Is the USCF’s mission to discover and develop little Nakamura’s at the expense of all else?
A very thought-provoking question! Thinking outside the 64 squares.
I give you the USCF mission statement. I submit you will find many, many more goals than identifying potentially promising junior players. Those goals cannot be serviced when you choke off a major revenue stream, which is what your proposal would do.
Yes, USCF is a non-profit organization. That does NOT mean that it shouldn’t make money. To fulfill the entirety of its mission, USCF must profit from its largest activities, by doing things like collecting entry fees at national scholastic events.
Look at the responses you’ve received on this thread. Ignore my own responses, if you like. You have yet to find ANYONE who thinks your idea is workable. I will go out on a limb and say that it isn’t because we don’t want to identify or develop junior stars. (In fact, I’d say we already have a great number of devices in place to do exactly that.) However, it’s fairly common knowledge that USCF relies on membership dues, plus income from its national scholastic tournaments, to fund much of its activities. You have yet to provide a single concrete alternative source for replacing that revenue. While you work on finding that source, please remember that the “S” in “USCF” does NOT stand for “Scholastic”.
I would imagine very few, and none who would be found by offering free USCF scholastic memberships. Do you think Nakamura got to master without coaching, books, the expense of transportation, etc.? Do you think he got to GM on natural talent alone, without years of hard work? There are exceedingly few kids in the US with the resources to become a master who aren’t already exposed to chess, and the programs that have developed such players out of relative poverty aren’t providing just memberships, they’re providing coaching and transportation (e.g., IS 318 in Brooklyn). If they have the resources to become a GM, a $20 membership fee isn’t going to stop them.
My initial post would double dues for adults. How concrete a proposal do you want? Could’nt be clearer.
Would it work? Remains to be tested. Conduct a poll among all members.
It’s not enough to say " let them eat cake.
Your initial post is clear. What is even clearer is that you do not comprehend just how much money we’re talking about trying to make up with your pie-in-the-sky thinking.
Go take a look sometime at all the national scholastic championships we run. Then, take away every single entry fee paid into those by players 18 and under. Say goodbye to all the entry fees for the National Elementary, National Junior High, National High School, National All-Grade, National All Girls, US Junior Chess Congress, National Youth Action, US Junior Open and US Junior Open Girls tournaments.
(Never mind also losing every single Under-18 entry fee into the USCF national open events. Or losing all those U-18 membership revenues.)
As I look at your MSA, it appears you haven’t played a rated game in quite a while. MSA goes back to 1991, so it’s been over 20 years for you. Perhaps you simply do not recognize just how big a portion of our membership the Under-18 crowd has become.
In March 2012, the USCF had 77,914 members. Of those, 30,893 were ages 12 and under. Another 7,878 were between the ages of 13 and 15.
(The data shows players grouped in ages 16-19, so I didn’t include those. However, once you include players ages 16-17, it’s obvious that the “kiddies” make up more than half of USCF’s membership rolls.)
This poll you keep asking for would NOT be a reliable test of your idea. It’s been explained to you by at least three different posters in this very thread that a survey (a) would be difficult to construct properly, (b) would likely not get enough responses to give you a statistically valid response, and (c) wouldn’t even be considered until you at least present a proposal supported by more than wishful thinking. In this case, “wishful thinking” equals “believing that all current USCF adult members would willingly bear a 100% increase in annual membership dues without getting a single additional service or benefit for their money”.
This is as aimless an exhortation as “Think outside the 64 squares”. Can we trade cliches for fact-based arguments? Please?
Folks:
A very interesting discussion.
I tend to very much agree with Boyd Reed. Dropping dues for 18 and under is simply not financially realistic in any way, shape, or form. I also agree when it was said that there is an upper bound to dues folks are willing to pay and I fear that a 100% increase will “sound the thunderclap” (to use the analogy in the discussion) on adult membership.
Someone said that he’d gladly pay a double USCF membership fee if it mean that kids were learning to play chess. Speaking for myself, I wouldn’t. I think we have a reasonable youth and scholastic program. That supposition, I think, is supported by the statistic that a majority of the dues paying members of the USCF are under 18 (as stated in Pres. Herring’s first report some months ago). However the model of “get 'em young and you’ll keep 'em” doesn’t seem to work with chess today. We’re getting them young…and then losing them when they go to college.
I am a prime example because this is EXACTLY what happened with me.
We’ve done our work with the kids, and we’ve done good work. Now, I think we need to shift our focus to the young adults which membership statistics say we’re losing. Dues have little to do with this, and that discussion is a red herring. What we need to do is start thinking like a young adult…and like it or not that means ONLINE. Networks. Computers. That, I think, may be the future of chess for the forseeable future. The success of the online poker tournaments is an indication of this. The success of things like World of Warcraft is another. The competition we have with things like XBOX and Playstation is a third indication. The fourth indication is simply the popularity of the current online chess communities through all demographics of our communities - patzer to Grandmaster. An ICC rating is seen as valid as a USCF rating. What the ICC doesn’t have are state and national titles.
Whether you agree that its a good thing or not, the fact of the matter is that people under the age of thirty, and intelligent people of all ages (which, traditionally is where we tend to think the chess demographic lies) live their lives online. In order to remain relevant the USCF/organized chess community needs to go online…yesterday!
The USCF, in some ways, realizes this. They’ve tried to go online before, I know, and it hasn’t worked. I’m honestly not sure why, but I’m sure folks can tell me. I don’t think it harms my assertion, however. I know the USCF is trying again, and I’m eager to see what happens.
When I talk about going online, however, I’m talking about going all the way. I want to see both speed and normal tournaments online. Sections of State championships need to be online. I want to see a section of the US Open online as well!
The scariest part of this for me is the thought of what happens to the traditional over-the-board tournament format? An online activity will directly compete against that, and if I’m right will be more than enough competition for it. Will an online format kill over-the-board play? It might. It will certainly significantly change its environment.
We have a new infrastructure to build, folks, what may be the most radical in the history of our game. Garnering a significant online presence will make the introduction of the chess clock in the 1800s look like child’s play and our discussions about mandating digital clocks look backward. But I see no other way forward into relevancy with regard to a modern society.
In the end, the issue is not that we don’t have a good youth program. We do. The data say that a majority of our USCF members are kids. The issue is that we’re not keeping them as they transition into adults, and that is the discussion we need to be having. Dues have little to do with it.
Richard “Doc” Kinne
Clerk, Boylston Chess Club. Director, Mass. Chess Assoc.
New England Chess Association Delegate-at-Large (MA).
USCF Local Arbiter.
I’ve been paying my own dues for 40 years (since I was 16). I’ll pay normal increases due to higher expenses but I’m not covering the dues for the Under-18 crowd. Let their parents pay for it if they want their children to play chess (just like any other activity).
Sorry, but that’s the way I feel.
Not to mention a dedicated father who is an excellent coach - one of the best.
Details, details. 
I also agree (started paying my dues at 14.) However, I would note that I’m ok at charging them somewhere in excess of a marginal cost (including any costs for directly attributable services) such that their dues are less expensive but not causing a financial drain and if anything adding to net revenue marginally (since I am advocating charging slightly in excess of the margin.)
In light of Doc Kinne’s response above, I hereby withdraw my topic proposal.
Very insightful analysis.
A very interesting discussion indeed.
Dan Williams-Lawrence
I agree with the issues, and I note that I’ve seen similar comments about “required memberships” with respect to other “sports or activities” in other states. In addition, IL is considered by many states to be a model/leader for sports and activities.
I think that concepts like the above are especially worth considering if they can be leveraged to multiple situations and if they can help us start producing more advertising revenue.
I agree with Jeff, that the idea is initially to address some of the IHSA concerns, BUT the same concepts coming out of that solution can likely be applied to other state scholastic programs, and also to COLLEGE and to BUSINESS-BASED leagues and programs.
Check out this thread for one of the more recent discussions of this topic.
I don’t think this is going to happen, for a few reasons. The biggest one, IMO, is that such events can’t be properly monitored for cheating. Also, I’d note that the US Open doesn’t have “sections”.
I’m not against online chess; in fact, I have an ICC account. But I think USCF missed the boat on it. As an organization, we need to concentrate on running the races that we can win. When it comes to online chess, we’re not just more miles behind than we were, but also looking at more competitors ahead of us than we were.
Dan:
I’m glad you brought the topic up. Some may have said that “thinking outside the 64 squares” was a cliche, but you had the guts to make that real. The price for that is that sometimes when you think outside the board everyone thinks you’re wrong…and usually they’re right…usually. If you think you’re right, or have a way to be right, though, keep plugging! That you plugged away in the first place is a great thing.
My initial thoughts on a web presence may need some recasting as well. After I wrote what I did I went back and saw some previous discussions. While I’m still convinced that a solid online presence is critical (hope that the that ship has not indeed passed us by) I’m not dogmatic on the USCF itself doing it. Partnering with someone who is already doing it seems better.
Someone brought up the issue that simply doing it may be just the thing to do, and the USCF Web SysAdmin chimed in saying that there was nothing in the rules against that.
The biggest bugaboo (that’s a technical term, by the way! 
) seems to be cheating. I agree that its a challenge, but I’m also convinced it can’t stop us. It is not practical to have a USCF TD at each playing site, especially if the people play at home, which is a great draw for online play.
Perhaps the best way of dealing with this would be to set up an online rating system in the same way we have a separate system for Correspondence and Quick play. I’m not utterly convinced of that fix, however, because if we set up a separate rating system it getto-izes the players and then the best we can do is an MA State Champion and an MA State Online Champion (as an example).
Richard “Doc” Kinne
Clerk, Boylston Chess Club. Director, Mass. Chess Assoc.
New England Chess Association Delegate-at-Large (MA).
USCF Local Arbiter.
Good discussion Gentlemen!
If by ‘simply doing it’ you are referring to holding online rated events, there are some fairly specific requirements that must be met if online events are to be USCF rated, notably having a NON-PLAYING certified TD on-site at each location.
Long post warning:
I probably bring a different perspective to this, having been a former president for a 400 or so person sports league, and maybe one of the relatively few 31 year old members of USCF, and especially rare in that I joined the USCF when I did, and that my wife is currently the executive director of a non profit with most of its revenue coming from dues paying members.
First lets start with the obvious.
Judging from the ranking lists, ~=37k of the 50k players rated are juniors, which means its close to 3/4 of membership. You have 13,000 dues paying members who played in a rated event in the last year that are adults.
Of that 13000 (actually 12,800 but w/e), 1500 are 65+, meaning 11,500 are 19-64, with a guess of some sort of parabolic shaped distribution curve by age from 19-64, with almost certainly more 55-59 year olds than 25-29 (and fischer boomers in general?)
So obviously you can’t make kids free with those ratios, but that’s kind of agreed on at this point. What’s interesting is that clearly USCF started focusing on the scholastic level some time back, but it hasnt translated to the 20 somethings.
I’m not so sure the USCF has failed here in anyway, and i think the task is a very difficult undertaking. I say this as someone roughly in that generation (decided to start playing competitively at 31),
Here are some reasons why getting 20 somethings could be difficult.
- You can’t set the bar too high for retention rate of 18 year olds. Right now the retention rate is too low maybe, but it’s bound to be low. Kids do things for funny reasons. Alot of times they are playing a sport or a game not because they want to, but because their parents make them. This happens in chess too. Many of you have heard of it second hand, but even I, relatively new to chess have seen it first hand for myself, complete with a dad yelling at his kid after a draw and there being plenty of tears from the 1st grader (who is quite good i should add).
There are plenty of story of kids who persist in spite of overbearing parents and become successful actors, musicians, athletes etc, but there are also lots of kids who burn out at 16, and fade away. (then there are people who basically end up as burned out but so talented they persist in their craft… if you have 15 minutes and want an absolutely chilling read that transcends sports/games/what have you, read this:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Marinovich )
Alot of kids give up what they did even if they liked it, to try other things in college. So while these players may return to chess, they may also give it up to try new things. So i wouldn’t view low retention as a big failure.
This of course is the extremes, but maybe you just played chess in high school because your friends did. To play as an adult means you are doing it pretty much only for you, and at a cost of something else.
- Alot of people in their 20’s are attached to competitve “non-competitive things”, ie: things that are silly on the scheme of it. Kickball leagues have exploded in popularity becuase people were taking softball too seriously. There are a growing number of dodgeball leagues. Many of these leagues are sponsored by bars, and after a brief hour and a half game, (or less), you go to the sponsoring bar for 20% off your tab, and usually these leagues are coed and not meant to be taken too seriously, with no major desire to improve while being in the league (and certainly no study of the best strategies by most teams!).
These people, at this stage in their lives, are not the natural market for chess clubs to target, as the socialization in chess clubs is mostly limited to the brief windows when you arent playing, and many clubs have time limits kind of unfriendly to finishing at an hour where the local bar’s kitchen is still open or whatnot. As far as i know, for people trying to meet new people and possibly a girlfriend, the chess club is not going to be seen as an easy avenue to the latter.
There are also alot of 20 year olds that dont even want to compete at anything, and just try and go out somewhere new every night.
- So if you aren’t going to go after people who are trying to goof off, you probably are going after people who want to do something with intention, and like to improve and are competitive. Sports in alot of ways is like chess, except for the pieces can do different things on different days (some days your hamstring might be tight and you are slower, some days you feel great, some days it’s windy and your accuracy on passing is reduced, etc). One of the frustrating things is that if you are one of the pieces on the board, your power gradually declines. It’s one thing knowing that you are going to run into some people who are better athletes than you, it’s quite another when you have to put in increasing amounts of work just to be “sort of in shape”, and that you are increasingly likely to be the worst athlete on the field. Your smarts, competitiveness and willpower can only compensate for so many deficiencies as an athlete before it stops being fun. When i was in my 20s, alot of my friends and i thought we’d play golf seriously when we couldnt play soccer or whatever at an acceptable level, or when you’re sore for too long after each game, becuase, while golf is athletic, it relies much more on skills that don’t diminish. For whatever reason, I am only respectable at golf when I don’t care much about how I’m playing or the score, which is obviously not something you want to pursue with passion on a go-forwards basis. Hence chess…
Chess could have the same appeal, but again, if you’re going after 20 somethings, who are competitive, I am pretty sure many will want to use whatever limited physical gifts they have for as long as they can, and even after that’s done they then have a choice between either a second sport that doesn’t matter as much as their initial sport (or running, tai-chi, something like that), or in some cases give up competitive pursuits completely if they have kids. As it stands even if you do chess and youre young, you’re probably doing something else too to try to stay in some semblance of decent physical condition.
Chess is somewhere in that ball park of options to pursue at some meaningful level of time investment, but it has plenty of competition, and possibly too much competition to people who still feel they could be towards the top of their athletic field, further limiting your chance at getting 20 somethings.
- Kind of touched on, but something facing alot of activities is the time demands and structure. I read part of a book called “Bowling Alone”, which explained that the number of games bowled is up, but bowling leagues are down, and then beat you over the head with 300 pages of similar examples, and what this means, and why it happens, and why it’s bad for America and civics and whatnot. I didnt finish the book needless to say, but the points were interesting. Golf (which i play 10-15 times a year, mostly with my father in law), is absolutely getting crushed right now. People are working longer hours, and the idea of getting on the golf course at 4:30 for a quick 9 or try to get in 18 mid-summer is pretty much impossible to alot of people. Weekends it’s basically a 6 hour commitment, which pretty much blows up one of your two weekend days and if done too much is guaranteed marital stress, even if you DONT have kids.
Some of the chess formats (the most beautiful ones with the highest quality games) suffer from the same malady to some degree. This is especially problematic compared to online chess. To play a game at the local chess club, it’s a 25 minute drive from my house to the club, another 20 minutes of milling around at least waiting for everyone to show up, play your game, and then possibly wait for an hour or more if its a swiss/quad format and you dropped a piece on move 22 and resigned by move 26 while your next opponent is blowing through multiple time controls trying to hang on in a lost game, then play again, then drive back home.
Golf theoretically can be played in 3-3.5 hours if everything goes right, but a weekend round is often a 6 hour committment. I feel that chess can be the same way, which is both beautiful, and inconvenient. Especially compared to the online format, where, tournament or otherwise, i can play games at an interval of my choosing, stop between games to cook lunch, if i’m in an online tournament i can probably eat while i’m playing, and there’s very little in the way of waiting for games to start, or driving, or any of that.
I’m saying this from the perspective of someone who PREFERS live chess as well, but is aware that for alot of people, being a USCF member, and going to rated tournaments doesn’t make sense.
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One mostly positive development: for the most part people are friendly to new members, and don’t care much how good you are, at the places i’ve gone. I had one notable exception the first time i tried entering an event, but generally recruiting is more grassroots, so on that front there’s some reason for optimism.
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If i had to start a club. I’d make a facebook page, start a twitter account, follow all of the people i knew, along with every big chess name i could find, post reminders every time the club was meeting, post results from every tournament, possibly some in game updates, possibly link to those sites that publish pgns. That would be both time consuming and require an adeptness with social networking. I’d probably have to be willing to eat 500-1k minimum for the first year as whatever minimal dues were charged spectacularly fail to cover capital costs. I’d probably also have to play a bunch of random tournaments, hand out business cards of the club to everyone i played etc etc. It’s a major undertaking to recruit for anything today. Alot of people are understandably either incapable or reluctant to do that.
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To me, Bacon is probably right, in that the biggest untapped market is recent retirees, where there are clear benefits for them (keeping the mind sharp, social interaction, something they can be competitive at against any age group), and they are most poised to have the resources (time, money etc) to go to these events, and the marketing strategies are more… old school.
Otherwise, you’re hoping to go after a really rather narrow subset of 20 somethings, and hope you win their attention over a number of worthy competing pursuits. This may or may not be a worthwhile goal, but its undoubtedly a difficult one, made even more difficult by the demographics of the people you currently run into at tournaments.
To DMN10:
Your remarks add significantly to this thread. I’m gobsmacked by your clarity of thought. I hope you continue in chess. People like you are the future of chess. Have you considered starting a chess blog?
Dan
There are a lot of good discussion points in this post. I just want to mention a few things that stood out to me.
Current membership numbers can be seen via BINFO posts, which can be accessed through this gateway. Those numbers show that junior members are slightly over 50% of current membership.
April membership breakdown by age:
Total members - 77,914
Age 0-12 - 30,893
Age 13-15 - 7,879
Age 16-19 - 5,325
Age 20-24 - 2,141
Age 25-64 - 24,448
Age 65-over - 7,228
I don’t see a breakdown of the 25-64 demographic. But I’m not certain the assumption above is correct.
There are, sadly, a number of overzealous chess parents. It’s not hard to see them in action, either. These days, just observing at pretty much any tournament will give ample opportunity. Certainly, they make the game much less fun - for their kids, for other kids, and for adult volunteers.
I think this and the prior analysis about 20-somethings (snipped for space) has a point. My empirical observation is that life in general simply intrudes more when you get out of your teenage years. College, work, graduate school, relationships, expanding circles of friends, exposure to new activities, starting families, and other concerns all become more pressing than, say, learning the newest novelties in the Chebanenko Slav.
I often told my students that they needed to get all the time playing and studying that they could before they graduated high school - because it would be hard for them to improve significantly for a while after that, since so many other things would require their attention.
This is a good point, and it’s true across many activities, I suspect (though I have only empirical observation to support this). My son played baseball for three years. The number of teams in our local league dropped each year, and this current season, they had to fold into another local league entirely due to reduced interest. He was interested in playing football, but the local youth football program not only required aggressive fundraising from each child, but also required five practices a week when school was out - dropping to a mere four practices a week during the school year. (This is Western Pennsylvania; football is king in these parts.) There was no way his mother and I could commit to that kind of time, given our respective schedules.
He’s decided he wants to pursue chess, which is fine with me. It allows him to spend more time with me, and because of my directing, I’m often at events where he can play anyway. But I can justify the added expense of USCF membership, lessons, entry fees, equipment and travel costs by using my directing fees to pay for all of that. Were that not the case, I’m not sure he’d be playing tournament chess.
Aside from the many retirees living on a budget, a big (and growing) problem is that fewer people are retiring early (and for many of them, that is a necessity). With more people working longer into their lives, free time is reduced for them as a direct consequence, so they don’t get to pursue current or potential hobbies more vigorously.
hmmm…if there is a price increase for adult members for any reason shouldn’t we look at how many adult members that will effect? It seems that we do have a number of life members that an increase would not effect.
The BINFO system also contains a monthly membership breakdown by age and sex, the most recent one is BINFO 201200091.
There’s also a breakdown by membership type and age group, here’s the most recent (from BINFO 201200110:
[code]April 2012 (Most Recent Month End)
Type Total % Reg 12/below 13-15 16-19 20-24 25-64 65+
B 271 0.0 0 0 1 5 251 14
E 3264 0.0 0 0 0 0 0 3264
J 7107 60.1 503 752 3973 1755 124 0
L 6873 33.8 0 0 0 0 3911 2962
R 17008 33.4 16 20 68 168 16223 513
S 68 0.0 0 0 1 1 66 0
U 26453 77.1 25594 859 0 0 0 0
V 1332 0.0 725 224 139 38 196 10
W 5664 0.0 3255 1132 715 153 401 8
Y 6105 74.9 797 4888 420 0 0 0
Z 3769 34.3 3 4 8 21 3276 457
Type Total % Reg 12/below 13-15 16-19 20-24 25-64 65+
Total 77914 49.4 30893 7879 5325 2141 24448 7228
[/code]
This probably underestimates the number of life members who are in the 65+ category, because we are missing birthdates for over 1000 life members.