Chess Scotland Noticeboard

Geoff Chandler

Who is responsible for placing the notice about the coming EURO Team
Championship on the front page and adding Scotland is seeded 37th out 38th.

What kind of impression do you think this makes to any potential
sponsor visiting the official site.

You can remove that now and replace it with....
"Scotland is expected to do well."

What was the thinking behind it?

"It's OK boys, off you go, we don't expect much from you,
look we have even planted the seeds of an excuse on the very
front page of our website."

The seeding is based on current grades and it is well known fact
most of the players in these other countries have inflated grades.

Morrison and Muir have nothing to fear. If these two were English
both would have had the GM title long ago due to way the English
(backed up with finance that Scotland cannot seem to get) manipulate
their talented players into tournaments where norms can be picked up.

Both are just as good as most of the English GM's.

Tate (another mockery of the grading system) will bring down a GM
in this this tournament. He's not scared of titles. To him titles are targets.

And any GM/IM looking at Stevenson's grade before the game thinking
they are going to get an easy point is in for a very rude awakening.

Let's not send them off with such low expectations.
Our guys are good chess players who can hardly wait to start
crossing swords with Europe's best.

Get the t-shirts printed and wear them with pride.

Scots sac without a
Care.
Over the board
These European
Losers
Are
Nothing but
Dummies

( On the back put on an advert for Chandler Cornered: Wink

)

DMB · King Joined: 08 Mar 2007 Posts: 267

err...it was the team capt supplied the seeding info.

We dont fund the Euro team at all which is a much stronger event (for a Scotland team) than the Olympiad.

Since we dont fund the Euros we always have a much less strong squad than the Olympiad.

Geoff Chandler · Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 3:22 pm Post subject:

Hi DMB

The team Captain has more important things on his mind than
wording the exact sentences on the front page of the Scottish Website.

You have the power, Change it to "Scotland expects to do well".
I'll take the rap.

I can order you to do it as I won this years Presidents Award (I cannot recall you getting one).
This grants me 3 Chess Scotland wishes.
I dont want to be forced to waste one.

I never mentioned weak team or funding for the team .
I did not even hint at that.

The team has picked itself. Four chess players who want to play chess.

I'd rather have 4 volunteers than 40 pressed men.

Every chess league team in the country would be glad to have
any of these players in their team.

(you have never forgiven me for sneaking a dog onto your grading list have you?)

Graeme Forbes · Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 8:59 pm Post subject:

Geoff does make a good point re presentation. But can we really be 37 of 38 given the recent -no doubt induced by fear of the Scottish side-changes?

JR · King Joined: 23 Jan 2007 Posts: 447 Location: Edinburgh

AWIC · King Joined: 10 Feb 2007 Posts: 221

Who are these potential sponsors? Are they not equally as likely to be put off by underperformance against mismanaged expectations?

As a principle I think we should back the management as far as possible. If they don't want to over-burden the team beforehand with unrealistic expectations then that's fine by me.

Here are what I described as my priorities for the Scotland team after the last Olympiad

Geoff Chandler · Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 11:53 pm Post subject:

Hi

It's still there. The message of doom and despair.

How do we know how many companies send out their PR team
to look for sports to sponser. They see 37 out of 38 and don't really
want to be linked with anything like that do they?

So they move on.

The front page should have a sponsor invitation box.
(one that stands out. A bit like the one for Dinosaur Chess)

Do you want to sponsor a Scottish Chess Event?

And that link takes them to a page full of pics juniors/adults playing chess.
Plus all the benfits of sponsoring a CS event and who to contact.

Who do you contact? There is nothing on the front page to direct
a potential sponsor. I bet 99% of the CS membership don't know
who to contact either.

Infact the whole web front page wants re-done. It's stale and cluttered
with too many links and too much information.

We need a front introduction page. Something bright snazzy and inviting.

At the moment it's 6 out of focus pictures, a Viking ludo piece on horseback
and an advert for skinny men.

And don't go throwing money at some arty farty grafix design team.

Put it out to the Schools in the way of competition.
Offer then £20.00 and a free Rampant Chess (signed).

Alan Tate · King Joined: 01 Feb 2007 Posts: 377 Location: Edinburgh

I've been going on about the website for a while now - as interesting as it is to know that Judit Polgar was no. 11 in the world in 2003, i'm not sure how relevant it is in 2009... Very Happy

Jacqui Thomas · King Joined: 01 May 2007 Posts: 340

Missed an opportunity when we had last years Marketing Director as he is brill at web design - I am sure though he would do it at a reasonable price but probably got too many copies of Rampant chess already.....

out of interest why is the Scotsman listed on the front page? they no longer sponsor the secondary team event - is there another reason? if so & someone is in correspondence can you please ask if they will consider sponsoring the team event again pleeeeeease.

On the subject of sponsorship there must be some of you out there with your own businesses that could get tax relief by doing sponsorship - please look into. Also some companies offer their employees £1 for £1 sponsorship & others are generous to just sponsor. We need sponsorship for both Adult & Junior Internationals, Scottish Championships & schools development (chess has been proven to be a useful tool in education & can help special needs as well). There must be an angle or use all of them for you to persuade someone you know to give sponsorship.

What would they get in return? We can look at options but the obvious ones are publicity on the website, entry forms for events, team shirts.

It could be a double headed coin because if we have more money we might be able to attract more players.

Come on guys give it a shot.

DMB · King Joined: 08 Mar 2007 Posts: 267

>>>out of interest why is the Scotsman listed on the front page?

So at no time in the last five years or so did you click the link? For a long while this would get John Henderson's daily column. Same with SOS. There was also a link to the Herald when Craig put his column on this site.

However all newspapers are now trying to generate cash from their content and are restricting the amount of info that users can get free of charge. So more recently when clicking the above newspaper links all you get are the opening paragraphs and an invitation to sign up to the full article.