Tournaments For All.

[skyward]

Stan, What do you think of opening up tournaments for all players whether subscriber or not? The only exception might be provisionals. A new player would have to get his/her 25 games completed before being able to join the Site Tournaments. The reason for the question is not enough players to join tournaments. There could still be specialised tournaments with or without requirements. There are not that many subscribers on this site making tournaments difficult to fill. What do you think? Is there a possible solution? Thanks. - Joe

[Stan Steliga]

I agree that it's a problem with not enough subscribers for the tourneys, but I don't know if opening them up to everyone is the answer. One of the thoughts with subscribers being the only ones allowed in the Site Tourneys was that subscribers are the ones that are moist likely to be here for a while. I think it would be frustrating for tourneys to be filled with people that don't see it through.

[skyward]

Good point Stan however there are already subscribers who don't play in the tournaments they signed up for. There are several who set up tournaments and are no where to be found. There are also tournaments that have been there forever with no one who has ever signed up. Is there a way to clean up these tournaments that have been there forever with little or no sign-ups? My vote is you open the Site Tournaments to everyone but provisionals. This might also be a draw to people who want to play on your site. Just some thoughts. This is my favorite chess site no matter.

[doubtfulguest]

I second skyward's suggestion.

And to Stan, I would rebut your hypothesis by pointing out that the long lag time before tournaments commence may be part of the reason why there are so many inactive users registered for tournaments.

Let me be clearer. Suppose Smith is playing a lot of correspondence chess, and decides to join a tournament. Years pass, and the tournament does not get enough registrations to begin. During this lull, Smith gives up chess, abandons Stan's, or keels over and dies. Then, after a few years, the tournament commences, and Lo! Smith is inactive.

I suspect this is fairly common. No doubt, there will be flakes registering for tournaments on a whim, and simply dropping out after losing a couple games, or what-have-you. But it seems to me plausible that users will figure out a way of combatting this if you open things up. Maybe people will opt for smaller tournaments, so they are more confident of who the registered users are. Or maybe they'll opt for larger tournaments, simply calculating in a certain anticipated rate of attrition to abandoned accounts. Or perhaps the tournament organizers will simply be more finicky about screening requests for tournament entry, to determine whether particular users seem likely to stick around.

At any rate, I say you pass the problem on to users, rather than allowing innumerable tournaments to languish in perpetuity with insufficient registrants.

My $.02. As always, many thanks for your lovely site, Stan.

[doubtfulguest]

PS: I think something you didn't mention is that there should be some perquisites for being a paid subscriber, and opening up site tourneys to all might be tantamount to devaluing subscribership. I don't think this is a reasonable fear, however.

1) I subscribed (alas, it expired last month), but it was not for the tournament privileges so much as to support a site I enjoy.

2) It's not much of a perquisite if the tournaments rarely actually get going.

3) You can still limit the CREATION of tournaments to subscribers, but open registration to all users.

[skyward]

I really like what you said about the creation of tournies for subscribers only but opening up tournaments to all, that is all players who have played at least 25 games. What do other subscribers or players think of this? Please post your thoughts.

[Stan Steliga]

I also think that subscribers creating the tourneys that are open to all is a step in the right direction. Somehow, I need to find something that will encourage subscribing. I know it seems like the inernet is free for everyone, but it does cost money to run the site. That is why I'm so hesitant to remove a subscriber-only feature.

[skyward]

Good point Stan, "how to encourage subscribers". Anyone have any thoughts on this? This might take some thinking meanwhile, if someone wanted to help with a donation let's say, how would they do that? I also believe that everyone who plays on this site regularly should be a subscriber. I know not everyone feels this way but boo hoot to them. When you get such enjoyment playing the game we all love we should help support your efforts by subscribing. I can't believe it's so difficult for people to fork out $25 or a small amount more for 1 year as a subscriber when they easily waste that same amount of money on junk. Oh well. :0)

[skyward]

It's truly to bad people don't get involved. 95 times this post has been read and only one player has commented. Non involvement is an unfortunate way of life in America. You see the need but you keep walking by. No comments, no suggestions, mostlikely very little support for Stan in the way of subscribing. Everyone wants everything for free but when there is a problem you whine, pregnant dog and complain. Shame on you for not supporting the site you love to play chess on.

[doubtfulguest]

Stan --

I would direct you to the "PS" to my post. I don't think that limiting tournaments to subscribers is really a perk for subscription. The fact that they rarely actually get going simply means that it's not REALLY a feature in the first place.

However, since you asked, I think you may not want to tinker with the subscription model too much. The fact of the matter is that if you take features away from non-paying users, then you only decrease the number of users on the site, which actually HURTS subscribers. And it's just notoriously difficult to get people to pay for anything.

If you want to drum up additional revenue, I suggest you consider things OTHER than tinkering with the subscriptions. I mean, as it is, the subscription thing is fine (except for the tournament entry issue). I was a subscriber, but it expired, but I plan to subscribe again at some point, mainly just to support the site.

Look, I disagree with skyward on this point. Say that 2% of users are actually willing to pay to support the site. You're not gonna change that. That's just how people are. I think it's probably the same everywhere. If you start to make (essential/primary) features unavailable to non-paying users, then you simply decrease the pool. So now you're still only getting 2%, but now you're getting 2% of a SMALLER pool of users. The best way for you to increase subscriptions is just to increase the number of users generally.

Other than that, as I said before, I'd suggest you just look for alternative means of drumming up revenue. Having an online store might not be a bad idea. Buy chess books wholesale, then sell them for a small profit. It's not great, but it'd add up to several subscriptions over the course of a year. That might take a bit of an investment though.

Alternatively, just sell merchandise. Like a "NetChess" baseball cap, or a "knight" keychain or something. It's not gonna make you rich, but even if you sold just a couple dozen per year, I think you'd probably be doing decently, seeing as how you can charge a pretty healthy markup on those sorts of things usually.

Just one thing -- if you do it, please make the design slick and not gimmicky. I hate how so many businesses just make such UGLY swag, you wouldn't buy it even if you wanted to support them. Just go for a "clean" and "simple" look with quality materials (i.e. a real "baseball cap" maybe with a leather strap rather than those hideous "trucker" caps).

I'd probably buy a baseball cap or a tee shirt if you sold them, and if they didn't look hideous (in fact, now that I've written this, I guess I'd feel sort of obliged to).

Other things you could try -- make an iPhone/iPad app! Again, I think the best thing would be to make it available for free. If you double the number of active users, then you probably double the number of subscribers automatically. Alternatively, you could make the app free to subscribers, but $0.99 for anyone else (I DON'T recommend this, but it's better than just making it a for-pay only).

Also, the site could probably use a bit of a cosmetic revamp. Don't get me wrong here -- I LOVE the site as it is, and I've grown accustomed to the look, so I wouldn't particularly favor a change. But it does have a bit of a "homemade" look. This is actually sort of the norm for chess sites -- look at the USCF site, or Chessbase, or Chessgames.com. They all have a sort of "cluttered" DIY feel, and Stan's is actually much better in this regard. But how cool would it be if it had a "clean lines" look like the Apple site, Amazon.com, or Facebook? You wouldn't really need to change any of the functionality of the site. Leave everything pretty much as-is, and just update the layout/colors/logos. A cleaner, more minimalist look might make the site more "approachable" feel for newcomers.

I don't know how ambitious you are, Stan, but you could also try to branch out. Look at the enormous userbase at chessgames.com. All they really have is a (not very comprehensive) database with search and comment-posting capabilities. And it's a great site. But you could eat into that a bit, if you added database functionality to Stan's. You could look up games with the same position as your correspondence games (which I think is not cheating -- although, just in case it is, I should say that I DON'T do that). I mean, there are any number of additional features you could implement in a not-obtrusive way, which would probably increase the number of total users, which would increase the number (though not the percentage) of subscribers.

Also, more features gives you more things you can selectively restrict to subscription users, which also gives people more incentive to subscribe (although, as I say, I think this number is probably just a fixed percentage of total users).

Anyway, this is probably a lot longer than it needs to be, but there's $0.02 on that.

[Stan Steliga]

Thank you for that thorough post doubtfulguest. I appreciate the comments.

You're right on the nose with everything. If I had more time, and the drive that I had when I was first developing the site, I would love to do most of what you suggest. I have an iPhone and I've been looking at the possibilities of an app. I think that could bring in users just from people searching for Chess in the app store. I have also checked into how to build an Android app.

In the past, I have had some "committees" at the site that have managed some of the things at the site. One way to make the tourneys better would be to have a group of users that could help me manage the tourneys problem. Maybe they could help identify tourneys that need to be removed, and I could give them a way to advertise available tourneys on the Game pages - which would make more people aware of the tourneys in general.

All that being said, I have been working about 60-70 hours/week at my "real" job for quite a while. I really don't have a ton of time to be doing a lot of new development for the site. I'm sorry if that makes people mad... it would be nice if the site had 100% of someone's attention, but it just can't be that way right now.

[doubtfulguest]

Stan-

60-70 hours per week? Yikes! As for "committees", let me just say that if you wanted to get things done, forming committees was probably not the best strategy.

Well, if you wanted some help, I would be more than happy to volunteer my time gratis, although I too will have limited time as I shall be in law school, and presumably studying hard

I have been wanting to get into iPhone app programming, and I'm currently typing this on an iPad, so that might be one direction to go in for starters. I have had experience with OO programming, though I haven't really done anything in a few years, and never for iPhone, which probably has its own quirks and peculiarities. In any case, I offer what meager skills I have.

As for a cosmetic revamp, I majored in film production for undergrad, and Quite decent at design stuff, so I could maybe be more useful in that way, if you wanted to go in that direction as well.

[doubtfulguest]

PS: Oh, and please open the tournaments to all! Thanks!

[sdr46]

I'm a big fan of Stan's and I'm appreciative of all the effort he has put into the site over the years. The sad fact is that he hasn't made improvements to the site for a very long time (I'm not blaming him, just stating a fact), and there are other sites that have leapfrogged way beyond what is available here.

I have spent plenty of time playing here (see the leader board for games played), but now spend most of my chess time at other, much better sites. I don't think you will see many more new players here, and more will be leaving, due to this fact.

I'm sorry it has gotten to this, but I don't see any remedy to the situation.

[lordking]

i need 6 more players to join my tournament are ther no more chess players out there c'mon people:)