John, I did not come here and complain about what you or the NCCA were doing, if you read the very first post, it says "Or is there another way of getting your game graded?"John Charman wrote:OK let's have some factual statements here in reply to you all.
I offered to grade our players games provided both they and their opponent was a silver member and they both agreed to it, it was a genuine offer to help and made after reading the following in the Help Guide in the online database:
GAME ELIGIBILITY FOR GRADING
Games can only be graded if they are played under acceptable conditions,
with clocks. Lightning and Correspondence games are excluded.
It is required that:
a. The FIDE Laws of Chess are used.
b. One of the following rates of play is complied with:
1. Rapidplay
Either:
i. Each player must have at least 15 minutes but less than 60 minutes
for all of his moves. This includes both the initial time control and
any subsequent time controls or quickplay finish.
ii. When Fischer (cumulative) mode is used then, using the assumption
that the duration of the game is 60 moves, each player must have at
least 15 minutes but less than 60 minutes.
2. Standardplay
Each player has more time than the maximum defined above for Rapidplay.
Whilst that clearly makes the games eligible for grading I obviously made the mistake of not checking with the person who would know for sure and that was Richard Haddrell whom I have now checked with and found there apparently are some other rules that I do not have a copy of anywhere even though I am an official grader.
I have therefore emailed all Norfolk players and apologised for misleading them and have said that if they think I have made a bad mistake then I am willing to resign as Grader, Membership administrator and Competition controller. I have already received many emails of support and one from the organiser of this thread, Mr Warren Kingston, in which he has asked me not to resign and states his thought that all of us involved in Norfolk's administration do a brilliant job and should carry on doing a brilliant job. Maybe this would not have happened had he thought that before he posted a complaint on a public forum and had instead asked me in an email if I was sure what I was offering was legal.
I have even had an email from the ECF CEO telling me I can't offer the service I wanted to, this on the same day that the subject was raised when he hasn't replied to an email I sent him 4 days ago regarding the appalling state of the membership system and offering help to try and sort it out.
So yet again this public forum has been fuelled for those of you who like to populate it and I suspect this message will help to start a lot more ungracious comment.
To Mr de Coverley who stated “Is this some sort of attempt to maintain the numbers renewing through the Norfolk MO? I really don't see why they bother. If the County Association wants £1 per head per player in Norfolk why not just levy it directly?â€
I take that as an offensive insult; every single £1 that I make for the county by offering the renewal of their memberships through our MO goes straight back into the county in the form of a discount on our competition entry fees. None is kept in county funds and if it were it would be used for the betterment of our county. Not only that but I am sure that with one or two noteable exceptions every member in our county would willingly pay £1 to the county if we requested it to fund our chess. And the reason I bother is because I like to make the chess playing in Norfolk as easy as possible for all our players, the vast majority of whom appreciate the work I and others do on their behalf.
Also to Mr de Coverley who appears to imply we don't tell our members correct information I assure you that the system has been explained ad infinitum to our members both by myself and by our Chairman John Wickham, and we do not attempt to make any profit from their membership, it is just a service we offer to help them administratively.
So there you now have some facts, it would be nice if instead of constant criticism some constructive comments were posted on this site.
I dont take that question as a complaint at all. Just a question really. Also I emailed you asking if this was correct what you proposed and I still to this hour havent had a reply? Hence the question on this forum.