We should not be quick to give up on the USCF. It still has 86,000
members, $3.2 million in annual revenues and until 1999 it had $2
million cash and equivalent in the LMA. We have recently suffered from
bad management and bad boards but prior to that we had 60 good years.
We are still stronger and better off than any comparable organization
that I know of.

Sam Sloan
---
what are you doing posting in the middle of the night - you crazy?

OTOH, uscf has had no major sponsors for a long time, nor seems capable of
financially containing one [which might be Anderson's point] and as above,
is now very reduced in ready assets and influence. Moskow seems to think the
same.

According to Horowitz in 1968 [?] uscf was in greenwich village and had less
than 10,000 members. the 'boom' was entirely fischer-effect, which boosted
it to 50,000+ by mid-late 70s. the past 40 years have added about 30,000
members, and the main increment is from the high turn-over scholastic scene,
which in terms of membership is simply a ratings-market requirement

a failing therefore, is that in the 60 years cited above [more pertinently
the past 35 years] uscf has failed to be more than that outfit in greenwich
village, a devoted amateur level organisation

whether this means that another outfit is necessary to cogently contain and
process another level of chess, enabling it to escape its annual rotations
of members, without significant increase in numbers, all seem to be the
point these chess entrepreneurs are addressing

and indeed, that is the chat on 'the other circuit' to which uscf-only folks
are deaf, blind and dumb. it is not a raid on uscf resources as much as a
resource of necessity

phil innes
vermont