We’re gonna come up with it later.
Well we will, once we get around to having our first meeting
Tomorrow
They're way behind in meeting their fundraising goal before the end of the year. They don't have a fundraising progress chart available yet, but they're working on it.
Hey guys, I'm brand new to this Reddit page. But I've come up with an idea. First off I'm a high schooler from NJ. My idea was to create a national chain of clubs which would push for non-bias political discussion. There would be a board consisted of people with political views from all spectrums. Any of you interested in teaming up?
I thought I would write about this having played OTB tournament chess in America for 10 years now, having been a member of probably a half dozen clubs across multiple states and regions. Everyone will have their own experiences but this hopefully provides enough of a cross section to give people (especially online only players) a feel for what is going on right now.
I will start with a bold assumption that OTB chess is sgetting squeezed and choked by a variety of factors. Right now there are 22,000 active players in the united states who have played a rated game in the last year. This is down from anywhere from 50,000 to close to 80,000 leading up to the pandemic.
The pandemic is of course an obvious issue and that's hit everywhere. I don't think it's solely responsible for the drop, but we will see what happens once the pandemic ends and how many people "return to chess",
The related issue of some people who have decided after only doing online they like it more and are not going back is another issue, but then there are two less obvious issues so we might as well start there.
First let me kind of state there obviously exist outlier clubs out there that are extraordinary for whatever reason (the marshall, st louis chess club etc), and lots of very very informal clubs with no rated games and just casual "pick-up chess", which will not be covered here, partly because it is so hard to track membership etc.
But in general there are two kinds of chess clubs in america, with plenty of clubs having some aspects of both parts of the spectrum but leaning heavily towards one part.
- The Fischer Boomer Chess club. Usually meets once a night on weeknights, will play their game or two until well after a kid's bedtime, there may or may not be a meal and/or a drink after being at the club. This is the club I started at, and was one of the youngest people there in my early 30s. There are a fair number of clubs out there. They are typically volunteer run, they are low dues, low entry fees, low prizes, high percentage of entry fees into whatever prize pool. The overhead is often minimal. They might meet in a quiet restaurant, or in a township's community room. One guy (and it's almost always a guy) has fronted the equipment costs, lugs the stuff to the club each week, and maybe has gotten paid back for the initial outlay but probably puts out a decent amount from their own pocket. Any teaching done might be by the best player in the club and it's at a relatively
Time crunches
People showed up to the first meeting, only to find a sign on the door saying "Welcome! Meeting is postponed until further notice."
