Chess Club activiities

Chess Clubs
1

Please list some non-Chess activities you do?

Please list some Chess activities you do?

My lists

Non-Chess

  1. Have meetings.
  2. Exchange accusative emails.

Chess.

  1. Host a tournament, sometimes two a year.
  2. Have skittles.

I think I see some of our problems already. We really don’t do that much.

2

Are you talking just about ‘chess clubs’? :frowning:

3

Yes I am talking about our club. But you are right that activity could apply to other organizations

4

Non-chess:

  1. (probably against the forum rules to talk about)
  2. Work
  3. Pizza!!!
  4. Playing with my cats
  5. …

Chess:

  1. Fics
  2. Chess club
  3. Tournaments whenever possible
  4. Pizza!!!
  5. Reading my collection of old Chess Lifes and stuff
5

bughouse

6

Was that on the chess activity list or the non-chess activity list?

I’ve found that bug is more common at the scholastic clubs while it is more frowned upon at the community clubs. There were occasional college bug tournaments that I played in but there isn’t as much interest as players get older.

7

well im 18, so i still love bug

8

Wait about seven years and then check again.

On the other hand, when the fluctuation at our community club skews towards more kids I’ll still play some bug with them after the serious games of the evening (through the doors and in the foyer rather than in the main playing room). My wife and I have a single kid (14) but she says that she takes care of two kids, with one of them having already turned 50.

9

Not exactly the chess activity that could entice the USCF to have a National event there…

10

Perhaps a better question would be: How do I improve attendance and chess activity at my club?

I am sure you will get a lot of good suggestions. Of course, much depends on what you have now. You would need to tell us more about your club: How many club members you have? Membership dues? How often do you meet? Adult players? Scholastic players? Certified TDs (willing to help)? Other chess clubs in the area? Potential members based on the population in that area, etc.

11

I think bughouse is a destructive activity, I know two clubs that were pretty much destroyed because the regulars only wanted to play bughouse among themselves, so any newcomers were ignored. Then as those regulars moved on (which eventually happens in any club) there weren’t enough members for the clubs to remain viable.

12

Bughouse works out just fine for our adult chess club.

Around 8 p.m., someone will say “did I hear someone say ‘bug’?” If three other people respond, bug is on. If not, then it isn’t. If there are more than four playing, they figure out some kind of rotation–usually the one who gets checkmated gets up and someone else sits down in his or her place. It goes on until we shut down at 9 p.m.

The bughouse players aren’t overly noisy and disruptive, and they are always the minority. There’s always someone around to play “regular” chess. We have players who never play bug, players who sometimes play bug, and players who will drop what they are doing when given the opportunity to play bug.

Bughouse is pretty good for allowing weaker players and newcomers to participate in chess with stronger players, and get a bit of a tactical lesson at the same time.

13

We have sets and clocks but no dues. Terrible clocks though. And the sets are a little bruised.

The only thing we do is skittles. We really hold only one tournament. Instead local tournaments are offered by private TD who have their own affiliates. That is very strange IMO.

I refuse to play bughouse. But the double games sounds good.

Our playing site has ordered us not to take up money. That is fine. But it does prevent USCF tournaments at that site.

Since we have currently unstructured activities I am going to suggest we start having structure activities such as unrated tournaments (both dual and quick). I think a Ladder programs for the skittles games. And do extensive internal advertising of those events via phone and email. We can easily do external advertising through the Web (various places). And the local paper.

Hey we can possibly run a national event. We run a very well respected local event. We just don’t like each other, but apparently well organized. shrug

Thanks for the suggestions.

Someone suggested (but not here) Mall Simuls for promotion. That will not work around here but work elsewhere.

14

One option would be to have a ladder system and have a trophy at the end of the year. At our club we have non-rated ladder games for about 35 of our 50 meetings of the year, with the top eight qualifying for a rated round robin for a traveling trophy.

If you have a problem with collecting money (for USCF dues and the rating fees) then you might still be able to get somebody to pay for an annual trophy or travelling trophy (maybe even the hosting site for those clubs in fast food restaurants or coffee shops).

Running the ladder with one ladder game per meeting, having people get 1, 1/2 or 0 points per meeting, and having attendance promoted by breaking ties in favor of those showing up for more meetings (17 points in 30 meetings is better than 17 points in 19 meetings) might increase participation. It depends on the people going to the club (if there was ONE BEST FORMAT then you wouldn’t have all the different flavors of clubs).

15

I like the approach of awarding attendance.

Maybe we can use our tournament by awarding a discount.

16

I learned bug when I was 18, and I’m still playing it 35+ years later. :slight_smile: I think if I added up the ages of the kids I was playing with on Labor Day, they might have been a little older then me.

17

One method we tried to boost tournament attendance was to offer a free entry to a future tournament to the person who came in last place. This was a well liked idea that dissipated discouragement. Usually we never had to give a free entry to the same person again as he/she was motivated to study harder.

Our club also likes raffled off door prizes; almost anything can be used. People like to get free stuff.

Try giviing out awards for attendance. Or playing the most games. Or for bringing in the most new members.

18

Granted we just got started this year. We seem to have a pretty good club running and we try to follow these guidelines:

Provide:
**-Informal, ‘friendly’ games
-Club and inter-club competitions
**-Opportunities to play in one or more leagues/tournaments
-A personal rating system where the results of inter-club games are rated to enable players to judge their standing and progress (like the ladder system mentioned earlier)
-Coaching by a more knowledgeable chess player
-A library of chess books
-Lectures/tuition evenings
-Chess PC software
-Social events (non chess. go bowling, have a pot luck, go to a basketball game, etc…)

**Hold Leadership meetings to get/stay organized
Manage Organization account to acquire supplies and stay within budget
Campus activity fair?
Post fliers; advertise on campus
Reserve Rooms or tables on campus for events and outreach

If you get bored playing each other all of the time contact other clubs reasonably nearby and set up a competition or a ‘friendly’ visit to one of their meetings.

19

Welcome to the forums!

So far our club does the following…

  1. Monthly G/10 rated tournament night.
  2. Socialize. Discuss the chess world.
  3. Organize (hopefully!) quarterly rated tournaments to include beyond-our-local-area. One down, one in planning.
  4. Starting 2nd week February, monthly progressive G/50 tournament (1 round per week.)
  5. Socialize.
  6. Go over games and puzzles as a group as time allows and as people volunteer them.
  7. Drink coffee / soda / etc.
  8. Indirectly promote our playing location, a dedicated Chess Club Soon to be Cafe.
  9. Most indirectly and not officially: Just about all of us are involved in some way with our local scholastic organization. No direct connection but a bunch of us, for example, went and de-stressed after the MLK tournament at the club.
  10. Did I mention socialize? :slight_smile: :smiley:
20

non chess stuff:

  1. teusday mornings we meet at a game room at the glendale adult center. we played axis and allies once, rummi cube, and another card game i forgot the name.
  2. we play 3 times a week at different peter piper pizzas which have video games, pizza, appetizers, and beer, so all of that enhances the meetings for some people. it’s hard to resist at least the food if nothing else. it’s a nice family environment.
  3. we play eye of the tiger during the first round of our tournaments to pump ourselves up and queen, we are the champions, when giving out trophies and awards.

chess stuff:

  1. an important thing i learned is to start playing against any new people who come in right away, it doesn’t matter how many games you got going or if you loose all of them. just don’t let them just stand there.
  2. if you got 3 people wanting to play you can flip a board in between two other boards then have 1 person on one side of the table and 2 people on the other side using the sideways board, each person plays 2 games at a time.
  3. we analyze games and give tips to each other after each game if it seems that the other person is interested.
  4. we play a tournament whenever people want it.
  5. explain quickly to new players how to use the same hand to move and hit the chess clock. also, we like to explain beforehand how the swiss system keeps each player playing against as equally skilled opponents as possible.
  6. invited a local fide master to come teach a class once a weak or do a simul. that was a good excuse to get personal contact info.
  7. got local restaurants to donate gift cards for chess tournaments
  8. saved up a lot of gift cards, got 3 large trophies and a bunch of medals and certificates for a july 3rd tournament. planning way ahead and got an experienced and well respected tournament director to come. guaranteeing big prize fund including 100 for 1st, 75 for 2nd, 50 for 3rd, 25 for 4th and participation medals and going to try like crazy to preregister at least 30 people at 25 bucks a peice. it’s not so much the profit we’re after but the prestige!
  9. e-mailed info on all my clubs and big events to other nearby clubs after showing up at their events with my players and voluntarily posting their events info on my website in the hopes that they’ll help do the same for me.
  10. found a place with wifi and freeway access and a lot of empty tables in a quiet section of their dining room for uscf rated and advertised tournament
  11. stopped putting in 99 percent of the personal stuff i was doing and focused more on mass appeal. i’ll go back to being myself more if i can start making more money. :wink: