[Chessclub] New Chess Season!

[bjmason at u.washington.edu]

HELLO UW CHESS FANS!!!

I know I've been out of it for quite a while, vacationing in NY, TX, and my home-town of 
Vancouver, WA, but I'm back in Seattle now and ready to become exponentially more involved in 
making the UW chess club successful for years to come!

Gregory and I had a meeting yesterday to discuss our plans for the upcoming year, and we're 
both very excited about the opportunities that await this young club. We are talking with the 
president of UO chess club about a web-based tournament between our teams, we're trying to 
get a Pacific NW Chess League started, to involve numerous colleges in this part of the country 
in our efforts to make chess a sport supported by our school, and we're looking into obtaining
formal instruction to improve the abilities of our players. Gregory even mentioned sending a 
recruit to the BCC high school chess championships to try to get high school players interested 
in coming to UW to play chess! I know that a few colleges give scholarships for chess players, 
and I want UW to become one of them (long-term goal, but not impossible!) To start all this off, 
the executive board steering commitee will be meeting soon to ratify our new constitution!
(which you can find at http://students.washington.edu/chessuw/documents.html )

Okay, sounds like everything is in motion for this to be a fantastic year, right? Well, despite all 
the efforts that Gregory and I have put into this, we need one more thing to make all this work: 
Chess players! We want everybody who wishes to play just for fun to come to the meetings and 
play chess, but we also need players who are willing to compete and perhaps even devote some 
time to study to improve their game. The only way to find these people is to advertise!
Remember, if there are more people than our little room in Parington can hold, we will get a 
bigger room! That's not a problem! I would rather go through asking for another room than 
spend the whole year trying to find enough people to fill a small one!

Back to the concept of advertising, Dawg Days is well under way, and many of you probably 
know about the booth that the chess club will have on Thursday. If you weren't aware of that, 
you are now, so please stop by! We'll have a couple of boards set up and will be handing out 
flyers to help spread the word that the chess club is the place to be!

During our meeting yesterday, Gregory and I felt that we would need more attention than we 
would get from just the Dawg Days stand. Our idea is to set up a chess board in the HUB eating 
area (top floor) and playing some chess there to get people's attention. Personally, I felt that was 
a great idea! In fact, I'm going to be there tomorrow during the first day of classes (Sept, 29th) 
from about 11:30 to 1:00 with a chess board and a clock (and flyers, hopefully) to play and talk 
chess with anyone who's interested, so if you have some time, pay me a visit! A few prospective 
members of the executive board are interested in switching off so we can probably have 
someone there with a chess board at least twice a week, but we'll see how the first little bit 
goes! Remember, we need your support and your word-of-mouth-advertising to make our 
visions of grandeur come true!

As I mentioned above, I'm very excited about the possibilities this year and am looking forward 
to working with a very motivated group of board members!

Sincerely,

Brian Mason
Co-president UW Chess Club