A thought came up at a fairly good sized scholastic of just under 200 players in which we had a number of walk-ins uninformed about chess tournament section terminology such as what does K-1, K-3 U600, Elementary U800, mean. As I am one of the Texas Chess Assoc officers, and this was a TCA event, I opened up my lap top, used my phone for wifi, and started to research their kids in the US Chess data base. Also I helped those parents brand new to tournament play pick the best section for their youths. My doing this, at least to some degree, helped speed up the onsite registration process as registrars did not have do this research, and could keep the line moving.
But, the thought that occurred to me was this - as this forum does have quite a few
very experienced tournament directors and organizers, how often have you had specific information/registration assistance (not actual registration) ques or centers
available ?? For certainly it is vital to help these onsite folks in a timely, yet professional manner which hopefully leads to their coming to future events.
Thoughts please -
Rob Jones
I’ve only seen it at larger scholastic tournaments. It’s probably the only time it’s necessary as well. For smaller events there aren’t as many questions, so the TDs can usually handle it.
We have a dedicated “chess control” booth/table at the Illinois state K-8 championships (roughly 600-700 players) and the Illinois All-Grade (400 or so). The biggest chess control is at the National Scholastics. That’s not surprising as the smallest one is still well over 1,000 players. The National Chess Control booth is kept pretty busy throughout the tournament.
What is wrong with a simple FAQs sheet, which could be posted in multiple locations?
Larry S. Cohen
That’s a good idea even in the smallest tournaments, but in a huge scholastic I’m sure it wouldn’t be enough.
Bill Smythe
Or even a medium size scholastic of a few hundred. Look, I direct tournaments for several different organizers in the DFW area. We had a large regional scholastic of just
under 200 players that I sent out several email blitzes to advertise. We had a few who
drove to the wrong addresses because they told me “we did not open up the email, and
merely assumed where the tournament was”. The same problem exists in a way with
posted material. A. Too many parents simply lack the inertia to look for this information, B. at well attended events, it might be too difficult to get through the crowd to get to the information signs, and C. Many parents would simply prefer a “face” tells them whatever rather than reading. A issue sometimes is that quite often
volunteers are hard to find, and do not grow on trees.
Rob Jones
I was not suggesting eliminating face to face information transfer. Rather I was suggesting the FAQ sheets as a way to reduce the number of such transactions that might be needed. You could also post this information online along with the pairings.
Larry S. Cohen