bad excuses for not joining a ches club

a colleague said that he wanted to join a chess club but he was afraid if he was going there everybody will beat him every time he played against someone. -

>it may partially be true that you will lose a lot of games to start with and you need a "get back on the horse" mentality approach to start with but even a new member will soon learn to win some games.

 we need more members in the chess club and we need to get rid of the myth that holds people at home.

another bad excuse is that it is expensive.

>140$ per year is not expensive. I guess you spent more on an evening in town drinking.

some say they do not have time because of their career

> a career means nothing without life 

how can we get rid of all those myth that prevents people showing up in a chess club.

My dog ate it...oh wait that was my homework.

Like it or not, the skill differential in this game is well beyond logarithmic ... a fact that is quite unknown outside serious chess circles. In other words,  a layperson walking into a club might think that if he plays a strong club player often enough, he might get "lucky".  When he discovers that he can't, he runs away because of issues with ego or a sense of futility.  The rare few actually sit down and try to figure out why they are losing and make an earnest attempt to not make the same mistakes again.

 With interest in club chess diluting the way it is in some cities, an adult newbie doesn't have too many chances to play a game where he/she can put up a decent fight as the number of serious players far outnumber the casual skittles people.  Most of these new recruits just had a tough day at work, have a family at home and bills to pay and hoped to get a few games in with a non-zero score to go home with.

So I guess one solution is to treat new/novice players with kid gloves and keep them far away from the stronger players unless they specifically want to fight an uphill battle.  The club can also run casual unrated tourneys or have novice sections to encourage play. One more idea would be to have a few resident mentors ready to welcome new players and "gently" offer to go over the game with them if they really want to get better.  Those with massive egos will still stomp away and refuse help, but you stand a chance of making a few converts :)

this has already been discussed and I think it was a fair decision and an official declared the win. like I said rules are rules.

I don't think anybody will stop chess because they lost 1 game due to rules. in the future they will make sure that they have the right address on the TOMTOM gps. you shouldn't use a gps if you do not know there you want to go.

they were all quite strong player 1600-1800 range. while our team was 1400-1600.

off topic to the current topic I can provide you with the latest development is that the club want an apology for us accepting the win. actually they gave us till 1.2 but we haven't given them one. since we have nothing to apologize. but I forgive them for their behaviour. I think they have been quite entertaining you should see some of the news they have posted on their webpage.

Not expensive? That is pretty expensive for casual players, in my opinion. So is spending that much out drinking for a night.

We have a small club that meets in a local restaraunt and don't have many expenses (mainly affiliate fees). I'm toying with the idea of an optional membership fee that will inlude two club tournaments a year with some of the membership money going to prizes for those tournaments and some to go toward the affiliate fees and sponsoring larger regional tournaments. However, if I aked for $140 a year and required it for club membership, we wouldn't have any members.

140$ for a year -- well it depends on how often you go. If it's just a couple of times, well yeah, it's expensive. If you go every week then it's not.

Oh, and what on this earth do you drink that costs 140$? This is US dollars we're talking about, yes?

I just used a currency converter and we pay 68.51 dollars per halve year.

then say it is rather cheap then it is compaired to other sparetime event imagine buying a judo gi for 75$ and added to that you need to pay for member fee.

golf is quite expensive plus you have to pay expensive clothing you cannot come dressed in your blue jeans and golf clubs.

I am not proud of it but I have used 200$(tequila sunrise is quite expensive) on a single evening but lately I have found it I have even more fun then I only use only 55$.

some people in denmark spent more than 111$ on their phone bill each month to be able to surf unlimited on their HTC DesireHD or Iphone.

but I guess everything in denmark is relatively more expensive than in the us.

In-fact I did try to look if the event was published somewhere, as according to your previous information I thought it would generate a lot of tensions.

I did try to google it using your name/town/country/chess and variations, but I could not find anything related to chess. Then I added "skak" and switched to Danish and I did find some data, but again I did not find the actual event, of course since everything was in Danish I could have easily missed it.

I liked this.

Actually I'd gladly pay to play each week at a club where I never win!  Of course if after 6-12 months I still never won I might stop heh.  I think it's much more unattractive to a club if you hardly ever lose -- then there's no reason to go.

 http://4hk.dk/ it is the webpage for the fourth section in denmark which represent around 12 chess clubs.

you can go to nyheder "news" or go to holdskak= team chess select A række gr1

A-group 1 and look at gråsten against Bov you will see that we win 4-0 against nobody.

I think so fare the news has only been published by the foremen from the other club on our main webpage and on their own homepage.  

actually the membership is for Danish Chess union we get a magazin each month in our letterbox and a granted permission to go to tournaments. they publish our rating.

and some money goes to 4. devision they also write a magazin that they give us.

If we have to go to a town longer than 200 km away the club pays for gas for the car. Also buying chessboard and equipment. some times they give us cake and coffee. some money pays for the web page and so on.

we operate with a rather large budget.

I go every thursday to chess. 

of course in danish kroner I spent over 1000 dkr on a single evening. then I went to college I got money for studying so I went to town drinking with my friends. 

a beer cost around 5$ dollars in denmark.  I got rounds from other and I payed rounds for others as well. but I did not stick to beer. So we also drank tequila sunrise8$, and a lot of jake daniels 9$ per, and a lot of shots I cannot remember the name of.

afterwards eating pizza and a coca cola. sun day did not exist in my calendar. I had a hangover.  and next weekend was the the same.