Yorkshire vs ECF disparity

[Alan Burke]

I totally agree with Ihor that on the current ECF website under "ECF Membership Benefits" it states that members will receive free unlimited grading of results in club competitions, leagues, county championships, etc, etc.

OK, I might be mistaken, but there does not seem to be anywhere where it states that such members will only be graded if they play in ECF-sanctioned events.

[Angus French]

The ECF's Game Fee Bye Laws are, I believe, relevant to the topic under discussion. They cover membership of organisations, registration of events and grading of games.

[MartinCarpenter]

Ok thats a comfort cf the billing Overall cost still not great mind.

Still, those numbers from Jon do answer the question cf the local Yorkshire leagues. The answer is that under the current arrangements they'll simply never go ECF graded.

They simply CAN'T. Take the Sheffield league. Objectively an astonishing success story given the population base - 9 teams in div 1 playing 16 matches of 8 boards a season at an avergae quality not that far behind the Yorkshire league. Seemingly similar down to divison 5(!) where they drop down to 8, although over a few fewer boards once you're below division 1. At least matching Manchester I think and there's rather more people there.

Current membership about 35 per cent and an estimated cost of ECF grading about 5.5k or so. So how on earth could you try and move it towards ECF grading under the current charging regime? The evidence from the Yorkshire league is that you won't immediately get over ~50 per cent membership by doing so so you'd have to ask each club for getting on for a hundred pounds and thats with half the players already being ECF members.

Equally compulsion would clearly be an basically absurdly risky position to adopt given how sucessful the league is currently and the potential downsides given the low base membership levels.

The only way you'll ever get these leagues into the main ECF structure is by allowing the base of members in Yorkshire to grow over time until it does start to look financially viable to do it. That'll be a slow business and not one you can short cut via compulsion. Refusing to grade the extra games of Yorkshire members (having seemingly promised to) is of course very unlikely to have the desired effect

In fact if you get widespread annoyance from the extant Yorkshire membership causing the levels to drop then even the Yorkshire league will simply have to pull out on cost grounds. To me it looks very debatable if its affordable at current membership levels.

[Sean Hewitt]

1. The ECF have changed their stance.
http://www.englishchess.org.uk/?page_id=2
Clearly states that there will be unlimited free grading to all bronze members as well as silver, gold etc.
I know a number of people in Yorkshire consulting lawyers about the legalities of this as it stands.

That's rather selective quoting. The same page also clearly states that "Each Standard Play result will incur a Game Fee of £2 (junior-only events 50p). Rapid Play results will each incur a Game Fee of £1 (junior-only events 25p)."

If a league submits it's results for grading then those results can only be graded if the league agrees to pay that cost. If not, the league will not be able to submit it's results. I hope that all leagues in Yorkshire do submit their results on that basis.

I suspect that consulting a lawyer will cost more than the cost of ECF membership!

[Andrew Bak]

2. Cost. It may seem fine to state that it is only £12 per person to join the ECF and have unlimited games graded (as long as they're in an ECF game fee registered event), but the bottom line is that in many local leagues in Yorkshire there are a large number of players who only play a social game of chess, someitmes to help the team fill boards. Not having these players will reduce the number of teams in the leagues and also would mean that some relatively strong bit part players will not be seen playing the game. There must be a way of encouraging as many players to play as possible.

I've recently seen a number of strong players return to active participation chess in Yorkshire. Some of these players only played a handful of club games each year to keep in touch with their friends but because of family commitments could not play in tournaments, county matches or even the 4NCL. Circumstances change, kids grow up or tey become divorcees and now find they can devote time to the game and are keen to play as much as they can again. I think it is important to give everyone the opportunity to play as much or as little as they wish.

Martin Carpenter is right to be concerened about how the Yorkshire league will meet the extra £2k. However, it will actually be the chess clubs themselves who are billed for the registration payments for non-ecf members and the biggest worry for me is that we might see clubs voting with their feet and not putting as many teams into our comeptitions next season because they have found it too expensive to recoup the money for non members who had their arm twisted to help in a fixture.

This is exactly the same debate that the ECF had with regards to implementing the new membership scheme - I'm sure there are hundreds and hundreds of other pages and thousands of posts already on this forum that deal with the above issues! The issue we are discussing here is how the ECF should deal with the conflicting situation where some leagues are non-ECF affiliated but have ECF members playing games in them.

Ok thats a comfort cf the billing Overall cost still not great mind.

Still, those numbers from Jon do answer the question cf the local Yorkshire leagues. The answer is that under the current arrangements they'll simply never go ECF graded.

They simply CAN'T. Take the Sheffield league. Objectively an astonishing success story given the population base - 9 teams in div 1 playing 16 matches of 8 boards a season at an avergae quality not that far behind the Yorkshire league. Seemingly similar down to divison 5(!) where they drop down to 8, although over a few fewer boards once you're below division 1. At least matching Manchester I think and there's rather more people there.

Current membership about 35 per cent and an estimated cost of ECF grading about 5.5k or so. So how on earth could you try and move it towards ECF grading under the current charging regime? The evidence from the Yorkshire league is that you won't immediately get over ~50 per cent membership by doing so so you'd have to ask each club for getting on for a hundred pounds and thats with half the players already being ECF members.

Equally compulsion would clearly be an basically absurdly risky position to adopt given how sucessful the league is currently and the potential downsides given the low base membership levels.

The only way you'll ever get these leagues into the main ECF structure is by allowing the base of members in Yorkshire to grow over time until it does start to look financially viable to do it. That'll be a slow business and not one you can short cut via compulsion. Refusing to grade the extra games of Yorkshire members (having seemingly promised to) is of course very unlikely to have the desired effect

In fact if you get widespread annoyance from the extant Yorkshire membership causing the levels to drop then even the Yorkshire league will simply have to pull out on cost grounds. To me it looks very debatable if its affordable at current membership levels.

Martin makes a lot of sense here and I agree with all of this.

Whatever you might think think of Yorkshire and it's previous contributions to the ECF, the fact is that more Yorkshire players are now becoming members of the ECF and the ECF is running a major risk of alienating the very same people it is trying to encourage to become members.

[Sean Hewitt]

Still, those numbers from Jon do answer the question cf the local Yorkshire leagues. The answer is that under the current arrangements they'll simply never go ECF graded.

They simply CAN'T. Take the Sheffield league. Objectively an astonishing success story given the population base - 9 teams in div 1 playing 16 matches of 8 boards a season at an avergae quality not that far behind the Yorkshire league. Seemingly similar down to divison 5(!) where they drop down to 8, although over a few fewer boards once you're below division 1. At least matching Manchester I think and there's rather more people there.

Current membership about 35 per cent and an estimated cost of ECF grading about 5.5k or so. So how on earth could you try and move it towards ECF grading under the current charging regime? The evidence from the Yorkshire league is that you won't immediately get over ~50 per cent membership by doing so so you'd have to ask each club for getting on for a hundred pounds and thats with half the players already being ECF members.

I think that's the wrong way to look at it. Take the Stockport league. There were fewer than 35% of players who were members last year. Now, the vast majority are. That's not because the Stockport league loves the ECF (far from it) but because it put sensible steps in place to manage the transition.

If the Sheffield league wanted to be part of the ECF then it would say so. That would mean that players would join the ECF in order to avoid the £2 per game fee, so the Sheffield League's game fee bill would be a fraction of the £5k quoted here.

I hope that one day all of the Yorkshire's players choose to participate in the ECF. But that can only happen if they buy into the idea that they have to pay their fair share of the costs, just the same as everyone else.

[Mick Norris]

Nice one Mick,

You are I presume making a point about unlimited free grading results in club competitions, leagues , county championships etc.

I meant to thank you for confiming that Yorkshire are not alone in running leagues that do not pay game fee. However, there may be a slight differencce with Lancashire leagues that are ungraded and the Yorkshire scenario but I'm not really sure what differences there are.

The local Yorkshire leagues submit their results to Jon Griffith and he collates them for his brilliant Chessnuts site. He them submits all the results to the ECF via Richard Hadrell I believe, in the format the ECF require and the ECf choose which results they wish to publish. I suspect the Lancashire leagues don't sent their results to the ECF.

Of course if the ECF do not get paid game fee they can argue there is no reason for them to publish these results.
However their membership rights/advert states that all games for members will be graded, so I suppose if we still try to provide the results they will have to honour what is written on their website.

So yes it might be different for Yorkshire players.

You're welcome

The NW ELO list from Harry Lamb pre-dates Yorkshire gradings I think, it has certainly been around for a while

I would like to see all the leagues both sides of the Pennines go graded, it would certainly make the job of chess organisers much easier - it is why events I run only give grading prizes to those with ECF grades

[Peter Shaw]

The Leeds league became ECF graded a few years back. How on earth did this happen? The only evening league AGM I go to is the Huddersfield league. If someone proposed it there, it wouldn't get much support. I'd imagine all the other leagues are similar - what is different about Leeds?

Becoming ECF graded doesn't seem to have caused any major impact on the number of teams in the Leeds league, if anything I think it has grown slightly.

I would like to see all the local leagues become ECF graded, but like Martin I can't see it happening any time soon. How do you convince a player who just plays a few games a year for their local club, with no interest in playing congresses etc that they should become a member of the ECF?

[Sean Hewitt]

I would like to see all the local leagues become ECF graded, but like Martin I can't see it happening any time soon. How do you convince a player who just plays a few games a year for their local club, with no interest in playing congresses etc that they should become a member of the ECF?

4,000 such players outside of Yorkshire have joined. I would think that the clincher is "...otherwise it will cost you two quid a game". Which kind of brings us back full circle.

[MartinCarpenter]

Well the Yorkshire league has only managed to get up to 50 per cent or so membership levels despite being an ECF graded event, ditto the Leeds league. Perhaps they've both been badly disorganised about it - I'm not strictly around enough to tell - but that experience really isn't going to inspire any confidence in anyone else trying to do the same though. Given that the status quo is a viable option in Yorkshire (as it isn't elsewhere), you have to be very sure before you jump.

Does anyone have any opinions on how the ECF would react to Yorkshire just trying to get the Woodhouse (top division of the Yorkshire league) graded? Unsurprisingly that has a rather higher proportion of members than the lower divisions so seemingly 'only' an combined estimated deficit of 680 or so, with the remaining ~1500 falling on the lower division competitions where many of the clubs are rather less strong.

The former figure seems plausibly affordable split over 12 fairly well organised clubs (well 10), the latter much less so.

[Sean Hewitt]

Does anyone have any opinions on how the ECF would react to Yorkshire just trying to get the Woodhouse (top division of the Yorkshire league) graded? Unsurprisingly that has a rather higher proportion of members than the lower divisions so seemingly 'only' an combined estimated deficit of 680 or so, with the remaining ~1500 falling on the lower division competitions where many of the clubs are rather less strong.

The ECF would have no problem to certain divisions being graded, and other divisions not being as long as it is clear to participants whether they are playing graded chess or not.

[Dragoljub Sudar]

What will happen if Yorkshire doesn't pay its estimated game fee liability by 15th December?

[Alan Burke]

No doubt several people will be quick to shoot down my comments, but let's look at the situation of ECF membership and its benefits from the view of a new member wishing to join after seeing the advert for membership on the ECF website.

They will see one paragraph title "What do I get for my membership ?" The answer given includes "Free grading of results (unlimited) in Club competitions, Leagues, County Championships, etc, etc."

Therefore, the person decides on Gold membership and sends in his £28.

However, so far, I cannot see anywhere on the advert where it states that such grading will only occur in an event where every player is a member of the ECF.

The person then decides to join a club or enter a congress only to later find out that some of his games will not be graded, not because of anything he has done but because of what other players have not done.

Yes, some may say that there are by-laws covering this situation but that certainly does not seem to have been made clear on the ECF advert and the new member would not know anything about such rulings until after sending his £28 to the ECF - which, to me, seems a case of misrepresentation of an advertisement, especially at it states that one benefit is "unlimited grading".

That is why I suggest giving the ECF members in such leagues a season's grace and allow their games to be graded until the whole situation can be discussed fully.

[IanDavis]

Where was the 'terms and conditions will apply' notice?

[Roger de Coverly]

The person then decides to join a club or enter a congress only to later find out that some of his games will not be graded, not because of anything he has done but because of what other players have not done.

That isn't supposed to happen. The ECF want the position to be that all the games in an event are graded, or none of them.

An earlier version of BCF/ECF membership awarded as a benefit the right to have any game, anywhere graded. The Welsh and voluntary Scottish schemes still offer this. The English version was restricted to pre-announced foreign tournaments some years ago, because of the risk of grade manipulation through selective result reporting.

If you play in a FIDE rated Swiss or League, only games against other FIDE rated players will count to a FIDE rating.