English Chess Forum

Mick Norris wrote:New on the ECF website -

In order to be able to plan the production of Chess For Schools it is necessary to know the size of the production run.
Chris Majer, ECF Chief Executive

I thought (correct me if I am wrong) it was 250,000 free chess sets.
So the production run will be, 250,000 - 20 = 249,980 sets left to produce!?

Then all the ECF has to do is transport them to the schools

That was the original plan. Presumably the new plan is only to give sets to schools who have explicitly asked for them, which is not a bad way of scaling down the project. Now we only have to do five impossible things before breakfast.

Steve Henderson wrote:[I thought (correct me if I am wrong) it was 250,000 free chess sets.
So the production run will be, 250,000 - 20 = 249,980 sets left to produce!?

I'll correct you Steve. Its 10 chess sets per school. There were never any plans as far as I'm aware to give sets to schools that didn't want them. As there are approx 25,000 schools in the country, that's a potential 250,000 sets. However, it appears that only about 9,000 schools have actually applied.

No offence guys but I think you could have a county rep for each district who can pick up and deliver the sets. Im sure like Nigel Dennis or Brent Smith or someone in the Berkshire ranks would do the schools around here , it would take a long days of driving, but yeah. You could do 20 schools a day. On grounds that Reading you could do in 2 hours and has like 6+ schools.

Ernie Lazenby wrote:A terrible injustice was done when this forum was declared to be not suitable for an official voice of the ECF and I think its fair to say that some of the acerbic content of the discussions regarding the project is a result of that decision. The ECF needs its members most of whom want to support chess in England but even the most placid members can reach a point where the see their organisation being remote and out of touch with their views.

I would still like to see official clarification of the "loss of sponsors" nonsense

The ECF site now says:-

Chess For Schools Update

I spoke with Julian Van Wyngaarden (MD of Holloid Plastics) again yesterday (2nd December). Holloid have produced 500 sets of pieces (excluding pawns). This confirms that two of the moulds are ok. They still need to do the trial run on the remaining three moulds (for the pawns and the boards). I intend to visit Holloid on Tuesday 16th December after which I will release a further statement

Chris Majer ECF Chief Executive

So, that has bought another two weeks, I wonder what is next? Wrong colour dyes? dealing with tax changes? Air bubbles in the plastics?
or am I just a big cynic?

Matthew Turner wrote:So, that has bought another two weeks, I wonder what is next? Wrong colour dyes? dealing with tax changes? Air bubbles in the plastics?
or am I just a big cynic?

What should be asked is "at what point were those sets made"