How To Make A Club & How To Run It
First, we're going to start off with how to make a chess club.
How do I create a club?
Clubs are great ways to get in contact with people who live in your area, or have the same interests as you. To create your own club, you must first be a premium member. If you are a gold, platinum or diamond member, follow the below steps!
- From your home page, hover over the chat bubble icon on the left sidebar, and click ‘clubs’
- From the clubs page, on the right side of the screen click on ‘create a club’
- Upload a picture for your club, and choose a background image
- Choose a name for your club, and if you want to specify, choose the country and location.
- Next, write a description of your club! What is it for? Who should join? Let people know what your club is all about! There is a secondary box for a private description, here you can write anything that you want only members of the club to be able to see.
- Who can join your club? Decide if you want anyone to be able to join, or if you want invites to be required:
- The final two options will decide if you want your Club to be able to play Team Vote Chess, or Team Matches.
If you click the ‘advanced options’ link at the bottom of the page you will be able to choose a few more options to determine whether you want your club to have a private forum, private news and notes, and if you want to hide the notes on your home page from the public.
Once the above options are completed, you can go ahead and click 'Create' and your club is ready to go!
Once you've created your club you'll need to know how to run it.
Public & Private Descriptions:
When you create a description (either private or public) it should have exact grammar. For your public description, you should state what your club does why he/she might want to join and some relevant reasons.
Example: I own a 200+ club: https://www.chess.com/club/the-hobbit-hole-1
The public club description is...
Hello! May you please join our club? We'd like YOU to be part of our community! We respect your decision.
Our rules (they are always followed (making a good environment)):
- Be kind, helpful, and forgiving
- We will not tolerate racism, sexism, bigotry, or violent threats
- Do not abuse, attack, threaten, discriminate, or mistreat other members in any way
- Do not hijack threads, troll, or post distracting or meaningless content
- Do not post spam, advertisements, or copy/paste comments and messages
- Do not excessively promote your club (No advertising your club)
- Do not publicly debate religious or political topics
- Do not post obscene or pornographic content
- Do not discuss illegal activities
- Do not swear or say any profane language
- No begging for promotion
What we do:
- Daily Matches
- Live Matches
- Vote Chess
- Live tournaments (Swiss & Arena)
- Discuss chess
- Suprise events!
- And much more...
This club is mainly for chess, but as you can see we are fans of J. R. R. Tolkien and his writings, including The Lord of The Rings, The Hobbit, and The Sillimarion. If you'd like to discuss more about Middle-Earth feel free to do it in the notes as well as in some forums like Who Is your favorite LOTR character? Tell Us Here!
If you are not a fan you can still join!
Thanks, and please join! A appreciate it!
Next is the private description... The private description should state important things to know about the club and some quick links for convenience.
Example: This example is the private description of my club...
Welcome to The_Hobbit_Hole!
Official Club Rules | General Chess Discussion Forum | Who Is Your Favorite LOTR Character? Tell Us Here! | Endgame Tactics! | More Endgame Tactics! | Even More Endgame Tactics! I Middlegame Tactics! | Live Tournaments | Daily Matches | Live Matches | News | Forum | Notes | Chat
About:
Our goal is to provide a fun and clean chess community where you can learn and play chess with others. This club was founded on July 8, 2020, by @SamWiseGamgee39.
As you can see, we are fans of J. R. R. Tolkien and his writings as well as the movies made off of his books such as The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. If you are not a fan of LOTR please don't feel like you don't belong. Anyone does if they abide by the rules.
Like most clubs, we play vote chess, teach matches, and live tournaments. But, we also do other unique things such as LOTR Trivia, LOTR Sayings/Phrase Competition, etc.
We want our community to be a really good place that you want to be in. This is why we have RULES that all clubs should have. If you quit the club we may be sad that you can't stay but we usually won't ask why. Sometimes we may if we want to know if there was a problem that made you quit.
Things To Know:
If you have any questions just ask @SamWiseGamgee39 or just ask in the notes or chat. You may also create a forum but please only do that for a big and important question.
We have tournaments of all types at 12:00 pm PST. We switch between different time controls in the week so everyone gets a variety. We mainly play Swiss but we do Arena as well.
In case you do not know our admins and coordinators, I will list them with there jobs (and yes if an admin forgets there job but hopefully not 
). @ChessTitan006 (Moderator of chat and notes/also my brother) @Hyper_Speed20 (behind the scenes work/staff (makes awesome chess posts with middlegame and endgame tactics!)) @boldthirdcat2 (staff/behind the scenes work (my best friend on chess.com!)) @SteelChess7 (official vote chess, and team match organizer) @Lukas_the_Great (OTD (official tournament director/organizer). Special thanks to all my admins and coordinators for helping me run my club and supporting me.
A lot of people ask how they turn off notifications for certain things such as notes, news, forums, etc. To make it convenient for you all, here is the link to turn off notifications: https://www.chess.com/club/155570/settings
Other:
This section is still being developed.
(The last section is actually still being developed. I will edit this post once the section is complete).
Rules:
Every club should include rules to prevent bad behavior of profanity, etc. Although you cannot stop them from doing so the first time you can use a warning system. For example the first time he/she breaks a rule they will get a warning, and the second time muted (for a certain amount of time), and maybe then banned for the 3rd offence. This prevents any bad behavior in your club.
Important Tips:
- Only use club invites. Never PM people the link or advertise in chats or other clubs. (Don't do it anywhere, forums are the worst!)
- Make plenty of club events like team matches, vote chess, and live tournaments.
- Only make relevant news posts and threads. Most people do not like getting notifications on irrelevant things.
- If someone leaves your club, don't ask "why did you quit?"
- Make sure every part of your club has good grammar and NO sloppyness. (I see slopyness a lot!)
- When making admins or coordinators, do not promote them without there permission. If you have an admin don't keep demoted him/her over and over again. (This has happened to me in a club that is sloppy and does not follow these guidelines. It was kinda funny. The person made me SA and co-owner without my permission and I helped the club but the next day the person demoted me. And them soon after I became a coordinator, then admin, then coordinator! 😒)
I hope these tips were helpful for you!
See you next time,
Isaiah
