16-06-2014, 09:48 PM
Thank you for your interest Jonathan. The day went well and we got lucky with the weather. We had done similar things before but not with so much passing trade. The fact that it was the Paisley Gala meant there was bouncy castles, face painting, live pop music etc. so I knew it would be busy. We do not have many spare man hours for chess promotion so we kept it simple. It was just me, one club mate, a fold up table, two chess sets and a handful of business cards.
We met lots of really nice people many of whom were willing to give us a game and stop for a chat. On at least a couple of occasions young lads came up counting out money asking how much it was to play which seemed strange but in a good way and no I did not take it. A slightly saddening thing which happened twice was parents dragging their kids away from us saying something like " Leave the men alone you know fine you can't play chess" I did protest but to no avail.
This was done at next to no cost and with minimal organisation. If you view it as a nice day out it is a fairly painless way to promote chess and your club. I quite enjoyed myself and will probably do it again sometime. Several people said they would be coming to give our club a try however experience tells me to take this with a pinch of salt. We will just need to wait and see.
We met lots of really nice people many of whom were willing to give us a game and stop for a chat. On at least a couple of occasions young lads came up counting out money asking how much it was to play which seemed strange but in a good way and no I did not take it. A slightly saddening thing which happened twice was parents dragging their kids away from us saying something like " Leave the men alone you know fine you can't play chess" I did protest but to no avail.
This was done at next to no cost and with minimal organisation. If you view it as a nice day out it is a fairly painless way to promote chess and your club. I quite enjoyed myself and will probably do it again sometime. Several people said they would be coming to give our club a try however experience tells me to take this with a pinch of salt. We will just need to wait and see.