RSHaas posted:

"The subnational organizational level would be greatly strengthened if funded
USCF Metro District organizations were present and functioned as the "promoter
- organizer of first and/or last resort in its operational territory." Funding
would come automatically from a $10 share of each adult membership ($5 from
juniors) very much in the style of the Mensa organization. Each Metro District
would caretake the chess affairs of the area it covered in a wide variety of
ways including the direct promotion of chess events, or in partnership with
individual promoters, with the state association, with other Districts and with
Chess HQ itself."

While I agree with you about the need for greater incentives for the affiliates
and empowering local groups to promote and run USCF activities. The fact is the
USCF has been replying on membership dues as a source of revenue. The same
analogy can be make with the way in which chess tournaments are mainly run in
the United States. The main source of revenue is the entry fees rather than
sponsorship, as is it in other countries.

The USCF has managed to alienate so many vital people throughout the last years
with a consequence of losing many organizers, tournament directors and lacking
strong support from the state chapters. The only solution that I see at this
point is to make sure that the upcoming reorganization of the USCF will be
successful and upgrading the technology currently available, as well as
introducing and developing new promotional and marketing tools.

Although, I am hoping for the best and if I get elected to the USCF Executive
Board I will be proactive in following the steps of this process, at the same
time I am quite skeptical about the short term's results of the implementation
of this plan. If we don't have a plan of action with a time table attach to
it, we do not know for sure if the much needed improvements will be handle
appropriately.

" Work on putting a Mensa (Metro District) styled system into the USCF and
you'll finally arrive at a national chess federation in which you can take
pride. Lacking a Mensa type system, we don't need to send anything close to
$49 to Chess HQ for membership in an organization whose only interest in our
local areas and our states is how much money it can harvest therefrom.
(RSHaas) "

In my view, the financial priorities at this moments a

The sale of the building in New Windsor, upgrading the computers, software's
and technology in general, downsizing the USCF staff and moving to a new
location.

Once the restructuring of the USCF is completed, we need to begin building and
revitalizing the network.

The financial situation of the USCF still in very critical condition. The way
I see it: we have two minutes left in the clock and 10 moves to complete the
time control, these moves must be all good or excellent moves, one mistake can
cost us the game.

Yours for Chess,

Beatriz Marinello

Subject: Working Capital
From: (Stewart Q. Sutton)
Date: 7/12/2003 3:20 PM Eastern Daylight Time
Message-id:

(Mike Nolan) wrote in message
...

Here's some data by year on the number of 'A' affiliates that have
run events:

year | count | players | games
------+-------+---------+--------
1992 | 528 | 113760 | 225916
1993 | 548 | 125404 | 253672
1994 | 561 | 136290 | 276811
1995 | 575 | 144591 | 295756
1996 | 544 | 152385 | 305835
1997 | 542 | 149140 | 300065
1998 | 546 | 147808 | 301663
1999 | 523 | 142878 | 298624
2000 | 489 | 130097 | 274965
2001 | 435 | 146698 | 307626
2002 | 457 | 171155 | 367026
2003 | 374 | 87588 | 191288


Don't the 2002 figures seem to contradict the general perception that
adult chess has taken a dive?

Not if the games were played by kids.

John Fernandez

Yes, certainly the USCF must first right itself and get some wind back in
its sail. If that is possible, and it may not be possible, the USCF can then
explore ways to become a more effective national chess federation.
The one way the USCF can become much more of a "hands on" and "can do"
chess federation.. is to share a portion of the national dues with the basic
market for organizational chess.. i.e., the metropolitan market. That is the
scale where the most effective and most productive organizational work can be
done, therefore the best scale to capitalize. (RSHaas)

(Stewart Q. Sutton) writes:

Don't the 2002 figures seem to contradict the general perception that
adult chess has taken a dive?

Here's some more detailed data.

This data only goes back to 1999, because I don't have detailed information
on membership type before then, but here's the number of Regular Adult
players competing in events held by regular, college, HS, and state
affiliates. I've also limited it to regular ratings, since an increasing
number of events in the game/30-59 range are being dual-rated.

memtp | year | count | a_affil | g_affil | h_affil | t_affil
R | 1999 | 59521 | 50003 | 1673 | 2605 | 4363
R | 2000 | 53799 | 44262 | 1406 | 2658 | 4946
R | 2001 | 54097 | 44551 | 1690 | 2842 | 4461
R | 2002 | 55644 | 44530 | 1882 | 2365 | 6341
R | 2003 | 24534 | 20345 | 579 | 1211 | 2316

Youth members:
memtp | year | count | a_affil | g_affil | h_affil | t_affil
J | 1999 | 34632 | 20568 | 590 | 8962 | 4034
J | 2000 | 31775 | 16477 | 627 | 10141 | 4072
J | 2001 | 32681 | 18023 | 637 | 9909 | 3797
J | 2002 | 35555 | 20368 | 846 | 9294 | 4781
J | 2003 | 18492 | 9665 | 221 | 5852 | 2719

Scholastic members:

memtp | year | count | a_affil | g_affil | h_affil | t_affil
U | 1999 | 79016 | 38247 | 579 | 33920 | 5384
U | 2000 | 87765 | 39901 | 660 | 40301 | 6071
U | 2001 | 97507 | 46626 | 593 | 42578 | 7070
U | 2002 | 111960 | 54357 | 1154 | 46078 | 9559
U | 2003 | 57830 | 26859 | 336 | 25377 | 5123

Regular adult play seems to have held fairly constant, the most
dramatic increase has been among scholastic players competing in events
organized by regular affiliates.
--
Mike Nolan

Here's some data by year on the number of 'A' affiliates that have
run events:

year | count | players | games
------+-------+---------+--------
1992 | 528 | 113760 | 225916
1993 | 548 | 125404 | 253672
1994 | 561 | 136290 | 276811
1995 | 575 | 144591 | 295756
1996 | 544 | 152385 | 305835
1997 | 542 | 149140 | 300065
1998 | 546 | 147808 | 301663
1999 | 523 | 142878 | 298624
2000 | 489 | 130097 | 274965
2001 | 435 | 146698 | 307626
2002 | 457 | 171155 | 367026
2003 | 374 | 87588 | 191288


Something about that 60,000 jump in games rated during 2002 bothers me
because it seems to fly in the face of everything I'm seeing and
hearing. I wonder if there may be two factors that need to be
adjusted to give a better picture of the true state of adult
affiliates (or rated chess in general).

(1) When I go to the MSA tournament history page and look up a likely
candidate, say frequent poster John Fernandez, and examine his
tournament history I see an separate tournament entries for a "5TH NYS
G/45" under both the Regular and Quick ratings. Is it possible that
there is double counting of these dual rated tournaments in your
figures?

(2) I looked up the tournament history for A6017738: US CHESS LIVE,
and found that they have held 150 tournaments since 2002/03/10. An
"educated" guess on my part is that the tournaments average 40 players
per event. 150(tournaments) * 40(players per tournament) * 5(rounds
per tournament) gives 30,000 and that divided by 2(players per game)
gives somewhere in the vicinity of 15,000 games. If these events were
counted in your figures, would it be better to exclude the "Internet"
games to give a truer picture of OTB chess?

I know you are a very busy man, but I am still troubled by this and am
wondering if you could explain where my thought process went wrong.
Of course, do so when convenient for you.

(Stewart Q. Sutton) writes:

I don't remember whether I excluded 'Q' rated games in that summary or
not. However, since you also want me to eliminate the USCL games, I can
do both in the same run. This will also update the 2002 and 2003 counts
through mid-July.

This is by affiliate type, so I've given both regular affiliate (A)
and state chapters (T), since in some states the state chapter runs
a lot of events:

Type Year Affils Events Players Games

A | 1992 | 517 | 4860 | 106644 | 209084
A | 1993 | 536 | 5061 | 114738 | 227881
A | 1994 | 545 | 5272 | 121438 | 240611
A | 1995 | 556 | 5307 | 127857 | 254800
A | 1996 | 531 | 5394 | 134918 | 264776
A | 1997 | 523 | 5291 | 131174 | 257613
A | 1998 | 529 | 5119 | 133382 | 267748
A | 1999 | 507 | 4653 | 128134 | 263863
A | 2000 | 460 | 4177 | 117164 | 243029
A | 2001 | 415 | 4057 | 124783 | 259065
A | 2002 | 444 | 4140 | 134957 | 288922
A | 2003 | 367 | 2142 | 72106 | 158349

T | 1992 | 45 | 363 | 18183 | 40478
T | 1993 | 45 | 273 | 15788 | 35829
T | 1994 | 44 | 287 | 16402 | 38468
T | 1995 | 43 | 267 | 17838 | 41352
T | 1996 | 47 | 292 | 17379 | 41304
T | 1997 | 45 | 290 | 21424 | 52988
T | 1998 | 45 | 291 | 17937 | 40680
T | 1999 | 41 | 274 | 16049 | 35372
T | 2000 | 42 | 273 | 17933 | 40369
T | 2001 | 41 | 309 | 17197 | 36748
T | 2002 | 46 | 418 | 23244 | 50727
T | 2003 | 35 | 196 | 12861 | 27733

This data still shows a substantial increase in games rated in 2002.
It might be interesting to break this out by membership type, but that
analysis will have to wait until after I return from the US Open.
--
Mike Nolan