President's Report

30 October 2005

This year has been a successful year for The Gap Chess Club. During 2005 attendances at the senior club have been maintained at the satisfactory level of 2003 and 2004. Participation and interest in our tournaments has remained high. As a result the club has emerged at the end of the financial year (ending 30/09/2005) with a small increase in balance on the previous year, ensuring that the club can maintain its services to members.

The success of the chess club can be attributed to several factors:

• a strong inclusive social atmosphere on Friday nights
• a structured tournament schedule
• the commitment of the players to attend on Friday nights, and
• the commitment to administration duties by those on the committee.

The committee began to operate more informally during 2004 and this continued in 2005. Prior to 2004 the committee met regularly on a monthly basis and conducted formal meetings at a location away from the club’s premises, often at Stuart Wilson’s residence.

Following the resignation of John Curran as equipment officer in January, the day to day running of the club has usually fallen to four people – Debbie Jenkins, Marty Chadwick, Stuart Wilson and myself. As we have communicated freely and often with each other, there has not been a pressing need for formal meetings. In 2005 only one formal meeting was held, to decide the club’s course of action when we discovered Room D1 had been renovated by the school without advising us, and would no longer be suitable for chess.

Whether the club will continue the practice of deciding club matters informally among the committee members will depend of the composition of the committee for 2006. It is healthy for the club to have broad participation in the administrative duties within the club and I welcome any who wish to join the committee. It should also be acknowledged that there are other ways to assist the club, an example of which is the way Ray happily does more than his share of the cleaning up at the end of most Friday nights.

Publicity is important to gaining new members and the main way this occurs is through the Western Echo chess column and our club website. Marty Chadwick has taken over the writing of the chess column during this year and has performed admirably in this task, as well as maintaining the games pages on the website. Further ideas for promoting the club are welcome, particularly if you are prepared to undertake some of the legwork to carry them out!

In summary, 2005 has been another successful year for The Gap Chess Club Inc. and I do not anticipate any great changes to the shape and structure of activities at the club during 2006.

Andrew Robinson
President
The Gap Chess Club Inc.