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Often clubs grow in spite of themselves. The local club that I attend once or twice a week only has room for a dozen or so players. I am appalled at how some of the regulars treat newbies. [I am also appalled that Herb doesn't know that mate wins and ends the game even if the flag falls half a second later in blitz chess but that is another story...].
In Windsor, we have a fairly small room (free) at the library. The club usually has a dozen or so players there. The main activity is blitz... in the past, I have attempted to interest players in other activities, with dismal results. The blitz players want blitz, blitz, and more blitz.
Visitors are treated very badly by the regulars; ignored at best. This is an extension of the blitz players' fierce concentration on their chosen activity.
If the library would give us a larger room, would we make the effort to bring in more people, who the blitz players could ignore, and probably scare away with their loud and frequent arguments? Probably not. I am embarassed, half the time.
Visitors are treated very badly by the regulars; ignored at best. .
It's certainly a problem and one that was true at the Victoria Club when I arrived here. On the other hand, now the membership is triple what it was and those players are either gone or in the minority. Remember Jonathan Berry's dictum - 30% turnover every year. So, in a few years, the club can evolve to pretty much any format.
How to get there? well start by example and make the point of greating everyone new who comes in, explain the club, and arrange a game(s). If there is someone unpleasant to play, throw yourself on the sword and play that guy and not let him scare away the newbies. Run a blitz tournament once a month in order to break up the cliques a little bit. Once in a while, every 2 or 3 months, run something slower say an active event for 2 weeks. People do stop being interested if it's every week but are inclined to play if it's less often.
We still do have 3 guys in the corner who are basically uninterested in anything or anyone else but it doesn't matter. They do help pay the rent and there are enough other new people who do interact that the atmosphere has changed.
Thanks for the posting, Pierre. Even though I might have known it before, your telling of the tale puts in bold relief some of the differences in chess between Canada and Europe.
Of course, France is unique.... The role of club in France seems to be analogous to the role of provincial association in Canada. More or less. We always complain that Canada is too big for chess. Maybe the real problem is that it is too small.
Somebody asked whether the CFC had ever costed its various services. The answer is yes. In fact, until 1985, the CFC didn't have any employee. It paid a contractor every time a membership card or magazine was sent out, a rating calculated or a book sold. Because the payout for each thing was less than the amount that came in for that thing, the CFC operations made money every year. Even after CFC program expenses (such as Olympic Fund shortfalls, sending players to the Interzonal, World Junior, Cadet), the CFC typically made in excess of $10,000 per year. But whatever the reason, the CFC Executive went to an employer-employee relationship, one under which the CFC could, and eventually did, lose money. The reason I was told was that this was closer to the way that "normal" sports governing bodies were organized. It just occurred to me, though, that when the contractor (aka Business Manager) became an employee (aka Executive Director), the CFC Executive could exercise more control. It did happen that the ED had less discretionary power than the BM, I just never thought before now that the difference might have been the reason for the change in relationship.
It seems to me that the larger chess clubs in Canada (Scarboro, RA Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton for starters) have at least one night per week of tournament play. That's slow chess, one game per night, the results get recorded, maybe even rated. And on that night, one way or another, Blitz chess gets pushed to the side or pushed right out. "To get there from here" might mean opening a club for a second night during the week.
... I will take the example of France. Anyone who go to the Federation office to buy a membership will be in for a big surprise. You do not buy a membership, you buy a licence to play Competitive Chess an the licence is sold under the name "licence", not under the name "membership". This avoid the ugly stance members have no rights in the Constitution because the players are not members. Then you will ask for a licence, but they will tell you that a licence can only be purchased at a club : the national Federation does not sell licences.
Every licence is linked to a club, This has two main consequences : you can play rated team chess only for your own club (as Carey Price can only play hockey for the Montreal's Canadian) and you may select Governor only at your club AGM. The clubs are the only structure that name Governors who will elect the board of directors of the national Federation. The number of Governors depends on the number of licences sold by the club. In some countries, the number of Governors depends on the amount of the rating fees paid by the club. In general, the more money a clubs brings in, the more Governors it will get. Off course, there is a maximum number of Governors per club....
In Windsor, we have a fairly small room (free) at the library. The club usually has a dozen or so players there. The main activity is blitz... in the past, I have attempted to interest players in other activities, with dismal results. The blitz players want blitz, blitz, and more blitz.
Visitors are treated very badly by the regulars; ignored at best. This is an extension of the blitz players' fierce concentration on their chosen activity.
If the library would give us a larger room, would we make the effort to bring in more people, who the blitz players could ignore, and probably scare away with their loud and frequent arguments? Probably not. I am embarassed, half the time.
Blitz play is bad for any chess club. It leads to exactly the problems that you describe. It is in many cases an addiction that makes people unsociable and agressive. If a club's main activity is blitz, then it cannot grow. It will only appeal to a small group of addicts to the exclusion of everybody else.
Blitz play is bad for any chess club. It leads to exactly the problems that you describe. It is in many cases an addiction that makes people unsociable and agressive. If a club's main activity is blitz, then it cannot grow. It will only appeal to a small group of addicts to the exclusion of everybody else.
A number of us, usually the relatively stronger players, have attempted to reverse that with slower games and CFC regular rated play but one or two of the regulars tend to be very disruptive. We have been playing the rated games at libraries or in our own homes where we don't have to worry about someone clearing their throat for several minutes in a row or offering "improvements" on our play while the game is in progress.
In the old Windsor Chess Club which met on Tuesdays and Thursdays in a church basement we had one night for blitz and a second night for active or tournament play as I recall. At some point in the not too distant future we may pursue that again.
You have the CYCC in Windsor with a strong organizer and a fairly short distance from Toronto. So I would invite you to study the Toronto contingent going to Windsor this year ( I'm not all that familiar with the group myself ). Compare to say the local teams we used to send to say Edmonton in 2000 or Victoria in 2005. Criteria could include numbers of players, playing strength, FIDE titles/ratings, and potential contribution to the WYCC team.
I will have a chat with John Coleman about these matters when next I see him which will probably be Wednesday at the club, Friday at the kids Friday night club, or Saturday/Sunday at the weekend tournaments or all of the above. I suspect that Edmonton or Victoria would have had fewer Toronto kids since the expense would be much higher than going to Windsor.
I would invite you to study the Toronto contingent going to Windsor this year ( I'm not all that familiar with the group myself ). Compare to say the local teams we used to send to say Edmonton in 2000 or Victoria in 2005. Criteria could include numbers of players, playing strength, FIDE titles/ratings, and potential contribution to the WYCC team.
That sounds like a heck of a lot of work. You want someone to go thru the ten separate crosstables from Victoria 2005, identify the Toronto-area players (how), and then (1) count them (2) determine their playing stength (how, average rating?) (3) discover their FIDE ratings and titles as of 2005 (4) estimate their potential contribution to the 2005 WCC team.
Then, do the same thing for Edmonton 2000.
This sounds like a great job for some statistically-minded person with too much time on their hands, but, with the results in hand, then what?
While I may have advised adults whether or not they might find the club to their liking, there is no way I would or can refuse to allow anyone over 14 years of age from joining the club.
This sounds like a great job for some statistically-minded person with too much time on their hands, but, with the results in hand, then what?
Modern computers are great at doing calculations and it would be no trouble at all to write a program to do it, once the data is entered. That's where the real work is, entering the data.
In preparation for organising CYCC, I wrote a program to determine the city for players at CYCC in past four years. The program was easy enough, but the problem was (1) there are 10 crosstables for most years (now, there are 12), and (2) I am comparing the data from THEN (the date of the event) with residence information NOW (from the CFC member list).
Duncan asks not only for for number of players, playing strength (presumably as indicated by rating), FIDE titles, but also the potential contribution to the Canadian team.
However, the real problem is drawing conclusions. Suppose we discover that 30 Toronto-area players went to Victoria in 2005, their mean CFC rating was 1800, and two had FIDE titles. Suppose for Windsor 2010, there are 45 Toronto players, their mean rating is 1750, and three have FIDE titles.
While I may have advised adults whether or not they might find the club to their liking, there is no way I would or can refuse to allow anyone over 14 years of age from joining the club.
Well, I guess it's true that it may be more than a matter of semantics whether one 'gently discourages' an adult from joining the club, at least for the time being, as opposed to 'advising them whether the club might not be to their liking'.
However, unless my memory fails me, or I was seeing/hearing things (either of which I've been known to do occasionally), I do recall that on at least one occasion you were disappointed (on behalf of the individual involved) that an adult newcomer to the club got destroyed as if they barely knew the moves, and on other subsequent occasions you were looking forward to playing casual games with a potential adult newcomer in the bar upstairs first. Anyway, I hope you aren't offended, as I am only trying to establish complete transparency where I'm not sure that it entirely exists at the moment. I see screening as only a possible barrier to getting as many new club members as desirable, not clearly a definite and undesirable barrier.
Something else I've noticed as well is that what is in the RA's 2009-2010 Program Guide (sent by the RA by snail mail to RA members, or copies of it being left around the RA building itself), the RA chess club's policy for accepting new members doesn't seem quite as completely spelled out as it is on the RA chess club's website, which you quoted in your first post in this thread.
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Murphy's law, by Edward A. Murphy Jr., USAF, Aerospace Engineer
Well, I guess it's true that it may be more than a matter of semantics whether one 'gently discourages' an adult from joining the club, at least for the time being, as opposed to 'advising them whether the club might not be to their liking'.
However, unless my memory fails me, or I was seeing/hearing things (either of which I've been known to do occasionally), I do recall that on at least one occasion you were disappointed (on behalf of the individual involved) that an adult newcomer to the club got destroyed as if they barely knew the moves, and on other subsequent occasions you were looking forward to playing casual games with a potential adult newcomer in the bar upstairs first. Anyway, I hope you aren't offended, as I am only trying to establish complete transparency where I'm not sure that it entirely exists at the moment. I see screening as only a possible barrier to getting as many new club members as desirable, not clearly a definite and undesirable barrier.
Something else I've noticed as well is that what is in the RA's 2009-2010 Program Guide (sent by the RA by snail mail to RA members, or copies of it being left around the RA building itself), the RA chess club's policy for accepting new members doesn't seem quite as completely spelled out as it is on the RA chess club's website, which you quoted in your first post in this thread.
At the Scarborough Chess Club we've been very open with regards to membership. We look for some minimal things -- do you know how to use a chess clock, do you know how to record your moves. As to ability, we really don't screen for that. By having two sections (Open and U1700), even weaker players will have some games in a Swiss tournament where they feel competitive. Ratings in the club range from 780 to 2340. One big section for our Swiss tournaments didn't work. With two sections, everyone seems to be pretty happy. For our last tournament of the 2009/2010 chess season, we've got 57 players in the Open Section and 30 in the U1700 Section.
I am quite happy to see that this year we've attracted a sizable number of young players -- a number of whom come to us through Yuanling Yuan's Chess in the Library program and others from CMA programs. Even the weakest players see good improvement within a year of joining the club. We've also had some exceptionally talented young people join the club as well. It's worked out really well.
A steady stream of new members both young and old is very important to replace members who leave the club for one reason or another. The youth of some of our players hasn't really been a problem. Newcomers, both young and old, sometimes require a little instruction about chess etiquette but they pick it up pretty quick and we've had no problems. I'm particularly pleased to see so many young people, both teenagers and younger, enjoy the great game of chess with us gray-haired veterans.
One of the beauties of chess is that it completely cuts across generation differences. If we could just get it to cut across gender differences; then its popularity would explode. Who wants to spend a whole weekend (in a tournament) in the company of males. Perhaps that could be a marketing line to increase the appeal for females...
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