Perhaps the Office / EB should consider a contest with regular updates to a webpage tracking the following stats for clubs:
Number of tournaments held, player count, memberships processed count.
Probably could go deeper with the player stats if desired such as by age, gender, new players, repeat player count.
Track this both on a state and national level.
Make it friendly competition with some awards.
The bigger chess clubs, clubs whose primary focus is on USCF play, will win every such “contest”. Clubs who are more inclined to promote social activities, instruction/analysis, and casual play will be left out in the cold when you have a “contest” atmosphere.
Different areas have their own traditions as to the introduction to USCF play. In this area, many people renew their USCF membership through the Pittsburgh Chess League. Many techies rather renew on their own using their phones or tablets than through clubs or other organizations. The bulk of our club’s membership who join the USCF follow the above patterns. Most of our 160+ members are not USCF members and have no interest in joining. They come to play casual chess not tournament chess.
It’s called a start from the lowest hanging fruit where information is readily available and then branch it out to address other variants.
It’s recognized that there are clubs of different types. Actually one of the activities I had spoken to a couple of EB members about was fanning out and doing an inventory of all of the clubs that are out there and classifying them in various ways. There are tons of clubs that are casual but they are important. This activity would be a first step for the USCF to identify.
However back to the recommendation above, it’s a start. Have to start somewhere. Maybe it can also be an inspiration for casual clubs to become a bit formal. Perhaps the ‘contest’ could be tiered for clubs of different sizes.
Again it’s a start. It’s better than what we have now which is nothing…
This is the type of activity that the Clubs Committee would have to hash out… Oops, I forgot, the Clubs Committee no longer seems to be functioning.
Lately, I have been looking at a number of western state chess websites to see how many clubs are listed to compare those to the USCF list. There are many clubs that are not USCF affiliates. My impression is that they use one club’s affiliate ID # to rate events. Clubs west of the Mississippi are not easy to find, but they can be tracked down if the state website is kept up to date. Some of the state websites have extensive links to other regions.
I stopped caring about the Clubs Committee once I was told by the EB Liaison that the chair of the committee wants to discuss committee work over telephone only…
I’ve moved this topic from USCF Issues to Chess Clubs.
Moving the topic from a forum with limited access to a forum that few care to access.
The topic was moved to the forum that properly covers the subject under discussion.
More pressing issues to discuss there such as the federations stance on transgender players.
Great ideas, but I know some of this is already done in the affiliate appreciation program.
Rob Jones
We recently started posting a monthly activity list, showing, for example, the top 10 states for memberships processed, top 15 metro areas for memberships processed, top 15 affiliates for memberships and for tournaments, and the top 15 affiliates for tournaments with 3 month (soon to be 2 month) members, JTPs or non-members (including house players.)
No prizes, but maybe just making the list offers some incentive.
For the most recent report, see BINFO 201400111.
This report is kind of an offshoot of a report I used to run for Bill Hall. Whenever there was a day with much larger than average cash receipts, he’d want to know what the source was.
I’m assuming what I stated is easily pulled from the database.
How difficult or much work would it be to pull something like that out and publish to a web page?
The problem with getting too detailed is that it runs the risk of disclosing more age information than we already have available. This is also why we do’t publish Top 100 lists by state.
Beyond that, it’s a question of priorities. At any given time there are probably N items someone would like done, and maybe N/20 available time to do them.
You will probably need someone (eg, a committee chair or EB member) to champion your idea.
A very, very brilliant idea. Time to recognize clubs that are actually doing something positive, and useful for the actual growth of meaningful chess–and that can only be the building of the USCF membership base, USCF rated tournaments, etc. All the rest is truly lots of talk, little action. And for those who
state that it is the larger clubs that will ‘hog’ the awards–i really doubt this. what this will show is
that when it really boils down to it, that a relatively key few folks are keeping our federation going
by promoting events and club growth. Really, for the most part, the remainder are simply riding the
bus. Glad they are riding our bus, however. The definition of a club with few USCF players is very
simple–a club that basically lacks proper focus. And there are many of these, including far too many
USCF state charter affiliates.
Rob Jones
If I recall correctly “the federation has no official stance on transgender players”. In this day and age it would seem that club committee members could communicate by e-mail. Even if the committee member does not have internet access, usually colleges have guest computers and so do most public libraries.
At clubs with large numbers of members who play casual chess perhaps some could be recruited by extolling the virtues of USCF membership. This could be risky though. I took some friends to see a real tournament where there was exceptionally bad behavior exhibited by an adult player who referred to my friends as uncivilized in their milieu. We all had a good laugh but unfortunately the USCF lost out on a couple of chess enthusiasts who stuck to casual chess.
I think each club’s “proper focus” is for it to decide. With all due respect, I believe many of those you believe lack proper focus, would say the same about your perspective. There is plenty of room for all levels of interest in rated play.