Originally teaching sessions were regarded as a bonus and an important adjunct in the goal of providing a pleasant place for members to play and advance their skills. It was actually originally called a 2/1 club but we had some fairly major issues with problem people who were removed from the club for consistently obnoxious behaviour but who kept slithering back in until we finally figured out how to ban them permanently. At that time, to mark a new start, so to speak, the club was renamed. This happened probably only about 2 months or so after the initial start, and the new name was a hopeful reflection of who the club was focussed toward serving.
It was intended to be a place for both more advanced players as well as strong intermediate players to escape the problems of Main as well as a place for intermediates to continue to improve their game after they had mastered what BIL had to offer. Unlike BIL though, we never had an upper level "cap" on skill level, so we could offer the advanced opportunity to improve their game as well.
The goal was never to limit the club to one system, but by default the focus rested on the system that most advanced players were using, arbitrarilly determined to be 2/1. Both Rona and Charles at that time played 2/1, Charles has since switched to Oliver's Precision system I believe. But the goal was always to try to make the club a place where people could log into and find a decent game. We've had spasms of success with this but the efforts were indeed short circuited by people trolling in the club for random team matches or being called to do in BIL what they had been doing for us, when BIL adopted our "hosted table" system. Both hurt us badly.
What happens now, too often, is that people may set up a table and shout for players, possibly not realizing that such shouts don't actually get beyond the room unless made by the IAC ID. When players don't show up almost instantly, the hosts leave. We need more people to BRING people to play in the club, friends who will at least start out a table, and for players to invite other friends to come play. If someone is playing and knows they are going to be leaving, it's helpful if they look to find friends who aren't playing and ask them to come replace them, this will often keep a table going very successfully.
It's bewildering to think that members have no friends online so immediately shout for players and almost as quickly leave the table if nobody shows up. Especially since the enforced web version, it often takes people a while to get anywhere, and it is EXTREMELY frustrating to answer a call and find the table has vanished. If I call for a player and the host closes the table without waiting a reasonable time for someone to answer, I won't ask for players for that person again.
It's a bit frustrating to see 7 kibs at a table and another table with two players pleading for people to join and none of the kibs respond. This also happens fairly frequently.
We get a number of people who show up to teaching sessions but it is almost always a struggle to get them to participate, to do more than kib. Often there can be around 30 kibs and there aren't enough players to fill the table three times, often even twice is a struggle; players who do volunteer often have to be reseated. This is another example of how passive/ uninvolved members are now.
One thing that HAS happened over the past year is that the level of play has gone up and often more advanced players are protective of their status and unwilling to "make mistakes" or be subject to correction in "public". When we had more weak intermediates playing, getting participants was easier. Also, a number of "advanced" players..which is a highly relative term, react with scorn and hostility to anything suggesting they may not have all the nuances of the game entirely under control. Of course, none of these people will risk the courage of their convictions at the table themselves, but privately mutter resentful epithets about the teacher not following the rules as they understand them, one such recently gifting me with the information that the internationally successful teacher was " an idiot" .
Neither passivity nor a defensive aggression is encouraging in terms of looking for more teachers.
If a teacher is only ever going to offer 1+1=2 then we may as well defer to BIL.
The above comments don't apply to Precision sessions because I really have no idea what goes on there. Besides that, it is still relatively new to most of us and it is also much more complex to learn than 2/1 or Sayc, if only because of the heavy emphasis on artificial bids. So strongly emphasizing the basics would be extremely important. For those members playing 2/1 or Sayc, they are supposed to know the basics before they join IAC.
However, none of this explains the sudden and fairly dramatic drop in tourney involvement, certainly the enforced switch to the web version had a marked impact but it isn't recovering and surely by now it should have been. And I am truly at a loss to explain the 600 or so people who complained about not being able to access the club and asked for reinstatement but are never seen anywhere near either the club or any club events. Nor have they responded to requests as to why they want to belong, what they want the club to offer, or how it could fit their bridge time better.