"There is no money in the chess world. There is no serious company
that will be willing to show itself on the stage with Ilyumzhinov.
Chess represents strategic management, handling foresightful, exact
thinking, making decisions.
These are qualities those responsible in FIDE do not have" -- Hans-
Walter Schmitt, organizer of the Chess Classic Mainz 2007.


Bruce wrote:
On Aug 13, 9:27 am, "Chess One" wrote:
Much better to do something like the Polgar-blog which gets huge numbers
of visitors, and such people can get excited about the possibilities and
show up not in the 10s or 100s, but in the 1,000s or even 50,000 as
happened in Mexico City.

Her blog might successfully generate appearance fees for her -- but how do
you convert such a blog into high margin transactions for an organization?

I wonder if that is a serious question? One answer [with 1,000 parts] might
be to shut-up and listen, since so very many people have been writing to
just that topic for years.

Secondly, you actually know the answer, though because of some /frisson/ you
have about strong players, you dismiss a fair conclusion... look --

Her tournaments at her "club" generate small turn-outs and her foundation
has modest annual revenues.

The organiser doesn't promote the organisation, nor keep the money. The Club
in a city is essentially a local one. The national following from that base
gaurantees that in any city she will get prominently into the print news,
and very likely the tv news.

Other than keeping her name afloat, what does her blog do? Vanity press?

By not 'going on' about organisations [how completely numb!], and instead
addressing the //benefit to children// as players of the game - she achieves
huge press.

Please make a note of it. It is not difficult to understand, is not
controversial, and even opponents admit the FACT of it. Its simply not
necessary to have all these organisational attitudes and staff levels to
present the game to the public, in fact, by all evidence that has an
OPPOSITE effect.

It will be interesting to see how USCF can sensibly use its income and
staffing levels to well-utilize this level of celebrity, where -- to
re-state this to those who gave up already -- USCF could learn something
from Polgar Foundation on how to do it, which is going to be all about them,
the players, which is absolutely how it should be, and the potential here is
to make USCF a professional organisation, instead of feuding minor magnates
who are only big in their own estimation of themselves.

Phil Innes



ECJ- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Having been out of the loop mostly for 4 years I will only say that
USCF is an eternally political organization. While there is nothing
wrong with Ms. Polgar trying to promote chess, sometimes being on the
board politicizes everything a person wants to do.

Look at all the people who were pretty well respected as chess
promoters. Once they got elected to the board they were viewed as
sycophants, pandererers for political power, self ingratiators or do-
nothings. This included not just the well known politicos who have a
vested interest in controlling or influencing the board but in others
that started out with sincere, honest motives.

It was my experience that those people get sucked into the petty
quarrels and political alliances which are merely an accepted reality
of Board membership.