Merry Christmas / Happy Holidays to all!
LCCC will continue to meet on Mondays - 4pm to 10 pm - at the Buffalo Wild Wings in Brighton, Michigan in the Green Oak Shopping Center thru the holidays.
And bring any spare $3 million or more dollars you have lying around doing nothing. LCCC needs a place to live.
This year was actually a great year for LCCC. Membership (attendance really, since we have no dues required) has been on the increase. Our (let's face it) "squatter" location at BWW has worked out well. Actually, too well in your humble scribe's opinion, but more on that later.
Numbers: The rolling average of attendance at our old location prior to the pandemic scare was 12 players a meeting. That blows away most chess clubs except when they run events. LCCC attendance strangely decreases when we hold our in-house events. We must be a casual-coffee house chess sort of club. And that is fine.
Our average for 2022 was 16 players per meeting! Impressive by any measure. We keep a 2-month rolling attendance sheet. Miss 9 consecutive meetings and you are 'dropped' from the rolls. We keep your name and contact info, but you will not be on the current attendance sheet. Immediately re-instated when you do re-appear.
Your scribe did an analysis of the attendee type at the old location (a Senior Center - no food/drink) and our current location (BWW). Here is the breakdown:
Regulars (at least half of the meetings) - 8 at SC, 10 at BWW
Semi-regular (at least once a month) - 3 at SC, 5 at BWW
New members (first time visit) - 1 at both places.
Even though my smiling face would love to take credit for the increase in regular and semi-regular attendance, I think the food and drink might be more of the attraction. Not to mention the social aspect of other people just being around. Sort of like a restaurant with a line out the door gets more new people in their line than the equally good semi-empty restaurant across street gets in the door. More on that phenomenon later.
As to why we literally have 50 new people a year visit and we seem to only keep 1 or 2 for any length of time is not really a mystery. To paraphrase the late great Hall of Fame baseball manager Sparky Anderson, "If they don't want to visit, no one is going to stop them."
Chess can be scary. Some show up wanting to learn and decide chess is not for them. Some show up thinking they are good and find out they are not that good, and their egos are bruised. Some are too good for everyone at the club, so it is a waste of their chess time to play the average player. But most of the adult players are just that - adults - and life gets in the way of hobbies.
Most new attendees are kids, whose desires to play at the club change for many, many reasons. Sometimes the parents don't like the location or cannot make our Monday night meeting.
Anyway, the Club is doing well and that is a good thing. If you want to play some over the board chess, Monday night at BWW you will be able to find one.
But what about the other nights of the week? There are other clubs of course. You may have to travel some. You can find most all the clubs in Michigan on the Michigan Chess Association web site and magazine. Most clubs are hit and miss as far as attendance for the most part. LCCC has more attendance than most, and we still have our off nights.
An established chess club, open most days and evenings would be ideal. Everyone in the surrounding area would know where to go to find a chess game! Sounds like CHESS HEAVEN!
Not so fast! There is the matter of the $3 million (estimate) to buy/build a building, furnish it and maintain it. Then there is the matter of staffing it 7 days a week and probably 360 days a year. Your scribe is a pretty rabid chess fan but showing up at the "Club" 360 days a year is not only not feasible, but it does not even sound like fun. It now has a job/responsibility feel to it.
LCCC actually lived thru this "too much chess" phenomenon already. About 5 years ago some players found a coffee shop that would let us play chess there on the promise we would give them some business as we played. Now LCCC had Monday chess at the Senior Center and Thursday chess at the coffee shop! Chess heaven? Actually, chess burn out. More is sometimes less.
Our average attendance on Monday dropped from 12 to 7 players and Thursdays averaged 4 players. Adding insult to injury, the 4-player on average on Thursday were the same players still regular on Monday, as one of the Thursday person advocates started missing both nights (again, life gets in the way). And not too many people, no matter how loyal, can commit to two nights a week of chess EVERY WEEK.
The fan giant, the NFL, has seen the same thing happen to their Monday Night Football game (thank God as far as LCCC is concerned! Sorry BWW.). It used to be the "show" to watch on Mondays. It was another "party night" for millions of people. It was a ratings (attendance) monster! Bars were packed on Mondays, which before, Mondays were very slow nights for bars.
But now with Thursday and Sunday night football added by the NFL, not to mention college football adding Tuesday and Wednesday night football, people don't need to 'make plans'. They can see prime time football almost any night of the week in the fall. The Monday night ratings have tanked.
As far as the LCCC oversaturation, the coffee shoppe eventually closed and LCCC returned to just our regular Monday's and our average attendance returned to 12. People can schedule a "special" night for an activity, but if it is available too many nights, people tend to put it off or not treat is as not so 'special'.
Here's a number that will surprise most readers. LCCC has a "membership" of well over 100 players! This would include all players that show up on "occasion", like once or twice a year or maybe a little more. They love attending the Club, but life, travel, job, living distance, the "wrong" night for them, etc., all stop them from being a regular.
So to extrapolate all this 'knowledge' and to speculate, LCCC would probably need 2000 members to be able to get an average nightly attendance of 10 to 15 players every night of the week in a permanently established building. Is this even possible in Livingston County?
Part 4: Next Time as your scribe continues to think out loud about his dream of a permanent home for LCCC.
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