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Thread: 5A2. Extending memberships due to COVID shutdown

  1. #21

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    Quote Originally Posted by Michael Lo View Post
    More resources on two players chess on PCs (laptops) without internet:
    - Ethernet LAN connection: https://sourceforge.net/projects/avmnetchess/
    - Ethernet LAN connection: https://sourceforge.net/projects/skychess/
    - LAN, Direct Connect, and IRC: https://sourceforge.net/projects/jfchess/

    But all of them are quite dated, last updated a few years ago.
    It may be dating, but using local resources, such as Ethernet, rather than remote resources, such as the Internet, is a much safer bet.

  2. #22

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    Quote Originally Posted by Lyle Craver View Post
    My personal view is that membership retention needs to be the primary goal in the immediate future. This is done by enhanced the perceived value of membership to members which obviously is going to be judged differently by different people.

    The hell of all this is that just as Covid has already attacked various parts of the country at differing rates, the recovery is going to happen differently between provinces as well. If PEI (for instance - I'm simply picking them as one of the lowest infected provinces) has zero cases for 6 months while it's still going strong in ON is it fair to continue the extension? Similarly within a province - presently the infection rate is MUCH higher in Calgary than Edmonton. My question is "What's Fair?" and the only answer is "it's complicated"

    While there are a lot of online chess resources, the CFC "Brand" is OTB (over the board) Tournament play and while we can spread boards out to give more space between boards, other than allowing only one player at the board at a time enforcing 2 metres between white and black at a single board is going to be difficult. I don't think I've seen that at ANY tournament in 40+ years of participation.

    But I do think that we won't go wrong in asking ourselves what we can do that enhances the perceived value of a CFC membership to present members and to those who have recently chosen not to renew until events in their area resume. We do need to be proactive - it isn't going to just happen!
    How can we advertise more value to the CFC membership in times of COVID-19? There is only one answer for that guys: embracing online chess. Any other OTB, or semi-OTB (as has been discussed in the last few days) would be complex, not likely to work in all provinces/territories, perhaps not even appealing to players (that is more subjective, I admit). But online chess should be a selling point (CFC-rated online chess, I am not talking about any other online chess here).

    It all comes down to us accepting this reality forced upon us by the pandemic. Either we choose to keep debating and/or focus on the (undeniable) negative aspects of online chess; or we do embrace it, try to overcome problems and get things moving while the pandemic lasts (and keep in mind that "normal" normal conditions will never be reached until a vaccine is available, for a true normal situation we are looking well down 2021).

    If we present and market CFC membership (roughly 40 dollars) as a gateway to play meaningful games online, we should succeed in keeping (I would dare to even say increasing) the CFC memebership.

    In other threads I have posted some ideas to attract people initially (e.g., decide that one annual CFC membership comes with 5 free games online for CFC-rated tournaments). I will not repeat my ideas here, but the point is that it is indeed possible. If we are really serious on going down that road we should roll up our sleeves and start working more towards that goal.

  3. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by Pierre Dénommée View Post
    It may be dating, but using local resources, such as Ethernet, rather than remote resources, such as the Internet, is a much safer bet.
    In that case you lose the formidable resources of the chess server to check for cheating.

  4. #24

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    Quote Originally Posted by Vladimir Drkulec View Post
    In that case you lose the formidable resources of the chess server to check for cheating.

    I am talking about in person tournaments in which players plays on their computers to respect social distancing. There are arbiters on the site to check both sides.

  5. #25
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    Quote Originally Posted by Pierre Dénommée View Post
    I am talking about in person tournaments in which players plays on their computers to respect social distancing. There are arbiters on the site to check both sides.
    That would work. I am not familiar with programs that allow you to play over networks and not over servers but realize there must be a number of them out there that can be adopted to this application.

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