On Aug 21, 9:13 am, Old Haasie wrote:
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In a chess dead or otherwise poor performing area, would it be good
for chess or bad for chess if an individual promoter with some money,
not necessarily a lot of money, showed up and began promoting chess
events?


Okay why are YOU asking this question? Aren't you saying it WOULD be
good or do you just not really know and are only suggesting we try
throwing some money at a problem to see if the problem gets better?
Suppose my answer is no, it wouldn't be good for chess it would be bad
because the promoter showed up spent the money and the area saw no
increased chess activity.


Most people would say it would be a good thing.

So far only one person I know of has said it would be a good thing and
that is you.


Now, if the
promoter was a District umbrella, rather than a traditional individual
promoter, and proposed to do the same thing for the given area, would
that be good or bad for chess in that area?



Rhetorical? In my opinion it would make no difference in overall
chess activity and would waste a bunch of money creating a new layer
of bureaucracy. All those extra funds would be blown on one big
tournament and there would be no appreciable increase in chess
activity. Therefore it would be bad, because it accomplished nothing,
cost a lot and didn't improve things.


Why would an individual
promoter be good and the associative form of a promoter be bad for
chess?

The same reason that more bureaucracy is worse than less bureacracy.
The more layers of bureaucracy you create the greater the waste and
the fraud.


If either type of promoter missed the market, it could change
its approach. But, what would most likely happen in the case of the
individual is that he would quit altogether, taking away from the
chess community at large what was left of his working capital, leaving
a dead chess area with no mechanism to revive organized chess or
sustain it.

If an organizer quits it's because the players don't support his
events and he loses money. You are basically asking the players to
subsidize the local organizers through a dues sharing arrangement with
USCF. You want to take $50.00+ from the players and let the organizer
keep $15.00 of it to promote local chess. The numerous fallacies of
your proposal have been pointed out for years by many others.

If dues are an obstacle to participation at $49.00/year they are going
to be an obstacle when they are higher. Your false presumption is
that players will open their wallet if they think $15.00 of that money
is staying in the metro district. Unfortunately most rational people
don't accept that premise, you being the one exception.


If the District failed in its early attempts, it could
try again and again (using the annual funding) with different local
schemes until they found something that worked. Thus,.. a District
umbrella (a promoter in the associative form) would probably have much
more staying power that the typically thinly funded lone wolf
organizer. This is a benefit of spreading the risk thinly throughout
the organization versus piling all the risk onto one man's shoulders.

If the district fails the players will probably not return nor will
they ever trust the district to wisely spend their money again. What
is really needed to revive chess in an area is gaining the trust and
the participation of the players in that area. In order to do that
one has to know why the players aren't playing in tournaments? Is it
because of costs? Is it because of working? Is it because the time
controls are too fast or two slow? Is it because they hate the
organizer? Is it because their opponent at the last tournament farted
and belched? Is it because USCF dues are too high or entry fees are
too high? Is it because they just got married or had a new child
born? Is it because they have other more interesting activities that
they like better than sitting in a tournament hall playing chess all
day?

The most annoying thing about your Mensa plan is it pretends to know
the answers to all of these questions and it really addresses none of
them except to make the assumption that if a metro district system was
in place that players would crawl out of the woodwork to pay more than
they currently do to play chess.


Old Haasie