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Thread: 5.6 Ending the Membership Extension

  1. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by Fred McKim View Post
    Anyone who had a valid CFC membership on Mar 1, 2020 received an 8 month extension to their membership. I think our best offer to our members would be to sell memberships, until further notice, with a bonus of 6 months added on - in other words a regular membership would be for 18 months. Financially, I don't think simply extending the memberships again is a good plan.

    The new normal for 2021 is online chess and in-person matches or 4 player round-robins.

    Fred McKim
    CFC Treasurer
    I don't think we can really afford to discount at this point. Most of the memberships sold will be people that are playing in CFC online events. We would really have to reduce costs and our costs are very lumpy. FIDE fees and salary. We need to survive until everyone is able to get vaccinated.

  2. #12
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    I have been telling CFC members that play in my tournaments in Ottawa to renew for 2021.

    We need the support. I have no idea when we will be allowed back into the RA Center to start up the chess club and the weekend tournaments again.

  3. #13
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    It is not all gloom and doom. We will no doubt lose some members permanently but it is a recurring pattern with the CFC that a significant percentage of our players stop playing every year. These in turn are replaced by new players. The opportunity we will have once it is possible to play tournaments again will be that there will be a larger pool of players favourably disposed towards playing chess thanks to the pandemic and online play. Add to this, a bump from "The Queen's Gambit" and we should be ready for a return to better than normal that will take as long as three or four years. The good news is that we have been prudent for years and have built up reserves that should allow us to survive this pandemic. The bad news is that until we can play face to face again we are in for some pain. We do have to jump into online play but not to try to start an online platform. I am sure that in the chess community there is the expertise that would allow this but there is no real opportunity there. We would quickly lose even more money and we would not move the ball forward.

    We do need to find a safe platform where people won't be able to cheat and people won't be accused falsely of cheating. In the context of online CFC play we will probably need some variation of what was done at the National Online Youth program put on by Victoria Doknjas, Gergely Szabo and the Juniors to Masters program. Many arbiters monitoring a Zoom call, all separately recording the two cameras on every participant, a team of strong players going over the games. That is the future for the next two years for CFC rated play. It is easy enough to catch suspicious play after the fact but some of the metrics that the online platforms are using are just wrong.

  4. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by Vladimir Drkulec View Post
    I don't think we can really afford to discount at this point. Most of the memberships sold will be people that are playing in CFC online events. We would really have to reduce costs and our costs are very lumpy. FIDE fees and salary. We need to survive until everyone is able to get vaccinated.
    This is not my preference, as I agree with you, but offered up as a compromise if there is too much opposition to the status quo.

  5. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by Vladimir Drkulec View Post
    In the context of online CFC play we will probably need some variation of what was done at the National Online Youth program put on by Victoria Doknjas, Gergely Szabo and the Juniors to Masters program. Many arbiters monitoring a Zoom call, all separately recording the two cameras on every participant, a team of strong players going over the games. That is the future for the next two years for CFC rated play. It is easy enough to catch suspicious play after the fact but some of the metrics that the online platforms are using are just wrong.
    While this may be possible for some higher profile events, the run of the mill one day club swiss doesn't have the infrastructure for this .... and instead goes for charging a token entry fee with small prizes.

  6. #16
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    I had not heard that we might qualify for a federal interest-free loan / grant but could research this. Our store has taken the first slice of this loan (which is $40k which comes with a $10k grant if repaid by 12/31/2021 and which a later $20k has been added with an additional $10k grant if repaid by a date I don't have committed to memory - our store has not taken this yet though we might)

    I haven't really looked closely at the terms so can't tell you with certainty whether the CFC might qualify. I do know that some non-profits have qualified and received the loan.

    It's NOT free money but the terms are very good.

  7. #17
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    Fred's "18 months for 12" sounds plausible though would need to be properly timed. Obviously mid December 2020 isn't it but might well be by spring especially if by then the vaccine roll-out is well under way.

    Fundamentally in a standard tournament boards could easily be 2 metres apart but you can't reasonably protect white from black or vice versa at an individual board even with masks. This perception will undoubtedly change as Pfizer and Moderna become more familiar names to Canadians.

  8. #18

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    Quote Originally Posted by Lyle Craver View Post
    Fundamentally in a standard tournament boards could easily be 2 metres apart but you can't reasonably protect white from black or vice versa at an individual board even with masks.
    A solid sheet of plastic is required is required as shown in page 5 of this document https://www.fqechecs.qc.ca/pj/docume...C3%89CHECS.pdf . Combined with masks, this will provide a 96% protection. Unfortunately, basic probabilities (see Bernoulli trial) easily demonstrate that the probability of getting COVID-19 increase with each game. A 96 percent per game means a 4 percent probability of infection per game and playing multiple games will increase significantly the probability of infection.

  9. #19
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    Chess activity in BC is about half of what it was when we had live chess. The rating fee and membership revenue from our online events is about a quarter of what we were getting when we had live chess.
    I don't think it is wise to reduce that even further.
    Absolutely no one is complaining about the cost of CFC memberships out here.
    Paul Leblanc
    Treasurer, Chess Foundation of Canada
    CFC Voting Member

  10. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by Paul Leblanc View Post
    Chess activity in BC is about half of what it was when we had live chess. The rating fee and membership revenue from our online events is about a quarter of what we were getting when we had live chess.
    I don't think it is wise to reduce that even further.
    Absolutely no one is complaining about the cost of CFC memberships out here.
    I agree with you on that. People expect us to maintain services as revenues collapse so I really don't think that a schedule of discounts would lead to anything more than a rapid drain of the foundation funds.

    Clubs that have collected CFC memberships and have outstanding rating fees should remit amounts owed to the CFC. Hopefully Bob is catching up with billings and collection of receivables. Unfortunately the Rockefellers are not donating millions to the CFC like they do to the USCF. Lets get through this.

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