All throughout high school I was involved in the chess team. I enjoyed chess as a leisure activity, but was also very competitive. When I enrolled at the University a couple of years back I noticed that the chess community was virtually nonexistent. I was quite puzzled as the Illinois high school chess association yearly hosted one of the largest state chess tournaments for scholastic players across the country and believed that there had to be at least some people who participated in that event to have also enrolled in the University. In order to understand why there was no chess playing community I performed a Google search to find out if there was any chess clubs at the University. To my chagrin, I found a web page titled the Illini Chess club and I believed I was just ignorant for not finding the web page earlier. However, as I browsed the website I realized all of the people who had leadership positions had graduated already and that the club was inactive.
Thus, I decided to revive the Illini chess club with my buddy Michael. We realized that since we had not advertised our club on quad day we would not be able to attract many people. So we setup chess sets at the Illini Union Basement and played blitz games which offered five minutes to both players to play out the game. Our fast paced games attracted a few people and by the end of that year we had a small group of regular players.
The following year we were able to advertise the Illini Chess club during quad day. We managed to get a significant increase in membership, so we structured the organization by adopting leadership roles such as president, treasurer, and webmaster. Furthermore, we drafted a constitution to ensure that there were elections for leadership positions the following year. Additionally, we created an organizational division by making a club and a separate traveling team. There were some organizational issues with this as the traveling team and the club leadership was dominated by the same people who also happened to be the stronger players in the club and this may have alienated the weaker players who felt that they may have had no opportunity to advance into the club leadership positions. Ultimately, this situation led to a separation of meeting times. Essentially the club would meet one day a week and the team would meet another day of the week; however, the team members were required to attend both meeting days.
Finally, transaction costs were definitely involved in the revival of the Illini Chess club. There is pretty much no bigger cost other than the time commitment to start any registered student organization. However, if the Illini Chess club did not have any chess sets or chess clocks, then we would not be able to follow through in any organizational activities. Thus, a transaction cost to participate in the "RSO Market" was a monetary investment from the leaders to buy the initial chess sets and clocks.
Thus, I decided to revive the Illini chess club with my buddy Michael. We realized that since we had not advertised our club on quad day we would not be able to attract many people. So we setup chess sets at the Illini Union Basement and played blitz games which offered five minutes to both players to play out the game. Our fast paced games attracted a few people and by the end of that year we had a small group of regular players.
The following year we were able to advertise the Illini Chess club during quad day. We managed to get a significant increase in membership, so we structured the organization by adopting leadership roles such as president, treasurer, and webmaster. Furthermore, we drafted a constitution to ensure that there were elections for leadership positions the following year. Additionally, we created an organizational division by making a club and a separate traveling team. There were some organizational issues with this as the traveling team and the club leadership was dominated by the same people who also happened to be the stronger players in the club and this may have alienated the weaker players who felt that they may have had no opportunity to advance into the club leadership positions. Ultimately, this situation led to a separation of meeting times. Essentially the club would meet one day a week and the team would meet another day of the week; however, the team members were required to attend both meeting days.
Finally, transaction costs were definitely involved in the revival of the Illini Chess club. There is pretty much no bigger cost other than the time commitment to start any registered student organization. However, if the Illini Chess club did not have any chess sets or chess clocks, then we would not be able to follow through in any organizational activities. Thus, a transaction cost to participate in the "RSO Market" was a monetary investment from the leaders to buy the initial chess sets and clocks.
That's really cool that you dedicated so much time to resuming a defunct club on campus, and it was interesting to see what rules you made to prevent that from happening again. It seems the biggest test will be when you and your friend graduate and the energy and aspirations that went into forming the club weaken a little bit.
ReplyDeleteEven though you've based you club on a well established sport, chess, start up RSO's still have large failure rates, but I hope you current and future leadership can overcome these obstacles.
I was on the math team in high school. We played a lot of chess in the math department office. This was near the time when Bobby Fischer became world champion. There's a bit about that experience in the first paragraph of the linked piece.
ReplyDeleteWe also played a game called Twixt then. I wonder if you've heard of it. In a class called "Math Team Workshop" I played the teacher a game of twixt for my course grade - a 90 if I won, a 75 if I lost. I won. I found the teacher on the Internet not too long ago and asked him if he let me win. He was a tournament bridge player and said he took his games seriously, so he said I won fair and square.
I don't know what compels a kid to go from recreational chess playing to wanting to compete in tournaments. Perhaps you could have said a bit about that in your piece. I also don't know what concrete things a fledgling chess player does to get better. You mentioned the intimidation effect that the better players might have on the less proficient. What encourages them to improve?
Finally, on a different point, we've gone out of our way to have you blog under an alias to protect your identity. There may be no harm in identifying your friend Michael the way you did, but perhaps he did not want his identity made public in this way. You could have gotten the same effect in your piece by mentioning him by first name only or by first name and list initial. It's probably best practice to do that when talking about other students on campus.
It will definitely be an obstacle to see if the club will run after our current leadership has left; however, we are starting to get some more recognition after tying for first at the recent Pan american Intercollegiate team championships. Hopefully, that will attract more players to our club, so we can start training them for leadership positions.
ReplyDeleteI have never heard of the Twixt game before; however, it seems quite interesting. I think it would be quite exciting to gamble with one's course grade like that!
I think recreational chess players transition into tournament chess when they find that they have an aptitude for the game or another scenario is that a child is exposed early on to tournament chess as a hobby and becomes more competitive as he plays more tournaments.
Usually chess players of all levels improve based of a combination of things. I know I managed to improve significantly by solving tactical puzzles and watching chess video lectures on the the different stages of the game and then one could also find many books on the game. Also I think people are only encouraged to improve if they feel its worth the time investment. Many hobbies are arbitrary and some people feel its worth playing and improving in chess while others would rather spend time doing something else.
I have removed Michael's last name.
Thanks for the Feedback!
Hello,
ReplyDeleteThat's very impressive that you created a organization and your post reminds me of my past experience in setting up a Bridge Club when I was a college student. It indeed requires a lot of "investments" into searching for appropriate team members and specifically, applying for permission from the management of RSO. My personal example was that a Mahjong Club already existed and it sometimes organized activities in playing Bridge. Since I decided starting up the Bridge Club, I had to run back and forth all day long, persuading the management to accept the proposal and advertising the club. That was quite an experience of standing firmly and developing leadership.
P.S. Sorry for the Late feedback...