Howdy to all from NYC. Glad to have found you guys. Any team tournaments on the horizon?

Obviously no spell check in the subject line. Should be "tournaments".

Welcome.  A tournament would be great.  It's been awhile.

There has been difficulty getting enough members to join the tournaments to get them started. We also get opposition from administrators who don't understand our intentions, and out posts get deleted. In our first tournament we had our discussions locked by admins, and we had to speak to eric, the creator of the site, to get them unlocked.

If we can get enough commitments of people who would join the tourny, I'd start one.

-scott-

i'll play

What intentions might they possibly think we have? "The gay agenda"? Wouldn't we pick a lager and slight more glitzy venue than internet chess for that? Anyway..count me in. 

Most petty criticism is along the lines of "isn't creating a gay tournament excluding straight people" - sort of a reverse racism type argument by people who think they're clever. I've spoken to admins who believed we were trying to "recruit," as if orientation is something you can change.

Although i think that notion of us trying to "recruit" is absolutely rediculous, i can understand that this site is a family site and the subject of anything gay related in a family community of any kind can be a little touchy for most. But i do think that if we wanted to create a "gay" tournament, there shouldn't be anything stopping us. I mean, it's not like we're anti-"straight" and think that they can't hold there own tournaments.

If i come to Chess.com, my intentions are purely to play chess and to be able to associate myself with other who also like to, not to be discriminated against.

Though now looking at some of the posts and forums, i think it would be the job of the group "admin" or "moderator" or whatever title they may hold, to take care of topics like the one posted by a 14year old member titled

Gay Teens?

because there is a chance that this post and similar ones may send the wrong messages to people and provoke conversations many might deem inappropriate.

I have viewed the Gay Teens? post.  You may have to define what you meant by the word inappropriate.  How do you feel it is inappropriate?  Is it all posts?  Or just the post that states that you are cute?  I will be happy to remove it.  But I am removing it because it doesn't really pertain to chess, not for any other reason. 

I would hate to think that ignorance would try an prevent talented chess payers from having a little fun. I think the notion that this would be a venue for "recruiting" is ludacris.

As for the issue of exclusion...I have noticed groups formed around nation of origin. So, by definition some one from anther country would be excluded. I have also noticed groups formed around religious identity. If one does not belong to that religion are they excluded? Could they be recruiting also? I doubt the same concerns have been voiced. I think those try of concerns come up when you just don't like the idea of something and try and dredge up some semi-passable reason why.

I also belong to other groups that have posts that have nothing to do with chess. They have particular threads for chess related topics and a general chat where they encourage people to post things like jokes, news and other social topics.

As for cute....I am almost sure as a group we are better looking than average. You know what they say about "all the good ones"