chess game at Parliament Hill. With tents set up for casual or tournament chess for adults and children
to participate. An Active event would be over in one day.
You'll need to bring in some heavy weights Cdn GM's, Masters to promote the soundness of the mental aspects of the game and if we know of any Alzhiemer
patients that have improved with chess so you can get them to come to the event or see if they will talk to the media and get a video made to show at the event.
Chess and Math could also show how the teaching of chess in schools improves one's calculation skills.
You have to make it a BIG BLOWOUT on Parliament Hill for it to be a success
because not only the people of Ottawa can attend and think of all the tourists that may participate as well. You can also contact other Provinces
and Territories to run similar events at their Parliament Buildings on a prearranged day so all across Canada there will be Live Chess Games and tents set up to play chess.
We have the skills, we have the technology, we just don't have the guts to try something new.
Having tournament players ineligible for cash prizes still makes them feel unwelcome, I would imagine, if they want that choice. Instead the amatuer option is another way for them that may available, at least here in Ottawa. Maybe there ought to be an amatuer tournament membership option added, that is cheaper even than a 'normal' tournament membership. I have similar concerns for not providing ratings for tournament members. Again they may feel unwelcome, though perhaps less so. At least the CFC would be cutting itself off from some additional rating revenue.
Your idea of a "BIG BLOWOUT" chess promotion event to be held on parliament hill would be tailor-made for someone like Neil James Frarey here in Ottawa. If he is still not yet elected to the CFC Executive he would nevertheless make for a fine chess promoter/publicist on behalf of the CFC.
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Murphy's law, by Edward A. Murphy Jr., USAF, Aerospace Engineer
In a previous post I alluded that the tournament membership possibly tempts too many CFC [adult] members to not renew, but instead to take out a tournament membership after taking a year off CFC rated chess. Having now read the GL#5 discussion on the actual vote to change the fee to $20, I see that this is a point the CFC President was trying to make. I would like to point out that this could be construed as a tacit admission that the [e]magazine is of little value to many/most [potential] CFC members or tournament members.
Note that I am assuming that it is still the case that after getting a rating during a year, as shown on the annual rating list, a player must take at least a year off rated chess before being eligible for a tournament membership - I wonder if this little detail has been changed or lost in the mists of time (or the minds of most Governors or organizers) since the Handbook was written.
Last edited by Kevin Pacey; Saturday, 6th June, 2009, 07:39 AM.
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Murphy's law, by Edward A. Murphy Jr., USAF, Aerospace Engineer
Note that I am assuming that it is still the case that after getting a rating during a year, as shown on the annual rating list, a player must take at least a year off rated chess before being eligible for a tournament membership...
Unless there has been an oversight by the CFC , the requirement for any [adult or tournament] member to take a year off rated chess before becoming a tournament member again must have been changed in some way, if it wasn't indeed changed long ago, since after the print magazine stopped including ratings' lists there would have been no annual rating list published.
I wanted to point that out in case anyone missed the obvious, like I did :o.
Last edited by Kevin Pacey; Saturday, 6th June, 2009, 10:40 AM.
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Murphy's law, by Edward A. Murphy Jr., USAF, Aerospace Engineer
Thanks Jean. If Amazon has it I may order it sometime.
CMA has it. If you are really serious about getting answers to your questions get it now.
Originally posted by Kevin Pacey
I would be interested to know how Maurice would distinguish chess from other board games of pure skill that might try to make a similar request to be promoted by the government. Perhaps he might argue the government should promote all such games (Go, shogi...) except that they are not as popular worldwide as chess, as I have written.
You need Maurice to distinguish chess from other board games ? :) Maurice promotes what he knows best: chess. He apparently sees no point in putting down other games or promoting them. Chess is best by test as Fischer may have put it. In a relatively short time it has flourished all over the world to the point of being part of the school's curriculum in dozens of countries. No other games has managed that. Ashley explains why quite convincingly.
I seem to recall that more than one CFC wag has stated historically there is an annual membership turnover rate of about 1/3, i.e. 1/3 of old members are lost, replaced by new members that year. Evidently one or more unusual things happened since spring 2003 so that adult memberships are down so badly. I can name a few, but you don't want such speculation I gather.
Guilty. That was noticed repeatedly from 1975 to 1984, and by others later. It put the lie to all the theories about "retaining members". The only way that the CFC could grow was to get new members in numbers greater than 1/3 of its existing membership. Or to shrink, it would simply have to stop attracting so many new members. So what has happened since 2003 could easily be that the CFC has failed to attract new members. It shouldn't be difficult to figure out if that is the case: just look at new membership numbers issued. By "membership number", I mean the number on your CFC membership card (ooops! no cards anymore), not statistics.
I am open to the idea that the old rules do not apply. They weren't rules anyway, they were simply observations. The world for chess in Canada has changed completely since the mid-1990s. Things changed in the mid- to late- 1970s because of the Fischer boom, but that was a quantitative chance. What we have now is qualitative.
...You need Maurice to distinguish chess from other board games ? :) ...In a relatively short time it has flourished all over the world to the point of being part of the school's curriculum in dozens of countries. No other games has managed that...
Good point.
One thing I forgot to mention which may not be so trivial is that chess is quite photogenic. A typical Staunton chess set is beautiful enough to the eye, never mind decorative sets. Go and shogi easily pale by comparison.
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Murphy's law, by Edward A. Murphy Jr., USAF, Aerospace Engineer
Guilty. That was noticed repeatedly from 1975 to 1984, and by others later. It put the lie to all the theories about "retaining members". The only way that the CFC could grow was to get new members in numbers greater than 1/3 of its existing membership. Or to shrink, it would simply have to stop attracting so many new members. So what has happened since 2003 could easily be that the CFC has failed to attract new members. It shouldn't be difficult to figure out if that is the case: just look at new membership numbers issued. By "membership number", I mean the number on your CFC membership card (ooops! no cards anymore), not statistics.
Your idea would naturally only be a first step, if the CFC cares to impliment it. That's because it only shows whether enough new [adult] members aren't being attracted, and/or whether enough old ones aren't being retained. The CFC would still have to discover the reason(s) in any case in order to answer Peter's question of why there has been a serious decline in adult CFC membership levels since 2003.
To illustrate my take on what I think you're getting at, here's some fun with figures (the estimates are my pure guesses, meant only for the sake of example - the CFC would have to go back and find out the real numbers):
In this case there were 900 old adult members lost and 199 new adult members gained when comparing just the vital starting and finishing years of 2003 and 2009. The CFC's problem would be that it has been losing old adult members at an alarming rate for some reason(s), but it has comparitively no serious problem with attracting new adult members.
In this case there were 300 old adult CFC members lost and 401 fewer new ones gained comparing the critical years 2003 and 2009. In this case the CFC's problem was that it about equally lost old adult members AND attracted fewer new ones than was by any means acceptable.
Last edited by Kevin Pacey; Sunday, 7th June, 2009, 12:08 AM.
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Murphy's law, by Edward A. Murphy Jr., USAF, Aerospace Engineer
Having tournament players ineligible for cash prizes still makes them feel unwelcome, I would imagine, if they want that choice. Instead the amatuer option is another way for them that may available, at least here in Ottawa. Maybe there ought to be an amatuer tournament membership option added, that is cheaper even than a 'normal' tournament membership. I have similar concerns for not providing ratings for tournament members. Again they may feel unwelcome, though perhaps less so. At least the CFC would be cutting itself off from some additional rating revenue.
Your idea of a "BIG BLOWOUT" chess promotion event to be held on parliament hill would be tailor-made for someone like Neil James Frarey here in Ottawa. If he is still not yet elected to the CFC Executive he would nevertheless make for a fine chess promoter/publicist on behalf of the CFC.
HI Kevin;
I did not mean that tournament players were ineligible for cash prizes. I meant that those who don't want to join CFC or pay a tournament fee could not win a cash prize. You'd have to either join the CFC or pay the tournament fee to get cash. Hey at the club level there are very few cash prizes anyway. Most are Trophies.
The idea was to show club and casual players how the CFC rated tournaments are run.
...The second tournament would be all players who just want to play chess.
No CFC memberships needed, no tournament fees collected just an entry fee to play chess.
They get no rating points, if there are players with old CFC ratings then they can be used as a base. Charge an entry fee that will cover the costs of these extra players ( ie. room rent, trophies for winners or whatever is required).
This will give you an idea who wants CFC Memberships and tournament fees and who wants to just play chess.
I'm now wondering about the last paragraph in this quote. If people are [always] content just to play chess in such a 'second tournament', the CFC would [always] be garnering no revenue from them. Other than second tournament players being occasional spectators to the first (cash) tournament going on at the same site, and passersby thinking that the whole event (both 'tournaments') is larger than usual on the whole, would this new concept have much going for it from the CFC's point of view? Furthermore, it would appear to be up to each local organizer or club to run such a second tournament at the same time as a cash one, which may be going on somewhere already for all we know.
I grant you that the events' and/or club's organizer(s) may feel good about having a fuller site or club, and giving out trophies for the second tournament, but other than that your concept may change too little for the CFC, unless people who are currently content to play in the second tournament are someday inspired to play in the first (cash) one after spectating - as you say in your second post, they learn about how these events are run.
Last edited by Kevin Pacey; Sunday, 7th June, 2009, 11:52 AM.
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Murphy's law, by Edward A. Murphy Jr., USAF, Aerospace Engineer
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, the requirement for any [adult or tournament] member to take a year off rated chess before becoming a tournament member again must have been changed in some way, if it wasn't indeed changed long ago, since after the print magazine stopped including ratings' lists there would have been no annual rating list published.
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