Saturday 16 August 2008

The Organisers Metric

Through chess, how many people do you come in contact with on a weekly basis? The people at your local club? Friends you meet for a social game?
It occurred to me the other day (for no reason at all) that this might be a good measure of your involvement in chess. The more people you see, the more "involved" you are. And the obvious extension to this is what I've christened as "The Organisers Metric"
This is the number of people who you come in contact with on a weekly (or monthly/yearly) basis, through chess activities you organise or help organise. I guess you could treat this a measure of how many people you help get involved in the game.
Clearly the numbers may vary, as much on circumstance as definition. Chess coaches would have fairly high numbers based on the number of students they might see each week. Tournament organisers might see lots of players, although it may only be once or twice a year (with obvious exceptions such as Laszlo "First Saturday" Nagy). And tournament arbiters shouldn't be discounted either.
And what is a "good number"? For me I'd probably see between 40 and 70 players a week (through club,coaching and tournaments), but I'm sure that there are those who see plenty more. Of course bigger isn't always better (eg you may not speak to half the players in a tournament ) but having said that, the more activities organised, the bigger the game gets.

1 comment:

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