Thank you for the kind replies, as well as making some valid points that i hadnt considered, as well as access to information I didn’t know existed so handily.
Many of you had strong points probably better discussed on different threads regarding costs and issues with retirees (offtopic, eastside I lived in Pittsburgh for 5 years, still visit twice a year because of inlaws etc… hope to play out there eventually!)
I was able to find the following sheet on that same BINFO site, which gives a break down by exact age, across all membership types
The dropoff points seem to be sharp at the end of school age, a 25% dropoff or so again from 24-25, then flatlined until age 40 where you start seeing a notable uptick. I’d cut and paste the ages or a quick excel chart i made, but the formatting seems… unfriendly. The female membership after school age tells the same story, but even more sharply, without the uptick starting at age 40…
The last thing to note is the single greatest age group is age 9. Which is befitting, because my most recent loss about to be published… is to a 9 year old. Rated 19something… making me wonder if I’ll ever be anywhere near as good as he already is.
As I have been predicting for many years, so far accurately, on these USCF forums,…
USCF scholastic successes will never translate into sizable gains in adult successes until – rated play on the web becomes routine; of course interspersed on the calendar with face-to-face OTBoard rated play.
If we wait looooong enuf, maybe my prediction will eventually be disproven. But how much longer must we wait?
And web based rated play should be implemented with a social “team” aspect. By utilizing the web, Boston can compete against Nashville, without paying airfare and hotel costs.
Your characterization of ‘non-competitive’ seems misleading.
Instead, I would characterize as ‘team social’. Kickball and dodgeball are team activities.
The USCF rots in spawning team activities among adults.
However I freely admit that the USCF does not feel that it rots at team activities, because apparently the USCF believes there is no value in or interest in team related chess (as judged by the USCF’s actions or decades long lack thereof). People who play chess are different from other humans because chess players have no interest in social activities; right?
As these comments illustrate, rated play on the web should be a priority for the USCF, obviously.
. .
Once they use one or more activities to get into college, they are at a point where it’s efficient to try other things. And I don’t think chess will ever be popular in college, because college is too demanding in other ways. If we’re going to retain kids after college, we would have to “re-catch” many of them.
I’ve found that when planning strategy, it’s usually a good idea to assume best play by the opponent. If what I’ve describe above is optimal behavior by young adults, then we should not assume that people will actually do something different.
There are some problems with chess in this regard:
(1) talking and especially teamwork are forbidden during serious games.
(2) our rating system makes sure the pressure is on, every game.
In bridge, you get partnership arguments, but at least it’s some sort of communication. Often you have teams of 4 for the most formal bridge events. It is fundamentally a game of structured communication. Chess is a game of total individualism during play.
It’s possible to have social evenings playing chess. I’ve had many. But they are not USCF rated evenings.
I agree that the magazine is worth about $35.00. It provides about 30 minutes per month of entertainment, and after reading it several days of softness and adequate absorbancy.
Figure out some way to charge a per-game fee that will keep USCF going. How many rated games? How much to charge per game to match current revenues? Exploit the embryonic players’ parents’ compulsion to have the kids play every weekend. Put the magazine online only for crying out loud. It’s four months out of date and doesn’t matter.
We currently have a rating fee, charged to the organizer or TD per game that we rate in our rating system. FIDE has a similar arrangement but their rating fee is much higher per game.
In fiscal 2010-2011, the USCF rated around 552,000 games games. With a few days until the end of the 2011-2012 fiscal year, the USCF has rated around 578,000 games so far this fiscal year. The ratings fee for most events is 25 cents/game, since around 94% of events are submitted online, so the total ratings fees should be around $145,000.
By comparison, the USCF will take in over $1.6 million in membership dues in fiscal 2011-2012. (That’s on a cash basis, on an accrued basis the numbers will be different due to deferral of current year revenue and recognition of prior year deferrals for life, sustaining and multi-year membership dues.)
Ratings fees, currently 25 cents/game, would probably have to increase by a factor of 4, if not more, in order to generate enough revenue to cover what is currently raised from membership dues after subtracting out magazine printing and mailing costs.
FIDE ratings fees charged to the USCF for Swiss events are 1 Euro per player. The USCF charges organizers $2 per player with a minimum of $60, in part because of exchange rate fluctuations, but also because the number of players with FIDE ratable results cannot always be determined in advance (the USCF will not know what the FIDE ratings fee is for an event until several months after the event ended) and to help cover staff time to prepare events for submission to FIDE. Round Robin events have much higher fees based upon the strength of the event, not the number of players in it.