Chicago Open

Running Chess Tournaments
1

I don’t understand how CCA is running this event.

Their advertising says:

Under Illinois COVID rules, in the current phase, the tournament would be limited to 50 players per section assuming each section is in a separate room - so a total of 350. There are multiple schedules, so if each schedule were also in a separate room, they could have an additional 50 per schedule per section. But once they merge, they are limited to 50 per section.

Actually, a little less, because that isn’t counting the TDs.

The way Illinois applies their COVID restrictions, you can’t have 50 people in room A and another 50 people in room B, unless the people in rooms A and B never come in contact with each other.

I don’t understand how they can advertise a based on of 800, when their maximum is 350 - unless Illinois moves to the Bridge phase by the end of May. This is not something I’d bet on right now. To have a tournament of 800 under the NEXT phase, they’d have to have room for 1,333.

Anyone have an idea what they are thinking?

2

Most likely they’re hoping COVID will be over by then, allowing them to do whatever they want.

And if that doesn’t happen, there is still plenty of time to switch the event to online, as has already been done with a handful of other major events.

THAT’s what they’re thinking, I’m sure.

Bill Smythe

3

COVID over in a month?? Not possible.

Illinois is in phase 4. They have a bridge phase, 4.5 to get to phase 5. Phase 5 is herd immunity.

If we vaccinated EVERY ADULT, we might get to herd immunity. The number of unvaccinated CHILDREN is sufficient to put us right on the edge. With an anticipated 1MM illegal immigrants this year, that makes it harder.

It is unlikely that we will be back to normal before early 2022. We don’t expect to be vaccinating children under the age of 12 until late fall at the earliest.

Phase 4 limits to 50 people per indoor event. One can segregate the sections to separate rooms and allow zero intermixing and meet that requirement. With 7 sections they can get to 350.

Phase 4.5 allows the lesser of 1,000 people or 60% capacity. I am hoping for phase 4.5 by late June. Hopefully by then we have close to 50% of Illinois adults vaccinated.

To get to phase 4.5, hospitalizations have to be steady or declining for 28 consecutive days. Illinois rates have been consistently rising.

4

Yesterday 46.49% of the 16 and older IL population had received at least the first shot. One week earlier it was 41.42%. Another week like that would exceed the 50% by 4/20 and any of those with only the first shot should have received the second by roughly 5/18.
dph.illinois.gov/statewidemetrics

5

They tried that in Nevada, but the authorities didn’t fall for it.

Bill Smythe

6

Illinois allows it so long as it is truly run separately. There can be no intermixing. Each event has to have its own pairings area, no participants between sections, etc.

So, for example, if one had a 5-section tournament on a college campus, one could run each section in a separate building.

One section broken up doesn’t work, because pairings can drag people from one room to another in the same section.

7

We have every meeting room in the hotel (total capacity over 2500 people). If Illinois moves to the Bridge phase (60% capacity), our limit would be over 1500.

Bill Goichberg

8

Actually, Bill, that’s not true. The limit on the bridge phase is the lesser of 1,000 or 60% capacity. Currently, the best you can do is 50 per section, if you can keep the sections FULLY segregated. For example - no centralized room with all pairings.

However, anyone who is FULLY vaccinated (14 days+ after the last required vaccine) or has a negative COVID test within 3 days does not count against the limit.

To get to the Bridge phase, Illinois requires 70% of residents 65 and older have been vaccinated and 28 consecutive days of decreasing hospitalizations. While Illinois has hit the 70% vaccinations of age 65+, we currently have 0 consecutive days of decreasing hospitalizations, and in fact the numbers have been increasing.

I suppose you have about 2 weeks for that to turn around before it’s impossible, but it just seems odd for it to be advertised this way with no mention that the regulations don’t currently allow your based-on number. I’m not against you running it. I hope you can safely pull it together. But the implication is that it could be something that currently it cannot be, without mention of that issue.

Now, if you want to get into examining vaccinations or test results, you might get there.

9

If I were considering playing I would look at the prizes assuming a 50% payout. If the event still made sense to me, either because the prizes would still be sufficient or because I never factor prizes in, I’d come. If CCA has misunderstood the rules and they can’t have more than 350 players, that will be a loss for them.

10

I don’t see anything about consecutive days on the IDPH website. See below.

"IDPH will continue to track the vaccinations rates and hospital capacity metrics, mortality, and case rates over 28-day monitoring periods to determine if the state can move into the bridge phase or Phase 5.

Illinois will move to the bridge phase when 70% of the population 65 years and older has received at least one dose of vaccine, and to Phase 5 when 50% of the population 16 years and older has received at least one dose of vaccine. In addition, when moving to both the bridge phase and Phase 5, hospital ICU bed availability needs to be higher than 20%, and new COVID-19 hospital admissions, total COVID-19 patients in the hospital, and death rates are not increasing significantly statewide over the most recent 28 days.

Illinois could move back to the bridge phase or Phase 4, if over 10 days the rate of new cases significantly increases and at least one of the following is true: hospital ICU availability is below 20%, there is a significant increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations, total COVID-19 patients in the hospital, or deaths. New evidence concerning variants, vaccine effectiveness, or waning immunity could substantially and quickly increase COVID-19 hospitalizations or deaths and will be taken into consideration, in addition to the metrics being monitored."

Under the above, it doesn’t seem like hospitalizations need to decline each day for 28 consecutive days (which would be highly unlikely), rather there only needs to be a 28 day period during which overall, they do not significantly increase. I believe they peaked on Apr 16, and 28 days later is May 14, so if they are unchanged or even slightly higher than Apr 16 on May 14, that would seem to allow movement into a higher phase.

Bill Goichberg

11

Let’s hope this works out. Somehow, though, I somewhat share Kevin’s fear that you may be walking on eggshells here.

Bill Smythe

12

dph.illinois.gov/statewidemetrics shows that Illinois hospitalizations have been consistently increasing for over a month.

A 28-day period is 28 consecutive days.

I should have said non-increasing, not decreasing. It’s ok for it to stay level.

Illinois currently has 0 days of non-increasing hospitalizations.

They also do a linear regression on the most recent 28 days (i.e., 28 consecutive days) to determine if there are any significant increases in hospital admissions. However, if the death rate is less than .1 per 100,000 they will ignore the hospitalizations.

Illinois current death rate is 189 per 100,000.

13

“Twenty-eight consecutive days of non-increasing hospitalizations” would be an equally imprecise statement.

14

I don’t see how.

15

The site you linked to says:

Other Illinois sites have similar language. They are (perhaps intentionally) vague on the meaning of “not increasing significantly statewide over the most recent 28 days” but nowhere do they say anything about 28 consecutive days of decrease (or non-increase). Indeed, such a standard may well prove impossible to meet even years from now.

Imagine, for instance, Illinois suddenly had daily deaths of 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0. Do you really mean to suggest that the one death in the middle, by itself, would invalidate moving to the next phase?

All that said, trends are currently in the wrong direction, and I’ll be shocked if it’s possible for the event to happen. (But kudos to the organizers for trying, so long as the event is converted to online if appropriate.)

16

No, I wouldn’t argue that, nor did I say that. These statements are equivalent:

  • most recent 28 days (has the additional clarity of indicating the ending date, which in turn indicates a specific 28 day period- but that’s unnecessary since the purpose is to trigger a change in events upon the 28th day)
  • 28-day period
  • 28 consecutive days

A “period” or “interval” is by implication a selection of consecutive smaller intervals.

It’s the days that are consecutive or that form a period, not the desired attribute during the period. That would be 28 consecutive DAILY non-increases in hospitalizations - indicating that its measured day-by-day. Or of course, using the “day-by-day” phrase itself.

A month is a period. It is a collection of 28,29,30 or 31 consecutive days based on context/circumstance

What I said, once corrected for “non-increasing” was not imprecise.

One can, of course, get even more specific, for example, “a period consisting of 28 days where the rate of hospitalization is lower at the end of the period than at the beginning, and where the the 5-day rolling average is consistently trending downward.”

Part of my work deals in the conversion of mathematical concepts into legal description for contractual reasons. I’m a bit embarrassed by not catching “non-increasing” since I deal with such items nearly daily. But “28 consecutive days of X” does not mean the same as “X occurring daily (or day-by-day) for a period of 28 days.”

17

I’m sorry, but what you’re saying now doesn’t square with what you said earlier in the thread:

If you are claiming that you did not intend it to mean each day for 28 days in a row, then why would meeting the requirement be impossible to meet in just two weeks from April 15? If all that is required is for the general trend to be lower, how would that be known to be impossible at the beginning of May for a tournament that doesn’t start until May 27? If all you are interested in is the overall 28-day period, why the comment about currently having zero consecutive days? Wouldn’t you instead want to point out that the most recent 28-day period does not show the needed trend?

You could, of course, just admit that you misstated the requirement initially. In any event, Bill Goichberg seems to have the right interpretation, so there’s really no point to further discussion.

18

The hospitalization trend appears to be promising:

4/13 2076
4/14 2043
4/15 2058
4/16 2160
4/17 2157
4/18 2218
4/19 2288
4/20 2191
4/21 2147

From 4/19 to 5/17, hospitalizations need to avoid significant increase. That would means going up from the current 2147 to over 2288. Not likely with vaccinations increasing, also warmer weather means more people outdoors which tends to retard spread of the virus.

Indeed, from 4/13 to 5/11, hospitalizations need only to decrease to about 2076, which seems likely. It would not surprise me if by 5/11 they are well under 2000.

It’s true that the trend up to 4/19 was unfavorable, but that does not matter. New cases are a predictor of hospitalizations about 10 days later, and here is the rolling 7 day average number of new cases ending 4/13 to 4/22:

4/7-13 3380
4/8-14 3351
4/9-15 3330
4/10-16 3308
4/11-17 3245
4/12-18 3213
4/13-19 3141
4/14-20 3057
4/15-21 2956
4/16-22 2867

So we can expect further dops in hospitalizations for the next 10 days or so, at least.

Bill Goichberg

19

You seem confused.

  1. I didn’t mis-state the requirement.
  2. I never said that it had to decrease daily for 28 days. Allowing for the non-increasing issue, I said it needed to be non-increasing for 28 consecutive days. I also just fully explained that, and how you seem to be misreading it. It’s the DAYS that are consecutive - NOT the QUALITY considered.
20

Perhaps you could give an example of a pattern you think meets the criteria but is not decreasing every single day. People understand numbers much more readily than semantics. Perhaps less randomly, take the actual numbers Bill listed. If it decreased steadily and ended up at 2070. lower than the 2076 on day one, does that qualify in your mind?