Rich Hutnik wrote:
David Richerby wrote:
What advantage does membership of an organization like the CFC
confer? [...] Here in the UK, I can play in OTB tournaments and
get a rating from the ECF for a small fee per game that's included
in the tournament entry fee. (ECF members typically get a discount
on tournament entry that I believe slightly more than covers the
rating fee.)

Ok, so what it looks like then is Chess in North America needs to
change things a bit, and have it so that you can play in an
association chess tournament, but if you become an association
member, you need a discount.

A discount seems like a good idea. Whatever form it takes, there has
to be some relevant incentive to join the association if people are
going to join it. I am not a member of the ECF because I feel no
incentive to join; this doesn't seem to be a problem for me or the
ECF. The USCF, on the other hand, seems to believe that everybody who
wants to play chess in the USA with any degree of seriousness should
be a member; this position seems untenable to me.

Do any other sports require amateurs to join some kind of national or
regional association as a condition for taking part in competitions?

Sports that operate on a professional level normally have a governing
body for them. There is an exception of poker, but that is an
exception.

And boxing which, at the last count, had 1,487 governing bodies.

What happens with the CFC if it folds, is that Canada would
^ not! :-)
have
a governing body for chess. This means it will have no voice in
Canada to attempt to market it.

Not necessarily. Art, for example, doesn't have a governing body but
it still has a voice.

To have a champion in a country over a given game, don't you need
some sort of governing body to make the champion valid?

Not at all -- you just need people to accept the champion. Remember
that the chess world championship was not organized by any governing
body until 1948 but nobody disputes the status of Steinitz, Lasker,
Capablanca, Alekhine and Euwe as world champions of their time.

The falling membership of national associations doesn't
particularly concern me. The associations just don't seem to be
relevant to even the regular tournament player, let alone the
average guy who likes to play the occasional game of chess against
his friends or online.

So, you are saying that Chess is fine in Canada?

No -- I know nothing of the state of chess in Canada. All I'm saying
is that your reports of the bad state of the Canadian federation don't
necessarily mean that *chess* has a problem in Canada.


Dave.

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