10-03-2014, 11:15 AM
When I first came into the chess world and looked at the CS budget I was surprised that juniors were not charged for grading but having been more involved I now see that introducing fees could result in less kids playing. They are the lifeblood of the game and it is vital that we don't do anything to put off kids from playing.
It would be crazy to try and implement a charge of £600 for a day of school chess, as is seen from Michael's example. It would either stop the games from being graded, which we don't want or stop it happening altogether, which we definitely don't want.
I think it would be wrong to charge for grading of school chess (including UK Chess Challenge which is extortionate enough as it is). This is the market we really want to encourage and many kids are introduced to chess through this way. We definitely should not have a blanket grading on all junior events.
Speaking purely personally, I have mixed views about charging for SJC, NEJCA and LJC events. The proposed rate certainly seems prohibitive. If it was felt that they should be introduced without having a negative effect on junior chess (a big if) then I'd suggest that they should be a lot lower.
How do the organisers know what to charge when they don't always know how many rounds of chess there are going to be is just one of the practical problems.
I'd also be interested in hearing the views of the 3 CS Junior Directors on this.
It would be crazy to try and implement a charge of £600 for a day of school chess, as is seen from Michael's example. It would either stop the games from being graded, which we don't want or stop it happening altogether, which we definitely don't want.
I think it would be wrong to charge for grading of school chess (including UK Chess Challenge which is extortionate enough as it is). This is the market we really want to encourage and many kids are introduced to chess through this way. We definitely should not have a blanket grading on all junior events.
Speaking purely personally, I have mixed views about charging for SJC, NEJCA and LJC events. The proposed rate certainly seems prohibitive. If it was felt that they should be introduced without having a negative effect on junior chess (a big if) then I'd suggest that they should be a lot lower.
How do the organisers know what to charge when they don't always know how many rounds of chess there are going to be is just one of the practical problems.
I'd also be interested in hearing the views of the 3 CS Junior Directors on this.