In article , Jerry says...

Well if the uscf is losing money, is it losing money
serving $49 members or serving $15 members?
Which is more likely?

Neither, or both depending on your perspective. It isn't an either/or.

Kevin L. Bachler

Bruce Draney writes:
Well is the uscf making money or losing money on
kiddie memberships? Where is it losing money anyway?

Nobody seems to know, and that itself is a bad sign.

Consider these two possibilities:

a) They honestly don't know due to ineptness and incompetence.
b) They know, but powerful political forces have prevented them
from addressing the issue for many years.

Decide which postulate you believe.

They really don't know, and they've decided not to find out because
they don't think they'd like the answer.

Jerry writes:
I'm not saying the junior dues should be raised to $75. I am
saying that the those who oppose junior dues raises are contributing
to the death of the uscf.

I don't believe that. The USCF is suffering death by self-inflicted
stupidity, not by undercharging junior dues.

The dues are paid by the parents, not the kids.

Irrelevant.

The idea of even having junior dues came from a time when a much
lower percentage of chessplayers were juniors. I was also before it
was realized that most juniors quit before or during their college
years.

Fine, get rid of separate junior dues, lower adult dues so they're
the same as current junior dues.

Kevin L. Bachler wrote in message ...
Columns are year, regular non-scholastic, quick non-scholastic, regular
scholastic, quick scholastic. I don't have the full 2000 data on my home
computer.

1992 116313 7845 44383 574
1993 119566 11229 47283 942
1994 126416 15893 57490 958
1995 131349 19242 68844 852
1996 131982 19978 75163 831
1997 129307 18190 78781 2255
1998 120973 15679 85226 1543
1999 107099 15046 92899 2346

This was provided by Tom Doan a while ago, it's around 200,000 games per year.

Hey Bachler, as was pointed out the last two times you posted
these figures, they are wrong. The USCF rates more than 400000 games
a year. How about posting a retraction? Again.
James B. Shearer

In article , Bruce Draney says...
SNIP

Rating fees have never been per player,

You can always calc it that way to distribute it to the EG Bruce. $0.40 per
game is $0.20 per player per game.

they have always been per game,
which means only $200,000 at $1.00/game unless I'm missing something.

Yes, you are. I am saying $1 per player per game, not $1 per game.

I
just don't see rating fees solving the financial problems as there is
not enough revenue there without huge increases or going to per player
rather than per game fees.

Your telling me something that I have already suggested.


The Board just approved 20 cents for diskette and 40 cents on paper per
game.

If we figure that the same approximate number of games are played and
about half are the 20 cent and the other half are the 40 cent, we get a
figure of $60,000/year annually and that's assuming people don't have a
cow when their rating fees double. Given past knee jerk reactions to
even $1.00/year dues increases, doubling the rating fees strikes me as
being a challenge, but given our desperate financial straits right now
and the fact that Beatriz is calling the shots (or helping to), there
might be no complaints at all.

Most of the time complaining is done because people don't believe the
financial analysis that is going into justifying the raising of the
fees. People find it far easier to blame problems on mismanagement,
waste and foolishness, and given our recent track record, it is
difficult not to also suspect this as a major source of our problems.

If you lower dues and raise rating fees, even to a $1.00/game, I think
you'll still have trouble generating any more revenue than you presently
do.

No one suggested $1 per game. I suggested $1 per player per game. That's $400K.
In Tim's model, that would finance a significant portion of the dues cut.


Best Regards,

Bruce

Kevin L. Bachler

On Wed, 27 Aug 2003 18:19:00 -0400, "StanB"
wrote:


"Sam Sloan" wrote in message
...

In any case, Bruce is all wet. He should know better. The board cannot
pass this. The dues structure is in the by-laws. Only the delegates,
who meet once a year, can amend the by-laws and change the dues
structure.

Not rue. the delegates delegated that privilege this year.

StanB

I would like to see that in writing. The dues structure is in the
by-laws. Unless the delegates modified the by-laws again, the
Executive Board cannot change the dues.

Did the delegates change the by-laws??

Sam Sloan

Paul Rubin wrote in message ...
Jerry writes:
Well is the uscf making money or losing money on
kiddie memberships? Where is it losing money anyway?

Nobody seems to know, and that itself is a bad sign.
__________________________
Among other things, it appears to be losing money on bad decisions by
former and some present Adult chess leaders, such as over-hiring,
Games Parlor, ratings fees, high cost of a OMOV system we cannot
afford (I'm in favor of OMOV in principal, but it appears very
expensive to handle on paper), excessive magazine costs, costly office
parties (old news, I know), poor computer technology, ED's entering
into bad contracts without Board approval, etc..... Fortunately we
now have a board majority that appears to be very focused on these
issues. Especially with the increased ratings fees and huge
scholastic tournaments of hundreds and thousands of kids, the
membership revenue, B&E revenue, etc... that goes along with them, I
remain skeptical that the USCF has lost or will be losing money on
kids. I remain open minded, however to solid proof to the contrary.

KidDon

On 27 Aug 2003 15:24:11 -0700, Kevin L. Bachler
wrote:

20 Cents a game is still an average of $1 per player per 5 round tournament.
Canada charges more than double that.

Any CFC executive you talk to will tell you rating fees are viewed as
a profit center - definitely not break even. Excluding all-junior
events which are $.50/player and subsidized.

Also, I'd like to see a plan to raise paper submission fees (once we have tools
in place for people to easily take advantage of electronic submission.) I'd
like to see paper submission at $1/game.

One thing I feel the USCF has definitely dropped the ball on is
writing a client-server application (or at least the server side of
it) for tournament submissions. Even if the USCF didn't write the
client side the various pairing programs would within 6-12 months and
this feature would no doubt be a MAJOR selling point for the software.

This would probably be a win-win for everyone since it would likely
add to the 'penetration' of pairing software in the marketplace.
Obviously this software would have to support various kinds of
tournaments besides Swiss events.

[I suspect the USCF could recover a reasonable portion of the costs by
licencing the software to other federations if the software was
sufficiently flexible to allow easy tailoring to foreign needs]

In effect, I see no solid profit centers for USCF other than dues. If
B&E is even break even, that means dues is pretty much financing
everything else in the organization.

Speaking as an outsider that CAN'T be good news for the USCF.

In article , Bruce Draney says...

Kevin writes in part:

Some will drop out. The question will be if states decide to go with unrated
events.


This past year in Nebraska there were more unrated events than ever
before, including events in places where there are no RATED events, like
Chadron, Kearney, as well as Omaha, Lincoln and Central Nebraska towns
with only a couple hundred people in them.

This is not a conspiracy, this is just a natural reaction to price
increases and activity decreases in USCF rated chess. While one might
think that these events were primarily for children, actually only a
couple of them were for children. Most of the children's events WERE
USCF rated.

Around Nebraska, USCF organizing is now a financial risk that some are
deciding is not worth the trouble. We have one active director in Omaha
right now and he also often farms out to run events in Lincoln as well.
In Lincoln, Mike Nolan runs one event per year, the Cornhusker State
Games, and Gary Marks runs one event per year, the Polar Bear in the
fall. We've got one organizer in Central Nebraska who runs some cheap
little one day events in the central towns during the winter, but he is
getting older and may retire in the next few years. We have a husband
and wife in Columbus who primarily run our State Scholastic events. One
guy in Lincoln does most of the directing of events for the LCF events,
but has been financially burned a couple of times on USCF events that
didn't draw well and seldom wishes to take the risk in time or capital
to hassle with USCF events.

The Chadron event is one of the longest running traditional chess
tournaments held in the state every Spring and draws a nice crowd of
players from Wyoming, South Dakota and western Nebraska. The Kearney
event was a team event that drew surprisingly well. The Kearney
organizer has just scheduled another team tournament in that town this
Fall.

The Omaha High School coaches organized their own invitational team
championship and drew over 100 high school players the vast majority of
them non-USCF members from all over the area. The coach of the
organizing high school feels that dues for the state association and
USCF are such an impediment to participation that he just decided to
bypass the official nature of both organizations and run an unrated team
event that charged $25.00 for a 4 player team. The event was so
successful and so cheap to run, that they plan to do more than one such
event next year. They paid for their prizes, and had plenty of money
left over to seed the field for this coming school year for a couple
more such events.

Not all of the area high school coaches are negative towards USCF and
the NSCA. One coach, took his players to both the official NSCA/USCF
Team Championship and also played in the unrated event too.

The Lincoln Chess Foundation has organized a series of chess days,
holidays, festivals and summer camps over the past few years and they
were all unrated, giving USCF zero income, but exposing thousands of
children to chess.

What the people in New York haven't seemed to realize is that it is not
chess that will die. It is USCF rated chess. Chess is thriving, but
USCF can barely keep its doors open.

In case someone jumps to the conclusion about me. I have had nothing
to do with the organization of any of these tournaments. I have not
played a game of chess in a tournament since last year, and I have not
run, organized or directed a chess tournament, either rated or unrated
in over a year either. I have found plenty of really important pressing
things to do with my time however when I am not bickering with Kevin
here on RGCP.

Best Regards,

Bruce

Does this seem consistent with what I have been trying to tell you?

Kevin L. Bachler

Kevin L. Bachler wrote in message ...
In article , James B. Shearer
says...

Kevin L. Bachler wrote in message
...
Columns are year, regular non-scholastic, quick non-scholastic, regular
scholastic, quick scholastic. I don't have the full 2000 data on my home
computer.

1992 116313 7845 44383 574
1993 119566 11229 47283 942
1994 126416 15893 57490 958
1995 131349 19242 68844 852
1996 131982 19978 75163 831
1997 129307 18190 78781 2255
1998 120973 15679 85226 1543
1999 107099 15046 92899 2346

This was provided by Tom Doan a while ago, it's around 200,000 games per year.

Hey Bachler, as was pointed out the last two times you posted
these figures, they are wrong. The USCF rates more than 400000 games
a year. How about posting a retraction? Again.
James B. Shearer

How about letting me know where the correct data is in Google? I'd be happy to
post something updated if I could find it. Do you know what was wrong with the
above?

I'd be thrilled if there were more games per year.

Kevin L. Bachler

Tom Doan posted the following correction on 1/17/2002.

.......................begin quoted material................................

On 17 Jan 2002 07:52:29 -0800, Kevin L. Bachler
wrote:

In article , says...

On 16 Jan 2002 19:40:05 -0800, Kevin L. Bachler
wrote:


From Tom Doan:
Columns are year, regular non-scholastic, quick non-scholastic, regular
scholastic, quick scholastic. I don't have the full 2000 data on my home
computer.

1992 116313 7845 44383 574
1993 119566 11229 47283 942
1994 126416 15893 57490 958
1995 131349 19242 68844 852
1996 131982 19978 75163 831
1997 129307 18190 78781 2255
1998 120973 15679 85226 1543
1999 107099 15046 92899 2346

Looks like the ballpark of 200,000 to me. 1 right, a bunch wrong. Ever read
page 9?

Kevin L. Bachler

Sorry, Kevin. Those were player counts, not games. I posted a
correction a month or two ago. Games are almost exactly double.

Tom Doan

Then I apologize and stand corrected. I hadn't seen the game counts.

Can you repost that?

Kevin L. Bachler


Columns are year, regular non-scholastic, quick non-scholastic,
regular scholastic, quick scholastic.

1992 225794 18682 99025 1149
1993 234276 27736 105165 1986
1994 248344 39254 128670 1908
1995 257432 46989 152944 1781
1996 257799 47502 168356 1865
1997 249993 43538 178333 4897
1998 235204 36517 190946 3245
1999 207592 35312 212407 5442

Tom Doan
............................end quoted material.............................
James B. Shearer