English Chess Forum

One of the `bonuses` of the ECF membership is discounted diaries....
When are these likely to be distributed......

David Pardoe wrote: When are these likely to be distributed......

Annually?

David Pardoe wrote:One of the `bonuses` of the ECF membership is discounted diaries....
When are these likely to be distributed......

It's only free if you're a Full Member, as opposed to a Standard member. In which case, it's a 15-month diary, and would have been distributed months ago.

If you have to pay for it, I'd imagine you'd actually need to send a cheque to the ECF and ask for one, or buy one via the online shop.

Alex Holowczak wrote:

David Pardoe wrote:One of the `bonuses` of the ECF membership is discounted diaries....
When are these likely to be distributed......

It's only free if you're a Full Member, as opposed to a Standard member. In which case, it's a 15-month diary, and would have been distributed months ago.

If you have to pay for it, I'd imagine you'd actually need to send a cheque to the ECF and ask for one, or buy one via the online shop.

When you say it would have been distributed months ago does that mean I should have had mine by now?

I joined in November as a Standard member, and subscribed for the diary. I had assumed that I`d get the 2011 version, presumably starting with Jan 1st 2011...and hoping it would arrive prior to the new year?
Are these correct assumptions, if not, what should I expect....

David Pardoe wrote:I joined in November as a Standard member, and subscribed for the diary. I had assumed that I`d get the 2011 version, presumably starting with Jan 1st 2011...and hoping it would arrive prior to the new year?
Are these correct assumptions, if not, what should I expect....

Hmm.

I don't think they start with Jan 1st 2011. I think they're designed to run alongside the chess season. If you've already paid for it when you subscribed, then I guess you would have been sent it. If they are designed with the chess season in mind, then you might have subscribed in November for something distributed in September, or something like that.

I guess your next port of call is to contact the office when they return to work in the New Year. They'll probably be able to give you a factual answer, which is probably more useful than me guessing!

ECF Website wrote: The many benefits of full membership include …
ChessMoves – the ECF bi-monthly news letter – by email
Reduced entry fees to some congresses
The ECF Yearbook
Discounts from chess retailers
15-month chess diary

The diary covers fifteen months from early October in the previous year. They usually arrive about that time. Mine came with a Hastings entry form. You are left with the conundrum as to whether to use the old one until it is finished or start the new one as soon as it arrives. When arranging an adjournment with another forum member in November last year, we both pulled out our ECF diaries and found ourselves using different years.

Having received an e-mail from the office today I can confirm that the diaries were sent out in September. If, like me, you never received one I regret to inform you that they have none left and they will not be printing any more. Better luck for 2012

Why not order one from a previous year that had the same day / date combinations and simply ignore the year? From MoneySavingExperts.Com....

They have plenty in stock from previous years judging from my visit to The Office.

You are sad. So, in fact, am I. A while ago I was considering whether to throw out a lovely diary that I hadn't used, and wondered the same thing. This is what I found;

"Calendars repeat in a regular cycle, at least within a century, because each year has 1 day more than exactly 52 weeks, and leap years add another extra day . This combination results in a sequence of repeated calendars in a 28-year cycle. For NON-LEAP YEARS, a given arrangement of days will repeat in 6 years, then 11, then 11 years, then begin a new cycle. Crossing a century changes this because only every 4th century year (e.g. 2000 but not 2100, 2200, or 2300) is a leap year. LEAP YEAR calendars repeat every 28 years.

When Calendars repeat
There is a very simple pattern for determining "when" calendars repeat with the same day/date combinations. Define any year as one of four things: a "leap year", the "1st year after a leap year", the "2nd year after a leap year", or the "3rd year after a leap year". Add 28 to a "leap year" to get the next year that it will repeat. Add 6 to the "1st year after a leap year" to get the next year that it will repeat; add 11 to the "2nd year after a leap year" to get the next year that it will repeat. Also add 11 to the "3rd year after a leap year" to get the next year that it repeats. Ex: 2010 is the 2nd yr after a leap year and will repeat in 2010 + 11 = 2021. 2011 repeats in 2022; 2012 repeats in 2040; 2013 repeats in 2019; 2014 repeats in 2025; 2015 repeats in 2026; 2016 repeats in 2044; 2017 repeats in 2023; and so on.

How often calendars repeat

* Any leap year calendar will repeat in exactly the same way every 28 years.
* Any "1st year after a leap year" will repeat in a 6-11-11 cycle, ie, it will repeat in 6 years, then come up again in 11 years, come up again in 11 more years, then repeat the 6-11-11 year cycle.
* Both "2nd year after a leap year" and "3rd year after a leap year" will repeat in an 11-11-6 cycle.

Notice the patterns involve 6, 11, and 28. The cycles of 6-11-11 and 11-11-6 add to 28.

It can be 5, 6, or 11 years before an individual date-day combination comes up again. Individual days will repeat on a 6, 5, 6, 11 year cycle. For example, January 1, 2000 (a leap year) was a Saturday. The years that January 1 fell on or will fall on Saturday are: 1955, 1966, 1972, 1977, 1983, 1994, 2000, 2005, 2011, 2022, 2028, 2033, 2039, and 2050.

Possible Calendars
There are 14 possible combinations:
A year can begin on one of 7 weekdays, and the year can be a regular year or a leap year.
Note that the cycle doesn't repeat on a 14 year basis. Because the year can start on one of 7 days, and a leap year comes every 4 years, the cycle is more complicated, but any given year can have its calendar taken from one of the 14 possible calendars.
In a regular (non-leap) year, the year ends on the same day of the week as it starts (2005 started on Saturday, and will end on Saturday) That's 52 weeks and one day. The next year starts on the next day of the week, and should end on that same weekday. (2006 starts on a Sunday, and ends on a Sunday.)
A leap year will end on the weekday immediately after the weekday on which it starts, and is 52 weeks and 2 days long. (2004 started on a Thursday, and ended on a Friday).

Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_often_in_ ... z1D0VGGhO2"

John Upham wrote:Why not order one from a previous year that had the same day / date combinations and simply ignore the year? From MoneySavingExperts.Com....

They have plenty in stock from previous years judging from my visit to The Office.

The office posted an announcement a couple of months ago stating that the stock of 2011/12 diaries had been exhausted. We deliberately ordered fewer last year as part of our efforts to avoid unnecessary expenditure.

The irony here is that I recall a comment on this Forum at the time of the announcement taking the webmaster to task for bumping a "bigger" news story down the page with the announcement about the diaries. How soon we forget...

John Upham will be disappointed to learn that any stray copies of older diaries were destroyed in the clear-out when the staff moved offices recently. The good news is that the value of mint copies of previous years' diaries must have shot up, possibly to as high as 2p.

I'm going to be even more sad than Adam. Years divisible by 100 are leap years if and only if they are divisible by 400. This accounts for the difference between the Gregorian and Julian calendars. Hence 2000 was a leap year but 1900 wasn't and 2100 won't be. In 400 years there are then 365x400 + 97 days, which is 20871 weeks, so 400 years is the length of the calendar cycle.

Ironically it's the first year I would have actually put the diary to use. I've never used one in the past but as i get older and my memory starts to fade I'd decided to start using one. Sod laws then that this is the first year that it apparantly went missing in the post

LozCooper wrote:Ironically it's the first year I would have actually put the diary to use. I've never used one in the past but as i get older and my memory starts to fade I'd decided to start using one. Sod laws then that this is the first year that it apparantly went missing in the post

I found another alternative - a mobile phone with a calendar function.

I suspect I may have several years' worth of old ECF diaries (unused) somewhere, if anyone really wants them (obviously only one per year). Including this year's one which is also still unused. I find it easier to keep track of my calendar by other means, but the diaries still keep getting sent because asking for them not to be sent was more bother than it was worth. Maybe I should see if I have a reasonably complete run and see if I can get more than 2p each on eBay?