Why CFC denying talented juniors to represent CANADA at World Stage???

[Duncan Smith]

Re: Junior Programs - Dubious Effort?

I would argue that all the CFC has done is create an atmosphere where juniors have a much greater incentive to play and improve (since higher ratings = more opportunities to attend international events). For example, if you randomly said the top 3 masters in each province will be sent on an IM norm tournament once a year, I believe you'd see a lot of adult players making the effort to participate and improve as well. Yes, the kids bring strength to events - because they have much greater reason to try to improve!

All this does is create a system where while you are a junior, there is incentive to play, and once you turn past junior age, that incentive is gone, and the player stops playing.

David, you seem to believe if juniors in Canada have it bad and adults have it worse, that the juniors should be forced to have it worse too. Seems like a good recipe for killing off chess as sport for good.

[Fred McKim]

Re: Why CFC denying talented juniors to represent CANADA at World Stage???

CYCC participation has fluctuated wildly, there has been no trend up or down. You keep saying that the success of a CYCC is predicated on increasing future adult membership, and I say like hell that matters the whole premise that everything the CFC does is based on adult participation levels is faulty to begin with.

The CYCC was hijacked from the CMA and used as a subsidy for other chess projects for numerous years. The CFC failed to tap into obvious sponsorship opportunities, seemingly incapable of understanding that there are sponsors for the kids that are NOT interested in adult chess. This was proven in the event in Ottawa, where a specific provision was made that the CFC NOT put any of the sponsorship funds into general revenue. In fact, it seems to be 90% certain now that this requirement was broken.

Check out any other sport, you'll be challenged to find many that use youth projects to subsidize adult projects. What you'll find is it is understood that by supporting youth projects you ensure to some degree the survival of your sport moving forward. If the CFC cannot deal with the responsibility, then get the hell out of the way and let others try.

Duncan: You can spend a lot of time looking back on things in the past that you disagree with. However, there will be no diversion of Junior/Youth money on my watch, you can be sure of that. Financial statements are on-line for all to see. We're trying to make them more detailed as we go forward.

[David Ottosen]

Re: Junior Programs - Dubious Effort?

David, you seem to believe if juniors in Canada have it bad and adults have it worse, that the juniors should be forced to have it worse too. Seems like a good recipe for killing off chess as sport for good.

No, I believe that focusing CFC resources on adult membership would lead to creation of members that sustain past their 20th birthday.

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Why CFC denying talented juniors to represent CANADA at World Stage???

I think I've lost the drift of your argument. Are you referring to ELO (FIDE) rating fees or CFC rating fees? If you're referring to CFC rating fees, I don't think that going to unrated tournaments will reduce tournament entry fees by any significant amount. CFC rating fees are $3 per tournament per player (plus HST). So if we eliminate rating costs, entry fees drop by a whopping $3. Hardly anything on the cost of a weekend Swiss. In places like Toronto, Vancouver, etc. a significant part of the cost of running a tournament relates to the rental of a space to hold the tournament.

I'm referring to a number of aspects of forcing everyone to be ELO rated (whether FIDE or CFC, they are all forms of ELO ratings).

Aspect #1 would be the expense, and primarily this would be the expense of CFC membership. We've had a number of people posting here (Denton Coleman chief among them recently) that they know several people that inquire about the CFC, and are turned off by the high membership fees. A few posters have referred to University students who don't have much free money. What these posters claim is that the primary part of CFC membership fees goes towards ratings, because that is pretty much all the CFC does. I don't know the exact figures for that. Also, chess clubs that run CFC tournaments at their clubs probably have to charge the CFC rating fee on top of that. So it's not just your major weekend Swisses.

But there's another aspect besides the expense. It's the fact that recreational players, including new members, are thrown in with serious players and forced to play them because it's all one rating system. A while back I made an analogy: how would you feel if you were a middle-aged or senior person who decided you wanted to play some weekend tennis, and went to the club to join up, and come to find out that there is no separate section for you to play against only your peers? Instead, you join one big section in which you might be playing the latest 18-year-old wunderkid, and you'll be lucky to just return a serve in the whole match.

The CFC, and tournament organizers, needs to recognize the recreational player and encourage them to join up (or to keep coming out once they've discovered that recreational player is all they can hope to be). A good way to do that is to partition them off into a membership section that doesn't have to pay for CFC rating fees, but instead uses a DIY rating system that they can figure out on a piece of scratchpad paper. These players only want to play against their peers, or if they are new members, they want a slow rampup until they feel more ready to join the more serious (ELO rated) crowd. This applies to recreational players of all ages. Let the youngsters join practically for free and not be ELO rated. When the parents see that their kids dominate that section, they move them into the ELO membership section. Other kids that don't have the talent can continue to play for fun against their peers, rather than quit chess altogether. And in these non-ELO rated sections, you make it fun by offering brilliancy prizes or best-game prizes, and you can even hold chess variant events because, again, that can be rated separately with virtually no additional overhead.

This idea would require one or two more TDs per event. This might even get more people into organizing: start them off in non-serious sections where pairings are easy due to the easy rating calculations, and where any issues that come up won't have the seriousness they would in the ELO rated sections. It would be an apprenticeship system for organizers.

This is much more about the chess clubs than it is about major weekend Swisses, which could continue to be just for the serious crowd.

[Erwin Casareno]

Re: Why CFC denying talented juniors to represent CANADA at World Stage???

It is very difficult to see both sides of a coin at the same time.......withour using gadgets such as mirrors.

To see both sides, you need to spin the coin......

[Mikhail Egorov]

Re: Why CFC denying talented juniors to represent CANADA at World Stage???

It is very difficult to see both sides of a coin at the same time.......withour using gadgets such as mirrors.

I use my own eyes to see both sides of the coin and it works perfectly! :D

To see both sides, you need to spin the coin......

This does not work for me. :)

[Vlad Drkulec]

Re: Why CFC denying talented juniors to represent CANADA at World Stage???

I use my own eyes to see both sides of the coin and it works perfectly! :D



This does not work for me. :)

Only because you are not seeing the coin on the quantum level. :)

[Steve Karpik]

Re: Why CFC denying talented juniors to represent CANADA at World Stage???

I'm referring to a number of aspects of forcing everyone to be ELO rated (whether FIDE or CFC, they are all forms of ELO ratings)...

I am definitely opposed to moving to ELO ratings provided by FIDE (as I believe has been floated by some of the CFC leadership).

The CFC rating system, like any rating system, has its warts but for the most part I think it's a decent basis for a domestic rating system. I can understand how more accomplished players would like to get an ELO rating but for those of us who just enjoy playing the game, it would offer little or nothing. Watching my rating yo-yo between D-class and B-class adds an additional element of enjoyment for me (although I don't much enjoy sinking into D-class).

Putting on my hat as an organizer, CFC rating fee is not too onerous. Turn around by the CFC office on ratings is excellent. When we finish each tournament, there is a great interest on the part of our club members to see how they did in the last tournament.

ELO looks like it would be more costly, add complexity and provide a much slower turn around. And I don't know if they can handle rating players who have ratings as low as some of the beginners in our club. So I would definitely would be against going to ELO ratings. Here's a case where I think the CFC is doing a fine job.

[Mikhail Egorov]

Re: Why CFC denying talented juniors to represent CANADA at World Stage???

Only because you are not seeing the coin on the quantum level. :)

Probably because PHD in quantum physics is required. :D

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Why CFC denying talented juniors to represent CANADA at World Stage???

I am definitely opposed to moving to ELO ratings provided by FIDE (as I believe has been floated by some of the CFC leadership).

The CFC rating system, like any rating system, has its warts but for the most part I think it's a decent basis for a domestic rating system. I can understand how more accomplished players would like to get an ELO rating but for those of us who just enjoy playing the game, it would offer little or nothing. Watching my rating yo-yo between D-class and B-class adds an additional element of enjoyment for me (although I don't much enjoy sinking into D-class).

Putting on my hat as an organizer, CFC rating fee is not too onerous. Turn around by the CFC office on ratings is excellent. When we finish each tournament, there is a great interest on the part of our club members to see how they did in the last tournament.

ELO looks like it would be more costly, add complexity and provide a much slower turn around. And I don't know if they can handle rating players who have ratings as low as some of the beginners in our club. So I would definitely would be against going to ELO ratings. Here's a case where I think the CFC is doing a fine job.

Steve, I'm confused here, but firstly, if you are indeed a chess organizer, hats off to you. If you are a chess organizer outside of Quebec, then you are just one of the hard workers I've been defending for many months now against unwarranted attacks from inside of Quebec.

The part I'm confused about: aren't CFC ratings a form of ELO ratings? You seem to be implying that they are very different from ELO ratings. Maybe they are very different from FIDE ratings, but they are both (I believe) just different variations on a theme, and the theme is the ELO formula, which does allow for some variation.

Are you saying that the variation with CFC ratings is so great that it takes the CFC personnel a lot less time to do them? I hadn't heard that before from anyone. If true, it makes me wonder why so many posters are complaining that CFC membership is too expensive because of ratings costs.

What I have been proposing is a rating system for non-serious players that anyone can do with a few minor calculations on a scrap piece of paper. It would take just a moment or two to do them, and so no CFC involvement would be necessary. This would significantly lower membership fees to organized play to clubs that allowed it, and that would (according to many posters) bring many more people, young and old, out to clubs.

I propose this as a way to widen the base of organized chess membership in Canada. The other benefit I mentioned is that it allows non-serious players to play against their peers, much more than the current system allows. This would serve to keep current non-serious players in the club membership, and to bring in much more club membership who might become in relatively short order members of the serious (CFC-rated) player membership.

[Steve Karpik]

Re: Why CFC denying talented juniors to represent CANADA at World Stage???

The part I'm confused about: aren't CFC ratings a form of ELO ratings? You seem to be implying that they are very different from ELO ratings. Maybe they are very different from FIDE ratings, but they are both (I believe) just different variations on a theme, and the theme is the ELO formula, which does allow for some variation.

I've fallen into the role of organizing our on-going series of Swiss tournaments at the Scarborough Chess Club. I don't know enough to handle disputes that an arbiter should handle so I leave that to those who are far more knowledgeable than I am (for instance, Bryan Lamb). But I look after the grunt work of registering players, doing the pairings, reporting results to the CFC, posting cross tables to our web site, etc. So I'm sort of a defacto organizer. But back to your questions...

Yes, the CFC rating system is a variant on the ELO rating system used by FIDE (or at least that is my understanding). The formulas differ but they share a common heritage.

I have heard that some at the CFC would like to replace the homegrown CFC rating system with one administered by FIDE. Maybe that's just a baseless rumor but maybe it is true. I hope for reasons that I have listed above that this doesn't come to pass.

Now let's look at the issue of chess and how expensive is it to play rated tournaments. Let's take the Scarborough Chess Club for example. To play for one whole chess year (10 months) at the Scarborough Chess Club, an adult has to pay a club membership of $140. And they have to have a CFC membership ($48). So based on 40 games in a year, the cost per night of play is $4.70 per evening of chess -- somewhere around the cost of a fancy coffee at Starbucks. If our games weren't CFC rated, your cost would go down to $3.13 per evening (assuming that you didn't have a CFC membership for some other reason and taking into account that you are indirectly paying $15 per year for rating fees through your club membership). So playing in a CFC-rated tournament is costing you at most $1.57 per night (less if you use your CFC membership at other events). Our club annual membership fee for adults could then fall from $140 to $125 (since we wouldn't be paying the CFC rating fees). Not really that much. It can't go lower because of the cost of renting space in Toronto.

An alternate rating system may have many advantages but I don't think that lower cost is going to be a huge factor for a club like Scarborough. Rating costs just aren't a big part of our overall costs. And based on feedback from our membership, CFC-rating of our games adds value to the club membership. For other clubs and organizers, the story may be different.

We are finding CFC-rated chess tournaments to be quite popular. We don't offer casual or unrated chess just because we're pretty much full with players playing in our tournaments (typically 80+ every Thursday night). We can accommodate probably another 10 or 20 players but after that we're in trouble for space.

[Bob Armstrong]

Scarborough CC Swisses - Cracking 100!

Hi Steve:

I have reported on our Swiss registrations in our newsletter this year.

For all three tournaments of 2011 so far, we have cracked 100 registrants ( though during the tournament, a few have withdrawn at various points ). I've noted elsewhere, that about 44% of our players are juniors.

Bob

[Fred McKim]

Re: Why CFC denying talented juniors to represent CANADA at World Stage???

I have heard that some at the CFC would like to replace the homegrown CFC rating system with one administered by FIDE. Maybe that's just a baseless rumor but maybe it is true. I hope for reasons that I have listed above that this doesn't come to pass.

Steve: I think that statement is a bit misleading. There may be a few organizers so involved with FIDE rated events, that they feel that would be the way to go. That is a real minority.

There never has been a serious discussion concerning this.

The recent proposal by a FIDE Committee to raise rating fees and institute membership fees just goes to show why this would be a mistake to even consider.

For now, the big cities have large enough entry fees that they can have their top sections FIDE rated without players noticing they are in fact paying two rating fees.

[Bob Armstrong]

Re: Why CFC denying talented juniors to represent CANADA at World Stage???

CFC President Michael von Keitz, initially, in his presidential campaign, indicated he supported a move to FIDE ratings, but in the light of opposition, he shelved the idea.

Bob

[Paul Bonham]

Re: Why CFC denying talented juniors to represent CANADA at World Stage???

Our club annual membership fee for adults could then fall from $140 to $125 (since we wouldn't be paying the CFC rating fees). Not really that much. It can't go lower because of the cost of renting space in Toronto.

An alternate rating system may have many advantages but I don't think that lower cost is going to be a huge factor for a club like Scarborough. Rating costs just aren't a big part of our overall costs. And based on feedback from our membership, CFC-rating of our games adds value to the club membership. For other clubs and organizers, the story may be different.

We are finding CFC-rated chess tournaments to be quite popular. We don't offer casual or unrated chess just because we're pretty much full with players playing in our tournaments (typically 80+ every Thursday night). We can accommodate probably another 10 or 20 players but after that we're in trouble for space.

Steve, thanks for this information. I'm not going to try and insist something isn't working if it is working. I was basing my idea on the many posts of others that claim high ratings fees are dampening club membership. Maybe it's not so after all.

But just to make one correction to the above: your SCC membership fee would decline to $125 from $140 if no CFC ratings were used, but there's also the removal of the $48 CFC membership. So that would be a $63 reduction, which would be significant to many people. And although it does sound cheap when you mention the cost per night of chess, it still has to be paid for up front, and that's (for some people) a detriment that can't be overcome.

There are still the other aspects I've mentioned: the sectioning off of serious players from non-serious players (possibly all your current members are serious players?), and the delay in getting CFC ratings done (which for serious players is worth it because the ratings are more in-line with the rest of the chess world).

But it sounds like SCC is doing well and almost full to capacity, so I can see there's no need to try anything different there. Keep up your good work!

The "simple rating system" idea might still be worth trying for clubs in less concentrated / less affluent areas in Canada.

Also, my reasons for looking into this topic and devising a "simple rating system" are not just for chess organizers' potential benefit. It also is an aspect I want to iron out for my chess / poker hybrid game now on a timeline for late 2012 / early 2013 introduction via an online playing site leading up to an initial championship event (that I believe will capture the imagination of the chess and poker worlds and lead eventually to many great things, including televised events on at least one major network or cable channel). We are now entering the initial stages of the software development cycle for this project, after many revisions of the business plan. I know I've mentioned this before, and some of you might say "yeah, right", but it does take patience and consideration to get the plan right. The steps I was thinking to take a year or two ago would have been too hasty and would have required much more seed capital, with accompanying risk. Now it's a lower-risk, lower-capital plan that actually has much better chances of almost immediate success. The key is to get the software right, and those of us involved all know how to do that because we've been doing it for years.

For this project, the decisions as game inventor are primarily mine, and based on my look at the chess world, I've pretty much decided against an ELO rating system in favor of the simpler system I've outlined in another thread. Since this game will be totally new, it won't have the encumberances of an established game like chess. So its rating system will be almost as accurate and effective as ELO, but will be much faster, cheaper, and won't act as a drag on the membership. And the thing I like about it, it doesn't take ratings out of the hands of the members. Anyone can do the ratings themselves in a matter of minutes.