I began presenting this idea to USCF Executive Director Bill Hall prior to announcing my candidacy for the upcoming EB elections.  The purpose of this Grand Prix is to provide further incentives for more participation by class players as we all know that class players (which I call amateur players) stand no chance of winning the current Grand Prix and those class players that cannot participate in the Junior Grand Prix.

Over the course of the following months, I worked out details with Bill Hall. Bill Hall continued to tell me that he was discussing the matter with the current EB and that the EB had asked for some changes which I had made. Later Bill Hall comes to tell me that the EB felt that it was inappropriate, given my candidacy in the elections, to have this Amateur Grand Prix announced as they claim it would provide me with an unfair level of attention in front of voters.

A few weeks ago, I contacted three different EB members asking them if they had seen or heard of my proposal. Two of them stated that they had no recollection of discussions, formal or otherwise, of this. Another stated he may have overheard something over dinner but nothing in meeting minutes or as agenda items. I sent an email to Bill Hall and the entire EB about this and to date only one EB member has responded to it, reaffirming he had not heard anything. Bill Hall has not yet responded either.

You can see the email by logging into the BINFO system. You will need your USCF ID and your PIN number which are both found on the mailing label of Chess Life. The link to BINFO is https://secure2.uschess.org/MembersOnly/MO_login.php. Once you login click on USCF Electronic BINFO System. The BINFO is titled Amateur Grand Prix with a BINFO number of 201100337.

Here is the information on the Amateur Grand Prix – (I’ve omitted some technical details and placed the core information here)

The AGP shall be open to participation as follows:

1. Open to those not eligible to the Junior Grand Prix;
2. Open to those that have reached age 21 by Dec 31, 2012;
3. Open to those with an established / non-provisional rating below 2200 USCF;
4. Open to those without a FIDE title (WCM, CM, WFM, FM, WIM, WGM, IM, GM).

The following qualifications must be met for an event to be considered an AGP event:

1. The event must be advertised in Chess Life;
2. Each AGP tournament, or section thereof, awards AGP points in any AGP rating class if at least one player in that class, or in a higher class, actually plays in the tournament or section. Each player in an AGP event can earn points only in his own rating class and those above based on their pre-event rating. Thus AGP points are earned in the class of your pre-event rating as well as those classes your opponents were in if higher in your section.
3. The event must qualify for Regular or Dual rating (no Quick-rating only or unrated events);
4. The event must be organized in the 50 US States; International events which are rated by USCF will NOT qualify for the AGP;
5. Events must be completed by December 31, 2012.

** If a players rating is fluctuating above the 2200 threshold, tournaments played while under the 2200 threshold will qualify for AGP points.

** AGP events may have non-qualifying people participating in them, but only qualifying people can gain AGP points.

The AGP shall award prizes as follows based on the February 2013 rating list:

1. 16 prizes in total as follows: Overall (anyone from the Under categories), U2200, U2000, U1800, U1600, U1400, U1200, U1000; Each prize shall have one (1) for men and one (1) for women;
2. 100 State-based prizes to top finishers. One (1) prize per State for men and one (1) prize for women;
3. The two (2) Overall prizes for men and women shall consist of: Free entry to the 2013 US Open, up to 6 nights of hotel stay at the US Open hotel, three (3) year USCF membership extension, five (5) book collection, an eNotate electronic scoresheet hardware/software combination, and a plaque commemorating their achievement;
4. The fourteen (14) rating class prizes for men and women shall consist of: two (2) year USCF membership extension, five (5) book collection, an eNotate electronic scoresheet hardware/software combination, and a plaque commemorating their achievement;
5. The one-hundred (100) State-based top finisher prizes for men and women shall consist of: one (1) year USCF membership extension, one (1) DGT North American chess clock, and a two (2) book collection.

I’ve provided you with the candidate statements from the previous 2 elections, the major 2009 election and the special election from 2010. I ask each of you to read through the previous candidate statements looking at what candidates who are currently Executive Board members said regarding their ‘goals’ while in office.

How many of these statements even included goals that could be actioned upon? Those that did, is there any visibility to the status on them and even if they were attempted? Or were they just campaign rhetoric to get into office?

Then pull out the April, May, and June issues of Chess Life from this year and take a look at the candidate statements. Ask yourself – which ones contain actual goals that can be actioned upon? What have the incumbent board members accomplished in the past year?

2010 Elections – First Candidate Statement

2010 Elections – Second Candidate Statement

2010 Elections – Third Candidate Statement

2009 Elections – First Candidate Statement

2009 Elections – Second Candidate Statement

2009 Elections – Third Candidate Statement

Fill in the blank for what people want to adopt – a library, a community center, a church, a coffee shop, a [ fill in the blank ].

A USCF program where individuals can sponsor a location where chess players can/may converge or are converging for casual or organized play.

I’m going to use a library as an example here.

Someone can sponsor a library which would provide that library with a print edition of Chess Life and Chess Life for Kids (along with electronic access) and 2 chess sets/boards. Get a nice letter from the USCF stating that the library was adopted by ‘so and so’, provide a simple flyer that we ask them to post in the library to make library patrons aware of the chess materials, and perhaps a small printed booklet (this does not have to be anything at the level of quality of Chess Life or a book) with how to play chess, maybe some simple lessons to use, etc. Perhaps also on something regarding how to become a tournament director or how to find people in their area.

The USCF could use this type of outreach program alongside the state affiliates to get them involved as it would give the state affiliate exposure as well to the local communities.

We’d have to figure out the printing / mailing costs for CL/CL4K and the small booklet, the 2 chess sets/boards (purchase and mailing) and a charge for the administrative cost.

Perhaps it could be that the letter and booklet are made available via PDF, the sponsor prints them out and hand delivers it to the location (since it will most likely be local to them) along with the chess sets/boards. The sponsor pays the fee to the USCF for the sponsorship of the location. This way the USCF wouldn’t have to deal with anything but processing the sponsorship, sending to the sponsor an annual reminder of continuing sponsorship, mailing of CL/CL4K, and the creation of the booklet.

So this is the start of the idea – I think it would be a great way of doing outreach, minimal cost to the USCF, and gets the state affiliates involved also.

A question was recently asked of me:

Sevan – can you tell us what is meant by “the main stream chess lover”, and how one “attracts” such beings? What would a “real effort” look like in this area, and how would we measure the results?

And because you are a candidate in the current election for the EB, can you share with us any actual experience you have in attempting to do the above, and what results you have achieved?

My response:

The main stream chess lover to me is the person that loves the game, plays it with family and friends, either OTB or online. They may follow a chess related article in their local paper (whether be a mainstream one or a local/specialized/ethnic one). The world of rated chess is irrelevant to them because they do not have the time to play OTB chess, do not wish to turn their love of chess into a competitive thing, and have many other competing activities. There are well more of these than the hard core OTB players or even those that are members but don’t have a rating.

How do you attract these individuals? That’s a good question. Well first you have to make yourself known to them and approach them. Yes one must advertise their existence and what they have to offer. I know, this is when people will come out and say ‘we don’t have money to advertise nationwide or in major markets’. And I’ll say ‘yup’, so how do we try to do this without breaking the piggybank that doesn’t have anything in it?

Well there’s a great concept known as citizen journalism. Here are some examples:

http://triblocal.com/skokie/community/s … to-skokie/
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010 … exhibition

Both of the above links were done in TribLocal which is an online version area specific version of the Chicago Tribune by a local person in the chess community. Based on traffic to the article, it can get picked up by the print edition which the second article was.

What’s the cost related to this? Nothing. It takes a local person to find the local news outlet that supports citizen journalism. The article on the WGM Ruan lecture brought into the chess center at least 3 dozen people who were more interested in lectures than they do about playing rated chess. Did it also bring in people that are interested in rated chess – sure did. Also drew out some people from the woodwork that have been around the community for a long time but not active. And those that weren’t interested in rated chess are still an opportunity for that local person to work on them to turn them into USCF members (assuming the USCF can provide something that the mainstream chess person would desire). Key is that it drew a number of chess players together from the ‘non-hardcore OTB community’.

Of course this does take a volunteer infrastructure to be in place. Maybe the USCF runs a regional contest to encourage members to embark upon citizen journalism and a requirement for participation is that the USCF url is provided in the article – maybe a url like – http://www.uschess.org/cj which will redirect to the real main page and not the gosh awful landing page. This way we could also put tracking on the redirector link to see how much traffic is coming to it and from where. Have contestants make their article postings and then socialize them among their network from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Even perhaps have a section on the USCF site that has links back to these articles. Maybe a weekly compilation of them.

The real effort here is to actually expend the time and energy to make this happen. Not a half-baked and half-thought through promotion like was done with the Benefactor memberships.

My experience in doing the above? Well I don’t know, perhaps those links provided were for activities that would be performed at my chess center. I asked for someone from the local community to do a write up. And I do advertise in both localized mainstream publications and ethnically focused publications. Have been since the chess center was opened up. And it works well given the traffic I receive coming in with copies of the ad (yeah it’s one of those – bring this ad in for something or another). For every 1 USCF member I have as a member of the chess center, I have 3 that aren’t and I have a healthy number of members. I have businesses that are members whose employees (and the employers) don’t care for rated chess. They just want chess for one reason or another (the employers have bought into the helping with critical thinking aspect / thinking ahead, and the employees just have fun). I have special groups (those that aren’t businesses but still groups of people that have some common bond) that want and enjoy chess, but don’t care to go into actual competition.

Steve Immitt did bring up a point about the old Chessathons. Maybe it’s time to bring that back and ask local groups to put them together. Mike Atkins’ work on National Chess Day was a great thing. Because of his diligent efforts on that I got to capitalize on my chess center grand opening for that day (thanks Mike!). And yes that got into the newspaper as well but it wasn’t citizen journalism but a reporter from the Tribune however it was reposted on Facebook by numerous people in the local community to bring more attention to it.

So this is a start, and one that wouldn’t cost the USCF really much (maybe make the prizes into things like extended memberships or memberships to give away, etc). The USCF will never get to the point of having a nationwide advertising budget but it needs to get the attention of the larger portion of the chess community that is out there. Citizen journalism is a great and inexpensive way of accomplishing this. Of course the USCF does need to come up with some basic marketing collateral with unified messaging that affiliates can print off and use in the local community.

Here I’ll give you a bit of another but not much… cross gaming marketing. I’ve found that there are many, many households where one family member plays one game and others play different ones. I’ve found it that the wives play Mah-jong and the husbands play chess. Or the grandmothers play Mah-jong and the grandchildren play chess. Or those that love to play Miniatures (I’m not talking about a short chess game) also love to play chess. Cross promote with others in the gaming world.

Of course this does take the effort of someone to do it. That’s why the USCF has to leverage a volunteer infrastructure, because also the local volunteers are in tune with their local communities, how to get the message out, and what message resonates with the local community.