ECF Membership - The proposal

[Alex Holowczak]

Council have voted 55-45 in favour of schemes which abolish virtually all elements of paying by game or event. It's this principle (abolition of pay to play) which many club and county AGMs and players will find unacceptable.

I think far more of them will be in favour of this proposal than the one originally put. Nottinghamshire's delegate at Council said they wanted something a bit more like this. Very initial reaction from the Birmingham League is that this is much better than the original proposal, which they put 7 votes against.

[Paul Buswell]

Headlines

£ 19 extra to play in a Congress if you live in England and are not a club member.
£ 13 to play a single league game and retain your grade.

No, not quite...
£19 extra.... IF you want a published grade, which playing in only one congress probably wouldn't get you. What I would like to know is whether congresses will be relaxed about accepting entries from non-members: can't see it would make any difference to them.
The same observation, mutatis mutandis, on the second point. I am assuming Leagues will accept non-member competitors; no skin off their nose if the occasional player doesn't get their grade published.

The above comments obviously depend on how congresses and leagues deal with ungraded players.

PB

[William Metcalfe]

Roger why dont you set up your own national chess body seing how you object to everything the ECF suggests as a compramise.
You have all the answers lets see how it would work in the real world.The reality is you would never start your own chess organisation as you would not then be able to snipe from the sidelines all the time.

[Roger de Coverly]

No, not quite...
£19 extra.... IF you want a published grade, which playing in only one congress probably wouldn't get you.

In the transition period, you would have a previous grade. You might have one from a previous period of club membership, but your circumstances have changed. You can keep a grade alive by playing just one Congress of five games a year.

What I would like to know is whether congresses will be relaxed about accepting entries from non-members: can't see it would make any difference to them.

The same observation, mutatis mutandis, on the second point. I am assuming Leagues will accept non-member competitors; no skin off their nose if the occasional player doesn't get their grade published.

The above comments obviously depend on how congresses and leagues deal with ungraded players.

It will indeed, but the ECF does need the money and is gambling its financial future on a high level of sign up. Whatever Council may think, if a chess playing non-member decides that £13 or £ 19 is too much to pay for having a grade published, then they either won't play at all or will do without the grade if allowed.

The proposed policy is that all games will be graded as now, with non-member grades not being published. That sets a challenge for lovers of logic puzzles, namely to figure them out. Looking at a local grader's list would be cheating as is entering a Congress as a non-member and seeing where you are on the pairing board.

I think the ECF have refused to rate or threatened to refuse to rate international events containing non-members. They've ruled it out, so far, for domestic grades.

In terms of precedent you can also point to the current "your money or your rating" being applied to players with ENG international ratings who aren't current ECF members. This being applied even if they aren't currently resident in England.

For rapidplay Congresses, the simplest solution might just be to say that they aren't graded and thus fully open to all players. Not that many players are concerned about rapid play grades particularly if it avoided having either to take out an ECF membership in the first place or upgrading from the basic club only one.

[Roger de Coverly]

R
You have all the answers lets see how it would work in the real world..

Tell us then why you believe what I suggest won't happen and why attitudes, particularly amongst current non-members won't be as I speculate.

If the ECF abandons its current financing methods, it will have to sign up several thousand current non-members as members or else it goes bust. How is it going to do this?

Roger why dont you set up your own national chess body seing how you object to everything the ECF suggests as a compramise.

It's within the grounds of feasibility that the ECF might collapse and a new national chess body would be needed. Assume the ECF gives up collecting Game Fee in 2012-13 and then fails to sign enough members to bridge the gap. Sometime in 2013 might be the crunch.

[William Metcalfe]

Well go ahead and put it to the test Roger or do you just want to sit around do nothing and snipe from the sidelines.
Or would you rather be proactive and start your own chess organisation so you can cash in when the ECF collapses

[Roger de Coverly]

Well go ahead and put it to the test Roger or do you just want to sit around do nothing and snipe from the sidelines.
Or would you rather be proactive and start your own chess organisation so you can cash in when the ECF collapses

I don't think anyone will cash in if the ECF collapses.

Local organisations are being presented with a choice of poison pills. You can either insist that every one takes out ECF membership and risk the collapse of clubs because it's perceived as too expensive or they just don't love the ECF. Or you carry on as before and accept that not all players or games will be graded. If players don't want non-rated games, you collapse anyway, it just takes longer.

[Paul Cooksey]

I am very happy to see this proposal. I think it is a good compromise between fairness and simplicity.

That said, I'll get straight on with the invitation to try to tweak it . I hoped to see a slightly lower bronze level, £10 seemed an attractive price point. But it does seem hard to the maths work if we have 62% in this category. If there is scope to reduce total income, through charitable status for example, I would want to focus on this category.

I wondered briefly whether the high percentage of juniors needing silver might be an issue. But it seems to me from comments in another thread that parents are not hugely price sensitive if they can see value for their money. £5 extra, even for a single tournament, is probably good value compared to other activities for kids.

I don't think anyone will be able to dissuade Roger from his belief game fee is better. But I do disagree with him.
1. I do not think it is fair to compare the £13 membership to a single game fee, and to see it as a huge deterrent. There is also a fixed cost to join a club; typically much more than £13.
2. I do not agree with the analogy to train tickets. The rail company incurs a cost for each trip, and offers a bulk discount to encourage repeat business. I do not see anything equivalent in the ECF. The ECF is closer to an organisation like a Gym which requires a membership (I'm tempted to challenge Roger to see if he can negotiate 75p for 20 minutes on a machine at Bisham )
3. I hope the leagues I play in will want to support the ECF, and will default unregistered players.

I realise these are pragmatic arguments. Honestly, I think that is necessary. But I don't think even game fee is completely fair either. Why not charge per move? Why not charge extra for games against GMs? It might even be worth £1 to win an interesting tactical game against Roger, but only 50p to lose a boring technical one against me

[Roger de Coverly]

. There is also a fixed cost to join a club; typically much more than £13.

The club might offer membership for nothing and it doesn't have to be a club. You can usually play in county matches without being a club member. In any event, it may still represents a considerable price rise. University clubs in particular will suffer.

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The ECF is closer to an organisation like a Gym which requires a membership

If you wanted just the one session in a gym and you were offered a choice between annual membership or nothing, you would choose nothing (on financial grounds anyway)

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3. I hope the leagues I play in will want to support the ECF, and will default unregistered players.

I don't think the term unregistered is correct. It's whether you are a member of the ECF that counts. If a club cannot muster enough ECF members to field a team without defaults, it will withdraw the team from the League. If a league doesn't have enough clubs taking part, the league will fold.

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But I don't think even game fee is completely fair either.

Game Fee is essentially a calculation method where a league, county or Congress pays for its membership of the ECF in proportion to the amount of activity it organises. It's linked to grading and computes by individual game, but other methods within the same general premise are possible. It's very common for sports and pastimes to have to choose between charging per head and per session, but many elect to do both as the least worst method of tuning what they need to collect to what the participants are prepared to pay. If the ECF rules out any form of charging per session or event, it's seriously restricting its possible methods of funding and very vulnerable to critics who will accuse it of wanting to charge £13 or whatever for a single game.

[Paul Cooksey]

. There is also a fixed cost to join a club; typically much more than £13.

The club might offer membership for nothing and it doesn't have to be a club. You can usually play in county matches without being a club member. In any event, it may still represents a considerable price rise. University clubs in particular will suffer.

We are diminishing the number of losers considerably though. We are no longer risking 15% of players, or even 1.5%. I'll concede Universities may be a special case, might be appropriate to offer them the junior concession

. The ECF is closer to an organisation like a Gym which requires a membership

If you wanted just the one session in a gym and you were offered a choice between annual membership or nothing, you would choose nothing (on financial grounds anyway)

But Gyms don't offer this, becaue they are organisations with large fixed and low variable costs.

I hope the leagues I play in will want to support the ECF, and will default unregistered players.

I don't think the term unregistered is correct. It's whether you are a member of the ECF that counts. If a club cannot muster enough ECF members to field a team without defaults, it will withdraw the team from the League. If a league doesn't have enough clubs taking part, the league will fold.

I am an optimist, I think chess is a good game and people will want to keep playing. If the ECF can demonstrate it is fair and reasonable in setting its membership fees for occasional players, and they are at a level the vast majority of players can afford, I would not expect lots of people to give up in protest.

. But I don't think even game fee is completely fair either.

If the ECF rules out any form of charging per session or event, it's seriously restricting its possible methods of funding and very vulnerable to critics who will accuse it of wanting to charge £13 or whatever for a single game.

I think that is an accusation the ECF could easily refute, particularly if we help communicate their intent to be fair and simple. As machievaellian schemes for defrauding innocent people of £13 go, I think charging them for a game of chess is not the most obvious. You would need a level of paranoia to suspect it.

A more difficult accusation for the ECF would be that they were wasting money and overcharging players, because they were sticking to an inefficent means of collecting revenue due to a fear of change.

[Ian Thompson]

I am an optimist, I think chess is a good game and people will want to keep playing. If the ECF can demonstrate it is fair and reasonable in setting its membership fees for occasional players, and they are at a level the vast majority of players can afford, I would not expect lots of people to give up in protest.

I don't think occasional players will give up either, but I do think many will not bother to join the ECF if they don't have to, which is the current proposal. Why? Because:

1. If they don't play much they may well not be very interested in their grade.
2. If they don't play much their grade won't be a very reliable estimate of strength even if they knew what it was.
3. Joining the ECF will be something they just never get round to doing because its not important to them.

I thought that the 85% assumed take-up rate for membership was optimistic with the original proposal. I think its even more optimistic under this new proposal.

[Paul Cooksey]

I don't think occasional players will give up either, but I do think many will not bother to join the ECF if they don't have to, which is the current proposal

I can understand why the ECF might not want to enforce membership, it is difficult to see what sanction they have other than denying grading. As you note, that may be ineffective.

I think defaulting league games would be a much more effective stick, which may indeed be necessary. I do not think the ECF would be unreasonable in asking leagues to consider it. I hope ours would do it.

(I'm slightly worried Roger will raise the same objection that people may give up, and we will get trapped in a loop. To understand recursion, you first have to understand recursion )

[Alex Holowczak]

I can understand why the ECF might not want to enforce membership, it is difficult to see what sanction they have other than denying grading. As you note, that may be ineffective.

I actually agree with Ian's fears, echoed by Paul.

May I suggest something radical?

You could disaffiliate the league that has an ineligible player playing in it, and remove the membership of anyone playing in the "rebel" league that isn't enforcing the membership requirement, or at least paying off the debt owed by the non-members had they been members. This happens in other sports, and in other countries...

[Roger de Coverly]

May I suggest something radical?

You could disaffiliate the league that has an ineligible player playing in it, and remove the membership of anyone playing in the "rebel" league that isn't enforcing the membership requirement, or at least paying off the debt owed by the non-members had they been members. This happens in other sports, and in other countries...

I'm sure you could. I would quote you back, eighteen years of local Yorkshire leagues and counting. The ECF even helps them do their private grading.

If the ECF can demonstrate it is fair and reasonable in setting its membership fees for occasional players, and they are at a level the vast majority of players can afford, I would not expect lots of people to give up in protest.

I've told you the proposed price for occasional players, it's £ 13 a year if they play occasionally in leagues and £ 19 a year to play in a Congress, £ 25 to play an internationally rated game, (or even not to play an internationally rated game)

There just isn't a facility in the proposals for guest membership, temporary membership, non-member fees whatever you might call them.

[Paul Cooksey]

May I suggest something radical?
You could disaffiliate the league that has an ineligible player playing in it, and remove the membership of anyone playing in the "rebel" league that isn't enforcing the membership requirement, or at least paying off the debt owed by the non-members had they been members. This happens in other sports, and in other countries...

Not so much carrot and stick, as carrot and baseball bat with nails in it

Maybe if there was epidemic non-membership in an area. Allowing silent disaffiliation would be unwise. But I would be reluctant to take a hard-line position. People need to be given time to adjust to change, inviting arguments on matters of principle might make the transition more difficult.