Continuation of AGM - motion 1.2

[Phil Thomas]

Phil,
I think your last point possibly slightly misses the point (or at least the one I was trying to make). How 'big' were the congresses that have been lost since 2006/7 and how big are their replacements. Whilst the total number of congresses may have stayed the same, it may mask changes in the size of those events.
I always had the impression that Scottish Congresses had very good prize money compared to their English counterparts. I don't get that same impression today. Of course people might perceive that to only be of interest to a small minority of players, but I think it maybe flags up other trends. 'Local' organisers with contacts may have been better at securing sponsorship. Perhaps this ties into Andy Howie's observation.

Matthew,
totally agree with your comments.

Extracting that data from lists of graded congresses over the last few years and summaring onto the notice board would only take a few hours.

My own intuitive anticipation of the results of such a study is that the demise of a congress does not correlate highly with its size or with changes in its size. I suspect congesses tend to stop when the organiser loses motivation or moves out of area or, more rarely, loses access to a cheap venue.
It would be rather interesting to compare the sizes of congresses in their first year. Is geographical location really as important as people think? I recall crowded (but comfortable) playing conditions at the first Inverness event last September.

That paragraph above is all very speculative. For tonight, at least, I leave the interrogation of the data to others - league match tonight & I need to prepare (= hungry )

[Gordon Rattray]

Extracting that data from lists of graded congresses over the last few years and summaring onto the notice board would only take a few hours.

I looked at querying the master database used by the grading system. Unfortunately it's difficult to categorise events consistently and often different names get used for the same event across seasons. As an experiment I tried: Swiss event; not allegro; 5 rounds; no age restrictions; Grand Prix points awarded.

This gave the following rough data; it's not exact by any means. I think that to get accurate and consistent stats for congresses does require some manual digging around and tidy up, which I've not done.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.chessscotland.com/csOnline/grTempStats/congress.html">http://www.chessscotland.com/csOnline/g ... gress.html</a><!-- m -->

[Matthew Turner]

Many thanks to Gordon for posting those figures. The number of entrants is shown as

2004 2021
2005 2073
2006 1900
2007 1755
2008 1968
2009 1687
2010 1455
2011 1388
2012 1523
2013 1344

I am not sure if 2013 is a completed year. One can speculate no end about what is going on, but it looks to me like there is a pretty significant reduction in weekend congress participation.

[George Murphy]

Yes! To paraphrase Pete Seeger (RIP) - "Where have all the players gone?"

[Andy Howie]

Many thanks to Gordon for posting those figures. The number of entrants is shown as

2004 2021
2005 2073
2006 1900
2007 1755
2008 1968
2009 1687
2010 1455
2011 1388
2012 1523
2013 1344

I am not sure if 2013 is a completed year. One can speculate no end about what is going on, but it looks to me like there is a pretty significant reduction in weekend congress participation.

Could it be economic climate?

[Andrew McHarg]

I suspect there are lots of reasons that are all part of the bigger picture. But maybe one of the biggest reasons is online play?

[Gordon Rattray]

I am not sure if 2013 is a completed year.

Yes, it's complete - the given "year" is when the season ended. I didn't include the current season (2014).

And keep in mind that I had no exact way of specifying "weekend congress" in the query. I used "Swiss, 5 rounds, etc.". So some table entries matched this without being weekend congresses. Hopefully not too many though.

[Andy Howie]

If you amend the query so that gp=2 and junior event = false?

Edit - I would run myself but I don't have the password to download the database at work with me

[Gordon Rattray]

If you amend the query so that gp=2 and junior event = false?

Ok, thanks. Re-ran with your suggestion...

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.chessscotland.com/csOnline/grTempStats/congress_v2.html">http://www.chessscotland.com/csOnline/g ... ss_v2.html</a><!-- m -->

2003-2004 1730
2004-2005 1640
2005-2006 1676
2006-2007 1670
2007-2008 1865
2008-2009 1570
2009-2010 1325
2010-2011 1236
2011-2012 1428
2012-2013 1279

[Jonathan Livingstone]

I suspect there are lots of reasons that are all part of the bigger picture. But maybe one of the biggest reasons is online play?

Like you say Andrew (and Stevie previously) many possible reasons. What would be really good is a breakdown of all the likely contributors, and an estimated percentage for each contributor (where possible and with strong analysis to support that). A difficult but very worthwhile job. I would really like to see what the % contributer of the poor Junior retention rate is, in relation to the decline of our various tournaments/events.

No one seems to mention all the Scottish players that travel abroad to tournaments in this modern day. They are probably still attending the tournaments here, however where are the players from abroad attending our tournaments? There definetly isn't much of that. Are we stuck in the past? Has the structure of our tournaments not moved on with the modern day? I don't think anyone would argue the need for more sponsorship and an improvement on the standing of chess in the public eye.

We should be having Billy Connoly along (good health permitted) to open the Glasgow congress. The Proclaimers could be playing an opening tune at the Scottish Championships. I'd like to see us think big, and jazz the game up, and really just move it on.