You are asking us to think, but you do not seem to be thinking much
yourself.

You are saying that it will be cheaper to send a high school student
to a small town in the bad-lands of West Texas than it is to send that
same high school student to the US Open Chess Championship in a big
city.

So, by going to that small town in a remote area where the high school
student is provided with a free room in an otherwise unoccupied
student dormitory for a week, multiplying that over 100 players, they
have saved $100,000.

But by spending a week in the small town where nobody else will be
there except for the other high school players, they are deprived of
the opportunity to hobnob with and play against the grandmasters who
will be at the US Open, an important consideration for the high school
champion of a state.

If Susan Polgar wants to organize a tournament for high school
champions and hold it in Lubbock Texas, she should organize her own
tournament there. She can invite all the same players that are invited
to the Denker and offer them a free dormitory room and the same
scholarship prizes, all this costing the university nothing because
the dormitory is empty anyway during the summer and these scholarships
are rarely accepted anyway, and see how many show up.

I will bet that nobody comes and that is how many will come if the
Denker is moved to West Texas.

If the Denker is moved anywhere it should be moved to Miami where
Arnold Denker lived and where the Denker Estate is located. How about
taking a survey, asking the players whether they would rather go to
Lubbock, Texas or to Miami? What do you think the result of that
survey will be?

Susan Polgar should stop trying to disrupt a successful tournament and
should organize her own tournament and see how many come. Of course,
she already does that. Her "Susan Polgar World Open Championship" just
held got only 119 players, whereas the real World Open always gets
over 1200.

Sam Sloan

Sam Sloan has a go at thinking about others:-

"samsloan" wrote in message
oups.com...

Quote:

Originally Posted by mnibb I don't disregard that fact Bill, I say let them come and play the US Open if they want to play the US Open. Your logic with respect to this not being a savings for the Denker players is a lot like the person who goes to a sale and spends 3 times what they would have spent because it was a good deal. If you have 100 kids who will save $1000 or more each, that is $100,000 savings for the players. How much do you save the kids who go play at both the US Open and the Denker and Polgar events. Well, it seems to me that they are spending perhaps $1000 plus travel each. At TT they would spend travel only. Seems to me that you don't consider that as a significant expense to these High School children getting ready to go to college. Think it over again. Mark Nibbelin

You are asking us to think, but you do not seem to be thinking much
yourself.

You are saying that it will be cheaper to send a high school student
to a small town in the bad-lands of West Texas than it is to send that
same high school student to the US Open Chess Championship in a big
city.

It seems to me that Mark Nibbelin is not saying that, so why paraphrase his
argument that way. Whether Sam Sloan thinks that New York City is cheaper
than Lubbock, Tx, is unknown.

So, by going to that small town in a remote area where the high school
student is provided with a free room in an otherwise unoccupied
student dormitory for a week, multiplying that over 100 players, they
have saved $100,000.

Sam extends his argument. But he forgot a couple of things - most high
school kids will in fact have a parent with them, and that parent also needs
accommodation. The emphasis on motel/college rooms is unexplained.

But by spending a week in the small town where nobody else will be
there except for the other high school players, they are deprived of
the opportunity to hobnob with and play against the grandmasters who
will be at the US Open, an important consideration for the high school
champion of a state.

That is true enough - and we must presume that Sam Sloan considers the
amount of hob-nobbing worth $1,000 per player. Perhaps Mr. Sloan is
representing his own values, since I have noted before that meeting their
peers in chess from all over the country seems to be more motivating for
young players.

Ultimately it is a choice - and nothing actually prevent a youth and his
parent from spending the extra money to attend the US Open - and I expect
many will do so. The issue here seems to be for the family of the player to
have a choice to spend an extra $1,000 or not? And I also suppose that for
some players, that is a lot of money.

If Susan Polgar wants to organize a tournament for high school
champions and hold it in Lubbock Texas, she should organize her own
tournament there. She can invite all the same players that are invited
to the Denker and offer them a free dormitory room and the same
scholarship prizes, all this costing the university nothing because
the dormitory is empty anyway during the summer and these scholarships
are rarely accepted anyway, and see how many show up.

How grand to allow her to do this!

I will bet that nobody comes and that is how many will come if the
Denker is moved to West Texas.

So what's the fuss about?

If the Denker is moved anywhere it should be moved to Miami where
Arnold Denker lived and where the Denker Estate is located. How about
taking a survey, asking the players whether they would rather go to
Lubbock, Texas or to Miami? What do you think the result of that
survey will be?

I think people will vote with their dollars. And since Texas is
geographically more central in US than the southern appendage, Florida,
while also costing less to be there, why not indeed let people chose. As for
hob nobbing with GMs, well, Susan Polgar is herself a GM, and I have noticed
that she has some number of good friends in the GM community, and I bet
there might be a few of them in attendance, don't you? Maybe showing up to
play a simul or something?

Susan Polgar should stop trying to disrupt a successful tournament and
should organize her own tournament and see how many come.

O! But I thought all the above was a discussion about what the PLAYERS
wanted? I thought this conversation was in the spirit of an experiment that
would offer a choice to young players?

Surely, nothing restricts those with an extra thousand bucks who want to
hob-knob from doing so. But by insisting on that high threshold of cost,
surely those who can't afford that are excluded from the game, and I am
shocked, shocked Louis! that Sam Sloan should be indifferent to the fate of
less well-off kids playing chess.

Of course,
she already does that. Her "Susan Polgar World Open Championship" just
held got only 119 players, whereas the real World Open always gets
over 1200.

As they say on usenet: and your point is?

Sam Sloan compares two events at ratio of 1:10, but doesn't want to actually
provide a choice, and instead talks about disruption. You would almost think
that he represented some monopolistic venture, that sought to reduce any and
all competition, while denying the chess public any say whatever, and only
pretending to ask experimental questions about alternatives.

What Sam Sloan might like to also consider are the other factors which are
implicate in scholastic chess, and those are not merely quantities, but to
do with qualities. I believe that Susan Polgar already mentioned one of
those recently; that, in her opinion, there should be a limit imposed on how
many hours per day young people should have to play chess. This seems to be
a sensible measure which reflects a concern for the well-being of the child.
At a strategic level of the player's entire chess experience, having a more
pleasant tournament with a hundred or so peers, played over less than 12
hours per day, [rather than some 1,000+ people and long days] might actually
deepen young people's interest in the game, thereby keeping them in it.

While Sam Sloan has had a go at thinking; to advance his understanding he
might use this current momentum to actually think about the welfare of
SOMEONE ELSE:

The players!

Phil Innes
Vermont
--------

Sam Sloan

I also agree the logic is very odd. For the US Championship and US
Women's
Championship...they used to be held at small universities/colleges where
expenses were low (and so were prizes). The players didn't like it --
they wanted
larger prizes and fancier digs.

Holding the Denker at a Texas campus is OK in principle - but there are at
least four objections:

1. Remote location / college location

2. Separating the event from the single largest chess festival of the
season
-- the US Open

3. Separating the event from direct USCF involvement

4. GM Susan Polgar


I briefly addressed # 1 already.

I fail to see why Texas is more 'remote' than Florida, and in fact, its a
more central US location than anywhere else.

# 2 is obvious -- it is far better (as a
player) to go to a large festival/convention where one can see GMs and
play in
side events an decide how long to stay...vs. attending the Denker at a
remote
location.

But at a substantial cost - in this case =$1.000 'better'. Similarly, I am
not as sure that this 'better' is a view shared by parents and children who
are serious about their chess: 1,200 player-sites are a zoo!

# 3 is also important -- the US Open has USCF staff presence in
abundance in a way that most single events do not, and # 4 goes without
saying --
Sam is 100 percent correct that she is trying to take a USCF property
away.


In the UK we didn't go to events with GMs in them, since we had none.
Instead there were serious tournaments all over the place which then
generated about 20 GMs while over the same period in the US you generated 2.

Pro-rated per capita, US should have produced 80 native born GMs.

Of course, if property is more important that this factor, then by all means
argue for continuous mediocrity - though I rather fear that solution is the
most expensive one of all.

Phil Innes

ECJ

On Jun 23, 7:03 am, "Chess One" wrote:

I think people will vote with their dollars. And since Texas is
geographically more central in US than the southern appendage, Florida,
while also costing less to be there, why not indeed let people chose. As for
hob nobbing with GMs, well, Susan Polgar is herself a GM, and I have noticed
that she has some number of good friends in the GM community,

Can you name one, because I am not aware of any any more.

She seems to have cut relations with just about everybody.

Sam Sloan

I will bet that nobody comes and that is how many will come if the
Denker is moved to West Texas.

So what's the fuss about?



That it is a USCF property and it is NOT OK to allow it to fail by
allowing a bad plan to go forward. That's the fuss.


In 4 posts so far to my message NOT A WORD about the comparative benefit to
the player from Delegate Johnson. And, without any irony, these comments
come after 30,000 words on the subject by USCF boosters, who have NEVER
talked about the players. Not a word - except the supposition that they like
to hob-nob with GMs.

In his previous message Eric Johnson suggests that instead of player
benefit, his perspective is "I'll also add that the organization *needs*
people to buy hotel nights at the US Open -- so this "savings" is not
helping the organization"

Larry Parr and Larry Evans used to write about burocratic practices in
chess, at FIDE and USCF, where chess officials looked after themselves and
each other first, rather than any player-orientation.

So what is the point of maintaining these organisations when we see these
responses? I note that those who resent the Polgar and Denker being changed
do not even understand why any change has been mooted, since, quite
literally, they *demonstrate* that they do not think about the welfare of
young chess players.

Phil Innes

ECJ

Don, unless you know something that I do not know, Texas Tech has not
offered free room and board for the players.

The board has yet to be presented with a proposal. We do not know what
is being offered.

The board is in exactly the same position as it was on February 20,
2006 when the board was presented with a "Polgar Letter to the Board"
which resulted in a lengthy thread that has recently been restored
involving more than 150 posts, where we never found out exactly what
the proposal was.

As we now know, that proposal turned out badly for the USCF. We came
out on the short end of the stick.

Now, we should be asking: Will Polgar make an official written
proposal, or does she just figure that her slate will be elected and
then she can do anything she wants?

Sam Sloan

Quote:

Originally Posted by CHESSDON I have some questions. 1) Is the 100K to support the Denker or both the Denker and Polgar tournaments? 2) Is the offer for dormitory rooms and how much do these rooms normally rent, and are we talking 1, 2 3 or 4 players per room? 3) Similarly what is the going rate for the cost of the meals that come free?. 4) Are we restricted to certain dates due to room availability? Regards, Don Schultz

Don, unless you know something that I do not know, Texas Tech has not
offered free room and board for the players.



Even if they did -- this does not benefit the organization at all. Free
hotel rooms (in most hotel contracts) are valued at $0.

USCF doesn't pay for travel or lodging for Denker participants. Any free
lodging does not add one penny to USCF (either as positive donation or
reduced expense).

Does the board have a clear idea of what does -- and what does not --
benefit the organization???


I can answer that.

Supporting chess in the USA is the /function/ of USCF, and rather than 'what
can they do for us?, the pertinent question to maintaining a non-profit
national organisation is 'what can we do for them?'

This group of writers, Johnson / Sloan / Schultz behave together as if they
were a for-profit business in a monopoly position, seeking to keep any and
all other parties out of the game. They have in now 40,000 words not
addressed ANY benefit to young chess players, or even thought they were
worth a mention - except of course to disparage those who have.

Here they are, tragically surprised that other people have rather different
ideas and orientations and acted on them, while USCF went to sleep on the
issue while damning every critic that still bothers to engage them.

What we got here is a game of desperation catch-up during election season,
and instead of doing what USCF exists for, taking a lead in boosting chess
from within or without - what we got is anger from the Politcos who were
caught napping, yet again.

ZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz

Now that they are awake, at least for a month, they might note that this is
not the only thing they 'have' which is in some danger of migrating, mostly
for the want of proper care and attention, and stuffing their ears full of
each other is the surest way of ensuring what happens on the chess scene
will continue to tragically alarm them.

Phil Innes
Vermont

ECJ