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Ah, Gary. You keep pretending you would like to see me as Prez for another year, but I know better. ;)
That's not exactly true. It would depend on what you intended to do with the second term. Also, it's about time the CFC got a bit of continuity. You can't expect to change presidents every year and have a productive result.
I read some of what the candidates have written on the CFC site. Maybe I'm not understanding but the impression I get is seldom has so much being written about so little.
Vlad, I'm just saying that each year the CFC signs on a few new members, mostly juniors and gets some revenue from their membership fees. If we give away the new membership, there is initially some loss of revenue.
That doesn't mean I don't think it's a good idea to give free or very low cost initial memberships because as you say, getting someone in for a lifetime who might otherwise not have joined because they thought $24 or $36 is too much money to play chess for a year would pay long term benefits.
I'd rather see that kind of incentive to new players than the continuing talk of cutting service to reduce the already small fee we play every year to ensure we have a viable national organization.
Do you know if any of the presidential candidates have proposed a strategic plan for their upcoming terms? and could the last strategic plan be linked to the new website. I tried the search function but no luck. sorry if I missed it.
Maybe this should be a new thread-not sure.
Mike
There has been much discussion by the presidential candidates on the CFC Forum (which only makes sense !)
Groups that do tournaments that way would have to change how they do it unfortunately.
But what would be so wrong about lowering the SCC membership fees, then having people pay on their own if they want to play in the tournaments?
Come to think of it, I would guess not all your members play in all the tournaments. That's a similar situation to what the CFC currently does. Asking people to pay in advance for tournaments (regardless of whether they actually play), doesn't make much sense to me personally.
Denton
I would be pretty unhappy with the changes you are proposing. The SCC has to commit to renting our space one year at a time (44 weeks). Yearly membership fees are essential to our financial stability. We hold 5 multi-week tournaments in a year. Collecting fees for each tournament would be a pain. Our club operates successfully on the efforts of a small group of volunteers. Adding more work (i.e. collecting fees for each tournament) would not go over well.
Our fees are $140 per year for adults. Out of that $15 goes to rating fees. A small amount we hold back for equipment costs. The rest goes straight to the city for rent. If you make the rating fee $8 or $12 or whatever, realistically we have to add somewhere between $40 and $60 to our membership fees. Not very popular at all. In theory we could collect rating fees for each tournament but I'm sure our treasurer would be unhappy.
The type of changes you are proposing just offloads the burdens to successful clubs like the SCC.
Steve Karpik
Secretary, Scarborough Chess Club
Last edited by Steve Karpik; Sunday, 10th July, 2011, 08:55 AM.
I would be pretty happy with the changes you are proposing. The SCC has to commit to renting our space one year at a time (44 weeks). Yearly membership fees are essential to our financial stability. We hold 5 multi-week tournaments in a year. Collecting fees for each tournament would be a pain. Our club operates successfully on the efforts of a small group of volunteers. Adding more work (i.e. collecting fees for each tournament) would not go over well.
Our fees are $140 per year for adults. Out of that $15 goes to rating fees. A small amount we hold back for equipment costs. The rest goes straight to the city for rent. If you make the rating fee $8 or $12 or whatever, realistically we have to add somewhere between $40 and $60 to our membership fees. Not very popular at all. In theory we could collect rating fees for each tournament but I'm sure our treasurer would be unhappy.
The type of changes you are proposing just offloads the burdens to successful clubs like the SCC.
Steve Karpik
Secretary, Scarborough Chess Club
Valid concerns Steve.
A change to $8 fees would increase the membership for your club up by $25 (5 tourneys x $5 extra fee), but again, those players would no longer have to pay a $50 CFC membership fee.
Here's a way this can actually work in your favour:
Members can have the option of pre-registering for tournaments when they renew their membership.
If they register later, the registration fee could be higher. This compensates the treasurer for any stragglers, as well as gives your club a more realistic view of who plans to play in your tournaments. You can make the late registration fee a significant difference, which would encourage people to pay up front if they know they want to play.
It's not a big change that way. Remember that the goal of this would be to grow the number of CFC participants.
Regardless of how the system is set up, there are disadvantages for some and advantages for others. I'm quite aware that the advantage to this system is for locations where there are not a million tournaments a year (outside of the GTA). As we saw from some previous graphs presented by Roger Patterson, CFC chess isn't doing too well outside of Ontario and B.C. (Quebec is a special case).
The problem with this is that it'll be hard to explain to people why it was free this year, and now you want them to pay for their next year. It makes sense logically, but humans aren't exactly logical creatures.
By our calculations, if the CFC was to stay at current funding levels, then the rating fee would need to be $8 instead of 3. If we ditch the newsletter (the argument could be made that it wouldn't be needed anymore if membership fees are eliminated), then that amount could be reduced to about $6.50.
The fact is, most big tournaments already have ridiculous (in my view) entry fees. I don't think you would notice the rise in entry fees from $60 (and that's a cheap tournament these days) to $65, when in exchange you didn't have to pay a membership fee.
As to the small club events; I don't think these would be as harmed as people think they would be. I don't think too many people would complain if their small event had a total entry fee of $6.50 + prize pool.
I think this approach would allow a lot of people that want to "try" chess to get a chance to play. The $50 membership fee and $20 single tournament fees are prohibitive to not-currently-serious players playing in tournaments.
Denton
Hi Denton,
First of all, good to see that someone still does care about the "not-currently-serious" chess players.
I believe that what is needed in this regard is a whole new approach that can occur alongside of the current approach. That is, the current approach (membership fees and individual tournament fees and so on) stays intact for the serious players. What I propose as new is a parallel approach for the non serious players.
As we know, the CFC's bread and butter is ratings fees. The reason this can be is that calculation of rating is not a simple process. It works off the Elo rating system, and that system is not a simple app you can run on your Blackberry or IPhone or Droid or whatever (which begs the question: is prohibition of such devices at CFC events really to prevent cheating, or perhaps more to prevent some enterprising person from creating such an app and totally underming the CFC income stream? Hmmmm...).
Serious chess players do want to be rated, and it helps if they know that the ratings they receive are somewhat compatible with ratings used worldwide.
So where am I going with all this? Well, if your goal is to bring in more not-so-serious-chessplayers and give them a taste of tournament chess, why not have separate but parallel tournaments for them, CFC sanctioned, with rating system just for them? A rating system that doesn't require the CFC to do their ratings for them, and thus doesn't require ratings fees? A rating system so simple that THEY CAN DO IT THEMSELVES, ON A GAME BY GAME BASIS? Using nothing but a pocket calculator, or even in their heads if they are good at math?
The vision goes like this: at every major or semi-major CFC event, there is an organizer for the serious CFC-rated players, and there is a second organizer (perhaps an organizer intern, if you will) for the not-so-serious players. In effect, there are 2 parallel events. The event for the not-so-serious players has much lower entry fees and CFC "membership" fees, because these are the players that are just trying things out. They don't necessarily want to be thrust immediately into the midst of the serious players. They want to play against PEERS. And if they do well and get to like the weekend events, they are at any time free to pay up full CFC membership and join the serious section.
There are two things that could happen here: the best of the not-so-serious players could migrate into full CFC membership, and the worst of the serious players could (instead of giving up chess altogether) migrate into the not-so-serious events. The CFC could be behind both because both migrations help the CFC bottom line: fewer players leave the CFC, and more join.
All that is required are willing organizer "interns" (or beginners), and a simpler rating system, so that the not-so-serious players could be paired Swiss-style just like their more serious cousins. This would also help "grow" organizers. An aspiring organizer could start in the not-so-serious section, get his or her training there in pairing and settling disputes and so on, and eventually move up to more serious organizing. If the intern organizer makes a mistake, it's not so serious because the players are not so serious. No prize monies or titles are at stake for the not so serious players. They play for the chance to try out organized chess and to see if by playing regularly they can improve their not so serious rating to a point where they can say, hey, maybe I should try the real thing.
I have such a simpler rating system formulated. I would be glad to post it if there is enough interest shown.
This is all part of an overall effort on my part to see organized chess grow out of the constrained sandbox in which it currently plays. I've also posted in the past about getting the CFC to hold parallel chess and chess960 events, and getting CFC organizers to give out brilliancy awards (awarded in a totally objective manner) to broaden the base of prizewinners (i.e., a low rated player has slim to none chances to win a section prize, but does have a better chance to win a brilliancy prize, assuming the awarding of such a prize is totally free of bias).
I am frankly surprised at the lack of creativity and out-of-the-box thinking shown when it comes to how to grow organized chess. Just recently, Bob Gillanders posted elsewhere on this very thread that "Everyone is convinced their solution is the right one, but the risk always falls to the CFC finances if the experiment fails". The implication is clear: creativity is thwarted by fiscal conservatism (not blaming Bob G. on this, it goes beyond one person and especially one so recent, and Bob G. has done a great job in bringing the CFC back from the brink).
Well, here's a new proposal in which the only risk to CFC finances would be if this were set up and hordes of unsatisfied regular CFC members decided to abandon Elo ratings and join the non-serious rating system for much reduced membership fees. I really don't think that number would be significant. But I believe the number of new regular members you attract via this non-serious introductory route would more than make up for the ones who would decide to move down.
Just as an analogy: lets say you're middle aged, you like to play tennis and would like to consider eventually playing tournaments. Wouldn't you much prefer if you could join organized tennis and play tournaments, not against hardened and serious opposition right away, but against people just like you -- newcomers, young and old alike, who are just getting into the game? And if you find out you're not talented, you can still play occassional tournaments on the cheap against more newcomers, and almost never have to suffer the indignity of being crushed by a wonderkid who is so good that you never even get to play a 3-stroke rally?
BTW, is everything so rigid in the CFC world that if this proposal were deemed worthy, it would take another year to "come to a vote" and get implemented? Or are there other meetings throughout the year at which new proposals can get to a vote?
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
If you have such strong views, why don't you run for president? The past year has been a blast.
To increase membership an online server would be nice. Members playing other members and their server ratings automatically calculated when the game ends. Tournaments and matches paired for the players. Speed chess events and offhand games.
It would be a product which could entice people to join and maybe they'd use the membership to play in regular events as well.
you've suggested this a number of times...i think it's a good idea as well *depending on the cost*...the reason i let my membership elapse is that i live in a remote area where the only CFC tournaments within 2 hours were being run by me...after one unpleasant situation, i decided that i prefer being a player to being an organizer. i don't get to many/any tournaments in a year, so i have no need for a membership. i would be willing to throw some membership money at having a place to play online...hell i pay my CCCA membership every year :)
you've suggested this a number of times...i think it's a good idea as well *depending on the cost*...the reason i let my membership elapse is that i live in a remote area where the only CFC tournaments within 2 hours were being run by me...after one unpleasant situation, i decided that i prefer being a player to being an organizer. i don't get to many/any tournaments in a year, so i have no need for a membership. i would be willing to throw some membership money at having a place to play online...hell i pay my CCCA membership every year :)
You are EXACTLY the type of player that the CFC currently has no use to.
I think there are a lot of other players in your situation. I'm willing to bet if people didn't need a membership to play these tournaments, you may even be able to find another 6 people in your neighbourhood willing to play in a CFC tournament.
I don't expect a server to happen or the membership to increase much, if at all. Probably it's hard to know if anything would do much for the membership numbers.
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