I played in a corporate league in your area. I'm surprised it doesn't exist
any more. It was a Wednesday night league, just like softball or bowling.
I played for Dunellen, and I recall Bell Labs, Rutgers, and about a dozen
teams total were in the league.

Jay McKeen


"Ned Walthall" wrote in message
...
I am wondering if there is way we get chess going in the workplace?

In my own experience, the biggest problem is getting a chess club going
is finding space to meet. Finding players, even in age of declining USCF
membership, has never been much of a problem, at least not for me.

In my area, around Princeton, New Jersey, there is a softball league in
which teams from various companies play one another. The companies
supply and maintain the fields on their own grounds; the employees
handle the organization.

If we could, with a little help from the USCF, get company leagues
going, similar to the above, with the companies providing the meeting
space, we could, in effect, spawn chess clubs all over the US, and we
would be hitting on a major area of decline in USCF membership--adult
members.

Moreover, it would be a great way to recruit women members. The softball
league above has a requirement that a certain number of woman be include
on each team. You could do the same with a company chess league.

How could the USCF help, without costing itself much money, which it
clearly does not have, at least at the moment?

(1) It could establish--and of course publish-- some guidelines and
minimum standards for league play. (Why minimum standards? I will get to
that in a minute.) As I understand it, league play is very common in
the UK and Europe, but not so much in the United States. I have started
clubs and directed (small) tournaments; I have no model for setting up a
corporate league. Since the idea is to promote chess, I would want a
model that is inclusive, gives players at all levels an opportunity to
play, but also allows teams with stronger players to strut their stuff.
But how many matches, how many boards, how many players per corporate
team? The USCF could provide some guidelines with regards to how to set
up a league.

(2) It could sponsor, much as it does in the case of the team
tournaments, regional and national playoffs between league "champions."
Here is where the minimum standards come in. In order to have some
system by which a national corporate team champion could be crowned,
league play at the local level might have to meet some minimum
standards. What constitutes a league? Does their have to be a minimum
number of teams, a minimum number of matches, etc. Of course at the
local league level, the organization would be handled by local
organizers willing to devote some time in setting up the league.

If you linked the league play up with a good and worthy charity, you
might be able to get some corporate sponsorship. There is precedent for
this in other sports, particularly running. Race for the Cure is an
example that comes to mind.

And I would think that companies that pride themselves on the "smarts"
of their employees and rely on that perception in their
marketing--McKinsey, Accenture, Microsoft,etc--would love to see and
sponsor a corporate team in the finals of some kind of national playoff.
(You might be able to organize the leagues at the local level to be
inclusive, but if you had some kind of national playoff, you could make
them more exclusive, perhaps sending the best 4-6 players.) Who knows,
companies might even hire masters as ringers, which would be great.

Also, a lot of the arguments that are marshaled to support chess in the
schools seem equally valid in the workplace, particular in an
information economy.


Ned Walthall