I was wondering if anyone had resources on where to find a cheap place to run a chess tournament. I do not want the entry fee to be more than $20 and I would guess we could get 20-30 people to start with but could get up to 60 people depending on the turnout. Any ideas or websites that you know of to keep the costs down would be wonderful.
Thanks.
Don’t know how much this will help. With 30-60 players you really shouldnt have too much trouble finding a venue for a tournament. Try a hotel’s banquet room.
If you are looking cheaper think about a school, church, or community/senior center even a VFW Hall. Tons of possibilities, its just a lot of leg work.
I dont even know Gilbert, AZ or how populated/developed it is. My best advice for you would be to contact your state chess association. They’ll probably be able to give you better info and they may even assist you with funds (for a cut of the profit, of course).
Smartidiot:
Find something on the highway 201, 101, 60. It is always best having the tournament on any road people understand, as the players in the area understand the location much better. If you find a site on a road thats a dead end, needing to turn on roads nobody has a clue: it would be much harder for the players to come.
As you are so close to Phoenix, the home of the 2005 U.S. Open. It would be nice to find your site before this event, having it all set up for a few months down the road. What chess player at any level would not show up to the U.S. Open if its’ in your city? It would be nice meeting the Grand Masters, but they do not live in the area. That class D player from Phoenix would be a better person to have a cup of coffee with. Thats the person you want to talk about your tournaments.
I already run a nightly chess club at a Prominent used bookstore. We get 10-35 players depending a night for our weeknight tournaments that vary between 1 game a night for a month at G\75 or 4 games a night at G\20. I was wanting to find a nice cheap place to run a Sat. tournament. You are right about trying to get it done before the US Open. There is a buzz here with chess right now. Gilbert is huge in the Elementary Chess and there are a lot of adults getting back into chess just for the event.
Hotel Banquest rooms cost too much here. David Small has stopped a lot of the regular tournaments he was running because it was costing too much money. He stopped breaking even which forced him to stop running them. Gilbert is right next to Phoenix. The state assosciation is having similar problems. There are a lot of events that had been run for a long time that have been abandoned due to lack of a place to play and does not cost too much. Thanks for the suggestions though.
Site problems have seriously impacted tournament activity in many cities.
15 years ago we used to be able to rent a 4500 sqare foot room at a local shopping center for $25/day or two rooms totalling about 4000 square feet at a local motel for $75-$100/day. The shopping center no longer makes its facility available and the motel is now charging $350 per room.
For several years the cribbage folks were running events at that same motel. They had an interesting deal. They got the room relatively cheap if not free, but the schedule of the event had two built-in meal breaks, and the players would eat at the motel restaurant. If we tried something like that with chess players, 90% of them would trek across the street to McDonalds, then leave their trash and half-eaten burgers strewn around the playing room. (We were asked not to come back after a chess player scribbled all over one of their tablecloths with a ball point pen.)
Thankfully, the local community college is fairly cooperative. I think they don’t charge us for the rooms, but they do expect us to follow their rules, including the ‘no food or beverages other than water’ rule. They also expect the room to be cleaned up and the tables and chairs set up the way we found them. I don’t have a problem with either rule.
I think the policy of the local school district is that we have to pay to have a janitor on site for the entire event, at something like $50/hour. (If the school’s chess club is the sponsor of the event, I think that can be waived by the principal, but that limits the type of events that can be held to mostly scholastic ones.)
Smaller, out-of-the-way motels may still be a bit more affordable, it’s worth researching. You might also contact the Chamber of Commerce or the Convention and Visitors Bureau to see if they have a list of hotels with banquet/meeting space. Unfortunately, most of the newer motels (like AmericInn) have at best one or two 500 square foot conference rooms.
There is always the apartment complex community room. There are a number of apartment community rooms able to hold 100 people. This is how I have my events, the apartment complex likes the idea as a number of tournament players have moved into the apartments.
My chess club meets at a local college. I just had to help set-up a club for the college.
I am also able to run weekend tournaments there for either a minimal or no fee.
I just wanted to get a clarification, so as to not confuse other forum readers…
Are you a student of that local college? Because I am assuming you are, and thats (probably) why the faculty is allowing you to set up a club and have meeting space.
If you are not a student, and none of your members had a connection to the school, i’d be interested in knowing how you are able to do this.
Most colleges will not let an outside entity use thier campus without a substantial fee, and most won’t let you use it at all.
Before meeting at the college, one of the players at my club was on staff at the college. He is the one who helped facilitate the move. If I wasn’t able to use him, I knew of other people/students at the college that would have helped to make it work out.
How big of a Saturday event you want the entries to be? If you are holding tournaments at the Prominent, with past entries of 35 players. It looks like you want the event to be a category C, or the Prominent is not open during Saturday?
The Arizonia desert is free. 