If the room you are renting or place you are hosting the tournament has a capacity of a limited amount of people; can you limit the number of people entering the tournament if you make it public and post it on your advertisement?
Another example/question is I’m going to be a club director, which limits me to 50 participants While I don’t expect over 50 people to show up, for argument’s sake say, 55 showed up then what?
So, can I advertise that “Participation is limited to the first ## of registrations based on first come, first serve”?
To answer your second question first:
There’s nothing in the limitations for Club TDs that restricts you to no more than 50 participants. It restricts you to tournaments or sections of tournaments that are expected to draw no more than 50 players. Unless you advertise that participants will not be admitted unless they have registered in advance, you will have no way of knowing until the day of the tournament how many people are actually going to show up, and if you did require advance registration, that would be likely to significantly reduce the number of players who would come. I suspect that the USCF has worded the Club TD limitations the way it does precisely for this reason. It doesn’t, in general, want to create situations in which members will show up for a tournament only to be disappointed. Of course, if you hold a tournament and more than 50 players show up, then you should be expecting that future tournaments will also be likely to draw more than 50 players and should prepare accordingly for those tournaments.
If the room where you are holding the tournament has a limited capacity, this is virtually always because of legal restrictions, so in that case you will have no choice but to comply.
In addition to having past history for an event/site set the TD certification needed, using ‘based on’ prizes tends to define the organizer’s expectations. In other words, if you advertise an event as $2000 based on 75, clearly you should be using a TD whose certification level allows him or her to direct a 75 player event.
Oh, to have the problem of too many players showing up! The organizer has to have a good idea of what he can reasonably expect as entries to his event. I have seen organizers have crazy based on prizes with ridiculous expectations of how many would show up, like b/100 when his largest previous event had only 30 entrants. When prizes are consistently cut in half, the players start to move on to other places.
You can advertise space limitations or “open to the first 50 entrants”. That will tend to get a few more advance entries for the players who don’t want to miss out on playing. But if your tournaments have been small, why bother? You know your base and that you will not fill up all of the chairs. The tournaments that I have seen have an overflow, try to squeeze another board on some of the tables. Even had kids playing on the floor. The players will manage. Apologize and thank everyone for coming and find a bigger venue for the next event.
Well, an experienced organizer conducting relatively repetitive types of tournaments in an established market may have a pretty good idea what turnout to expect. A new organizer in an immature market may not have a reliable gauge of the demand. There may be tons of players thirsting for a taste of competitive chess!
One organizer planned an event with room for somewhere between 30 and 50 players. The rated sections fit in there but he never expected the non-rated section to have 200 (maybe more?) show up on site (before pairing software existed). Non-rated pairings were listed with colors and names but no board numbers. Players were instructed to find their opponents, find someplace to play and then report the results.
When someone is running their first tournament ever, it can be very hard for them to feel much confidence about how many attendees they will or won’t have. The first tournament I ever ran (in June of 2007) was held in a room that could legally accommodate 200 people, and I had enough tables and chairs set up to handle 48 players. But I had some ideas in the back of my mind about what I would do if more people than that showed up. All of those thoughts turned out to be unnecessary, of course. I had a total of 16 players show up, so I had 2 1/2 times as many tables and chairs as I needed.
Another possibility, if you charge an entry fee, is to offer a discount to people who sign up in advance. There’s a good chance that a sizeable fraction of the people who are planning to come will choose to sign up in advance just to get the discount, and then you will have some idea of how many people to expect.
A key word is “expected”. The limit is increased to 60 if there is an assistant and the TD is computer-aided.
The Club-level TD limitation is for USCF rated events, with a flat prohibition for grand prix, national or international events, and also “should not” be the chief for category A, B or C tournaments, which are Swiss tournaments with expected numbers in excess of 300, 100 or 50 (respectively). That “should not” is essentially “must not” unless there is an overwhelming reason (if the planned chief TD you were going to assist was hit by a car and hospitalized on the morning of the event then that would usually be an acceptible reason, while deciding in advance that you simply didn’t want to pay for a higher level TD would NOT be an acceptible reason - just remember that the default is that the reason is NOT acceptible and a Club-level TD needs to have a lot of justification for doing an event expected to be above his limit).
Notice that the type R event is not included in the events with limitations. 20 sections of 4-player quads is not a Swiss of any type and thus falls under category R. Even if you expected them all, and even though it is 80 players, it is not currently covered by the 50-player limitation (the pairing issues are much less than with a Swiss a fraction of its size, and that many players would generally greatly prefer a swiss to multiple quad sections). Also, only Swisses are considered for the tournament requirements needed to move from Club-level to Local-level.
You can advertise space limitations, but if you want your event listed as a Grand Prix in the TLA, then you have to put in an exception that the limitation does not apply to players rated 2200+. Keep some seats in reserve.
I recall a national elementary I worked at many years ago. The tournament received what was then a record attendance. The room for the primary sections was 5 boards short of what was required. The organizers employed what I call the scholar’s mate strategy. The 10 players without a board (bottom boards in the weakest section) were told to wait in the front row of the parents’ waiting area just outside the playing room where players also reported their results. As the first 5 games ended, the waiting players were assigned the newly vacant boards. We had no problems with the slightly late starting games delaying the next round. I don’t think it took even 5 minutes to assign the boards.
I remember the 1 time in the 1980s that Hoogovens [I may have the wrong steel company, but they were known for the big tournament in Holland] ran a special event of 3 top US players against 3 top European players in Indiana. There was a side event that advertised a limitation to 100 players. The side event actually only drew 50 players. If you advertise a limit you will likely not have the problem of turning away players. If that does turn up as a problem offer to player some casual games with the guy where you are doing TD work. Maybe even see if they are willing to help out with the event and get them as an assistant TD for this event and future events. Building a TD staff is never a bad idea for any club.
We’re going to have me and another TD but I have a few clarifying questions.
1.) A class C tournament is one drawing between 50-99 entrants. Per 18 on pg 361. These may be directed by Local TD’s. On page 263, Club limitations a club level TD should not be a chief TD of a Class C tournament.
It may not be an issue, as you said and have been too, I’m in an out of the way place but I’ve been contacted from some people in Kentucky and out of state. In Kentucky there may be around 20 people coming from just a couple hours a way from Ashland, not including our local club (maybe 8 by then) any anyone else who may come, say from St. Albans, Huntington or Charleston WV. I’m wanting to give the players the best experience they can have and be prepared.
2.) Can you convert published tournament types? To give a simple example:
Scenario) You advertise a 3 round Swiss and only 4 players show up. You ask and they are all ok with changing the tournament format, can this be converted to a round robin quad? Does this change the ability to add in late players?
I don’t know that one would want to do this, after all late players would still expect the Swiss format. But as far as the “Official” ruling of it, could it be done?
If I have 4 players in a 4 round section I run a quad plus a 4th round in which the top 2 (based on score) play again and the bottom 2 play again. I favor giving the players the number of rounds they expected. I have seen others make it a quad with the agreement of the participants.
It seems to me that for your first tournament you don’t really know how many players to expect. Based on what you’re saying it doesn’t sound like you’re likely to get 50, so it should be O.K. to advertise your tournament without specifying a limit on the number of players. If you do get 50+ you’ll have your hands full, and next time you should probably say “limited to the first 49 players who enter”. After a few tournaments you can upgrade to local TD.
In my case I assisted other TDs at a few tournaments before I started organizing tournaments of my own. I don’t remember ever being worried about getting too many players for my certification level. The rules may have been different then (1991) but I was probably already a local TD before I directed my first tournament as chief TD.
With 4 players for a 3 round Swiss I would use rule 29L, Using round robin table in small Swiss. You’d pair it as a round robin, but if late players showed up for round 2 you’d pair the remaining rounds as a Swiss. Converting the tournament to a round robin is legal per rule 29K, but using rule 29L is preferable.
I don’t mean to be a vocabulary #### here, but Class has a very specific meaning, and it is not the way you used it. You mean to say “category C”.
As far as limitations are concerned, they are based on expectations. If you’re expecting 4-28 players, you should be fine, but I’d recommend that, if you do get over 50 players, for your next tournament you hire a more experienced TD. You can check on TD/Affiliate who the TDs are close to you.
I would have had zero interest in hiring a more experienced TD when I was starting out as an organizer. I wanted to direct the tournaments as well as organize them. On the other hand, I had the advantage of having plenty of opportunities for gaining experience as an assistant TD. For an organizer/TD just starting out in an area where few or no tournaments have been run in the past, there’s something to be said for working with and learning from more experienced TDs by whatever means are available, either by hiring a TD to work in your area or by volunteering to assist, probably for no pay, at tournaments outside your area.