When I mentioned the forum to a chess friend, he said he never read the forums because it is “The internet version of CB radio.” Reading the forums make me think. After all, is that not what one would expect of any player of the Royal Game?
I am currently working at the Atlanta Chess and Game Center. It is my third “tour of duty” at the House (of Pain). This summer I have met many people who play chess. Some of those players play at work. I’ve had customers from MARTA (the Metropolitian Atlanta Rapid Transit Assoc); Fed-Ex; and even a fellow from Ethiopia who drives a taxi and needed chess sets for the drivers who wait at the “bull pen” at the airport and play chess while waiting for a fare. Today I had a customer who plays at home with friends and family. None of them had any interest in joining any organization. One of the members of the House plays chess at a bowling alley on weekends, staying and playing until the place closes at four am. He said he has tried to get the other guys to come to the House, to no avail. I received a phone call from a player who wanted to know how he could play online. He had no interest in coming to the House. When I asked if he had ever considered joining the USCF, he asked why he should spend the money when there was so much free material online? How does one answer a question like that? I had one customer who came in to purchase the Informant discs on Kramnik and Kasparov who said he used to come to the House, but now stayed home and played online.
My question is: How do we reach these players? There must be many thousands of them out there. What can we, as a community do to bring these players into our organization?
There’s a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any overlarge concentration of like-thinking individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause.-P J O’Rourke
Offer something that is perceived to have a sufficient value to justify paying for it. If it’s something unique, that they can’t just get somewhere (anywhere) else, that alone helps to increase the perception of its value. The revenues come when enough people think what you’re offering is worth paying for.
Lowering price is an effective way of increasing sales in the short run, but increasing a product’s value is better for the seller in the long run.
I think that moving forward; we need a three prong approach. We need to expand Scholastic Chess to more school districts, build Senior Chess as a way to mitigate Alzheimer’s disease and build a strong mentoring program for seniors to help with scholastic activities and life skills, and partner with municipal governments to launch program’s and utilize resources to build our programs.
Many school districts recognize the benefit of chess programs, and although they have limited resources, once a dedicated person is in place, these programs grow. It may take many years, but these scholastic players will return as adult members, or introduce chess to their children.
Seniors already go to many senior centers in our communities, but the challenge is to introduce an activity that many feel is to challenging for them to start. Having a good chess coach in a relaxed atmosphere together with a mild form of exercise can mitigate the effects or prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. The only problem I have encountered is that with the modern active lifestyles, many seniors work late into their seventies, and do not want to go these centers, even if they are retired.
Many cities are looking for summer activities for their youth. Most of the Boys and Girls Clubs, Big Brother, Big Sister organization actively encourage mentoring and locations for instruction. My friend Neal and I put on Chess classes for Juvenile Offenders, who often just needed or wanted stable contact, and a little instruction on logical thinking.
These all build the local chess community. It helps to have the resources to provide the basics, but often it only takes initiative to ask the local business community for help, and a clear plan of what you want to accomplish. Use the State and National resources, though often limited, they have the experience to help.
Rob Sturgeon
The ideas are really excellent, Rob. But online chess cannot be neglected. The online community is only going to grow and the same goes for the online chess community. For the USCF to thrive, it must have a strong presence online. I’m very pleased by the promotion of online information and articles to supplement Chess Life. Ideally the USCF online chess club should be the best in the world … but we have some catch-up to do on that. FICS is free and ICC has a huge head start.
Steve: Your right, and now is the time to transition to the internet. Going online with Chess Life is a start, and maybe a partnership with the FICS is a way to go. If we don’t burn our bridges with Texas Tech, maybe a three way partnership of FICS, U.S.C.F. and Texas Tech could benefit everyone.
Mike: I don’t want to make money on this. I currently pay for two accounts now, but usually have three on ICC. I have my public account, my nephews, and then my private one that no one knows is me.
I’m thinking of the U.S. Chess Federation providing a grant by us to FICS, and they provide a subset of the FICS for our members. I think if we could get Texas Tech involved in hosting and some support, this could become the dominant Chess Server in the U.S. given time.
I pay ICC because I like the service, have no problems. I have tried other services, but many at the same time, but I still like ICC. I meet people from all over the world, and a large number of my friends also use this service. It is important to people in rural areas to have, since the distance to play rated games is prohibitive. Given my strange hours sometimes, I like playing someone at 3:00 AM. We need to be involved in internet chess, and this will bring members. I say up the dues a little to provide the support, it will be money well spent.
The idea of expanding scholastic chess is awsome. I know that in my area in the 90s at least 2 of the high schools were USCF affiliates. Unfortunately neither of them is now. None of the middle schools or Elemantary schools are either. As you mentioned resources are very limited at these levels. It is hard to come by the funds. In order to implement these things we will need to build strong independant clubs to help finance the scholastic clubs, and tap the local businesses. We should also look heavily into Colleges and Universities. If we can show the Scholastic players they can carry what they have been doing on into college as the football and other sports players do it will increase membership dramatically. These players then theoretically will then add to the local clubs after graduation. It would not hurt to increase the number of TEAM events for adults either. For example if your city has a big rival then work to build two clubs in the rival towns and host an annual competition between the two. That of course could increase depending on the number of rivals your town has. In larger cities you could go nuts with this idea. For example in Chicago how many clubs could put together teams and have a tournament that will give that club some type of title and bragging rights for the year.
Actually, ICC has more members than FICS, though they are almost functionally identical. Mike - do you have any idea how they compete with ‘free’?
People pay for some things that could arguably be obtained for free. Identifying the differences, and finding needs or desires to fulfill, was the key in establishing ICC 13 years ago. Oddly, chess players were consistently able to do this, and MBAs were consistently not able to do this.
(And under management by an MBA now, they are in steady decline, but I think that’s due to misunderstanding their business - during my tenure their, growth occurred, and this was not exceptional, though the growth rates varied from year to year.)
There are many people who won’t spend money on organized chess, but we do offer some things that matter to those who do spend. We offer a managed community, and there are certainly tens of thousands of people who value that in one way or another. I have propounded plans to expand such services via the web site, when the organization is prepared to move forward in this area, too: members pages, club pages and event pages, game and combination libraries, friends and heroes lists, and so on.
USCF’s product is a system of serving its members, and providing members contact with other members within that framework - whether following and supporting Kamsky or the Olympic teams, or playing rated games.
Rob - You appear to be objective on so many things, but not on this.
In my opinion, one of the most consistent errors USCF makes is choosing a “hero” and wishing for that individual or institution to “do it all” for us.
Solutions must be independent of the people who execute them, as people come and go. We’ve had glorious runs of support in one way or another from folks like Erik Anderson and Bill Church, but as each moves on, we turn out not to have retained much to build further on.
Let’s not wish for a chessic messiah, please. Instead, let’s build up further sound programs - whatever they may be. Even during out current economic downturn, USCF sits in poverty, surrounded by riches.
Hal, I agree, and I think expanding service is a way for the U.S. Chess Federation to grow. I think that is why we need to support people who are putting chess first, like the guys at FICS. An endorsement by the U.S. Chess Federation goes a long way, and we benefit from a community of chess players who maintain a link to the U.S. Chess Federation. Building lasting good partnerships with the right people is a keystone for the future, where I see the most growth coming from the internet, along with scholastic chess.
On a scholastic level, I think there is a 2 part problem in getting kids to make the jump from being a scholastic member to a long term adult member. Neither part has an easy answer to fix.
Part 1: Its easy to get younger children ages 6 to 11 to join a chess club and have fun with a scholastic membership. By the time they hit 11 to 13, their interests tend to change. Its a part of growing up… exploring different things.
Part 2: By the time kids are 16, your probably looking as a smaller subset of kids that truely enjoy chess and are on the high school chess team, etc. But then when they graduate, there is so much for them to do (going to college, getting a job, marriage, having kids), that playing chess can quickly be lost into the background of “stuff they did as a kid”. The ages of 18 to 24 is a fast paced episode of a person reinventing themselves as an adult.
How about finding a way to place a higher emphasis on Blitz and Quick chess. I know, its not really chess!!! But seriously, perhaps to keep people playing in the numbers we would like to see, maybe we treat it as an acceptable hobby.
there are probably people who would be proud to be a highly rated Blitz player. Others interested in Quick. and so on. How difficult to change ratings?
Might even have different pricing (rating fees) - get a lot more rated blitz if it didn’t cost so much. I think this idea has been discussed in one form or another in the past.
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In the abstract the issue queried by this post accurately strikes at the central problem (and opportunity) for the USCF.
But in practical terms I cannot get interested in this thread (no fault of Nocab).
Every several months these ineffectual forums rehash this obvious idea yet again. The same points get made as if they had not already been beaten to death over the years.
If the current president wanted the USCF to organize, manage and promote a revenue generating USCF Web Class Team Chess League for remote matches, it would have happened by now.
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Hal, good statement and I kinda/sorta agree with it and kinda/sorta don’t. Maybe YOU are one of those heroes, too!
On the general point, I do think that heroes ought to be used to some extent as long as they fit in to the organization and further the long range goals.