On Aug 13, 11:17 pm, PB wrote:
On Aug 13, 1:11?pm, "Chess One" wrote:





"PB" wrote in message

ups.com...

Phil:

Those are figures for all of England. It would be possible but
tedious to regionalise them, and the definitions for such an exercise
would need some thought.

I note that the 2007 ECF Year Book lists 9 clubs in Cornwall, which
implies perhaps a maximum of 16 matches?

Yes - that's way down since 30 years ago. Probably 18 league matches and 3
or 4 cup KO format ones. Then for some, county games which used to be about
1 per month, and we had a rated club championship. Maybe 20 rated-games per
year is an average?

On payment, I am a couple of years out of touch but the system as
applied to Cornwall would have been that the Cornwall County Chess
Association would pay the national body ?0.92 (say $1.75) per game
played in the Association's tournaments, and half that amount in the
case of junior tournaments. How the Cornwall Association collects
this money from its local clubs/players is entirely a matter for the
Association - I have seen various models depending on local
circumstances, which vary widely.

Interesting. So about $35 pa for that 20-game player [though this may be
offset by local art 'grants' and such - isn't some lottery money going to
chess now? Maybe just centrally to BCF?]. My old club colleague Ian George
is now the CCCA Sec, I'll ask him, and also how is his Pirc?

I further assume that these fees - 92 new pence per game support the cost of
ratings by BCF, and nothing else - not a magazine, eg.

My own Club plays in two leagues, in both Kent and Sussex. It is
those leagues which pay the national rating fee of ?0.92 per game.
But as it happens we pay the leagues not per game, but a sum per team
we enter, and we trust someone in the leagues has done their maths OK
to meet the leagues' costs. Then our own Club members pay an annual
subscription (currently ?48) to the Club to cover our team entry fees
and the Club's other costs, and we trust that our Club Treasurer has
got her budget right. At the moment the players in my Club's team
matches also pay a supplementary amount of ?2 per match, but that's a
contentious issue.

?1 = $1.90 very very roughly.

OK - that's a fair outline of club fee system, & maybe typical. Although I
notice you Saxons use money instead of Heva! being able to make payment in
mackeral.

Statistically, I mention in passing that there are a further 3,056
players in the English system who had rated games in 05/06 but none in
06/07.

I note 17 players whose first affiliation is listed as Camborne &
Redruth; 13 of them had rated games in 06/07, the average number of
games amongst those 13 being 16, and the median 14.

A very good report - and I thank you.

[I lived in Sussex one Summer, eat figs! and cycled back and forth on a
sit-up-and-beg 1919 bicycle twixt Arundel, Chichester and down the lanes
Bogner way, past Blake's house - easy cycling below the Downs. I met Lady
Goodwood there, who, at the time seemed to own half of Africa, and since I
didn't fawn before her, La assumed I was indeed the viscious Viscount Innes,
something of a raconteur, and engaged me in topics which I had to gloss
being entirely innocent of them! But I never played chess in Sussex except
with her driver who was good enough to play 'blind' while driving.]

This side of the pond only 25% of adult USCF members [that's 7,500 players]
play a minimum of 10 rated games per year.

Cordially, Phil Innes

regards

Paul Buswell- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Phil:

When you say that ratings go to the rating system and nothing else you
repeat a common misconception. It is true that the ordinary player
(i.e. one not paying any enhanced supplementary membership
subscription direct to the national body) will not see any direct
benefit other than their rating, but rating fees are not hypothecated
to payment for the rating system, they are just one of several income
streams to meet multifarious costs at national level.

It is correct that there is state funding for chess at national level
but at local club level it is far far patchier and very few have
tapped into it successfully. We locally could try for, let's see.,
national lottery funding, local Arts Council, local municipality,
local charities, all sorts of sources - but we've had very little
success because we don't really fit the priority criteria - except in
certain limited areas of 'social inclusion' we in this town are not
dealing with the main areas of politically correct concerns. Besides,
the damned paperwork is so daunting - I lose any enthusiasm for
spending 2 to 3 hours on putting together a halfway presentable
funding application for a few hundred quid if I assess its likely
success as maybe 20-1 against.

regards
Paul Buswell- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

We are also occasionally our own worst enemy. I lost at least 3-4
tournament and chess club sites because of anti-social, unacceptable
behavior by chess players.

It was one of the main factors in convincing me to give up chess
organizing. The other was declining attendance. I know of another
case where a long term site for the Kansas Open was lost forever
because a chess player propositioned a student on the campus where the
event had been held for years.

The student rightfully complained to the college officials and they
withdrew use of their campus facilities the following year. It was
widespread common knowledge that people slept in their cars in the
parking lot of the Adams Mark Hotel in Philadelphia at the World
Open. I knew 4 chess players personally who told me they slept in
their cars at that tournament for the entire time the event was going
on.

For a time here we couldn't keep a site for our chess club open
because moronic, obnoxious chess players kept ****ing off the owners/
operators of the places we were holding it. Between 1998 and 2003,
Omaha Chess Club moved 5 times.