The good news is, I joined up with the Kentucky Chess Association and have had a contact that said they and maybe 20 more from a larger club up north would be willing to travel to come to our tournaments. That said, if they are willing to do that, then other clubs that are also around 2 hours away may be willing to do the same.
I’m going to get a few smaller tournaments under my belt first though, before opening up that particular can of worms though. That said if you’ve seen my other posts you have probably seen the newspaper article, website, and other media we’ve been working on to get this really started and we’re off to a good start. The USCF has at least 5 new (or elapsed and now renewed) memberships from our area. I’m hoping for another 3-5 by end of September. I’m also willing to kick in some of my own personal money and solicit donations from businesses for a prize fund in order to maybe have a little larger prize fund than what would be just based on number of entries to attract people to the game and have good turnout.
Keep in mind this is all down the road, but not too far, seeing as it’s already almost September. I’m thinking Early 2015, I’ll have two or three tournaments under my belt.
1.) Is there any restrictions on individuals donating or businesses donating money to the prize fund in return for a flyer or a sign at the tournament hall? Basically think sponsor.
2.) I know I ask something similar but clarify it for me. Sections. If I have U1200, U1600 and Open sections, these players may all face each other right? They just wouldn’t be eligible for the advertiste prize for a section they don’t belong in, correct?
So, a 1757 wouldn’t qualify for a U1600 1st place prize, but would qualify for the Open prize? A 1345 player wouldn’t qualify for the U1200 or Open prize but would for the U1600.
Thanks for all the help. I’ve got a real passion to bring this to our area and I appreciate any advice.
An under section means that everyone under the cut off qualifies. So a 1100 rated player would qualify for both the under 1600 and under 1200. If you have a Class C and D combined Prize then only those from 1200 to 1599 qualify.
Ok, so let me ask then this then. If an 1100 player somehow won the U1600, he/she would by default pretty much have won the u1200 prize as well, but not necessarily vice versa. Is that accurate?
Scenario 1: In a four round tourney: The 1100 won three and draws one for 3.5. Everyone else U1600 got 3.0 or less, so he’s won both the u1200 and u1600.
Scenario 2: In a tournament with a U1600 and U1200 section, The 1575 player scores a perfect 4.0 (he’s having a great day) so he wins the U1600. The 1100 player scores 2.0 and say the only other player under 1200, scored 1.5. The 2.0 1100 player won the U1200 prize.
Scenario 3: Open, U1600, U1200. An 1575 gets a perfect 4, and no one under 1600 matches that. He wins the U1600 1st place prize. TWO people under 1200, scores 2.5 and are tied for first. They split 1st place, assuming its dividable prize. Some 1820, 1750, 1690 players score 3.5, 3.0, and 2.5 respectively.
The open prize goes to the 1575 who got 4.0, 2nd place OPEN would go to the 3.5 and third place would go to the 3.0. If multiple people from the U1600 and U1200 had also scored 3.5 or 3.0 they would have tied for 2nd and 3rd in the Open and would have got to share any of that if it was dividable.
There’s a lot of confusion between sections and prizes. If you have separate sections then players only play the other players in their section and in general are fighting for the top place sections in their section. They aren’t competing with players from other sections for any prizes.
Instead it sounds like you are actually talking about under prizes in a single section. So everybody is in a single section playing everybody else and there are place prizes and under prizes.
For prize distribution, one thing to remember is that each player can only win one prize. So say you have something like:
1st Place $100
U1600 $60
U1200 $20
You award the $100 to the top result and that player isn’t considered for the subsequent prizes. Then you award the $60 to the top under 1600 and that player isn’t considered for any subsequent prizes. Then you award the U1200 prize. A player doesn’t take two prizes, instead it passes down to the next eligible player. It becomes more complicated to calculate when there are ties and players bring different prizes into the tie to share among them.
1.) So if I have a U1200, a U1600, and an Open section, and there is only one entry under 1200 (say 1154) he would get to play in the tournament even if he was the only one in that section, or are you saying he couldn’t be paired against the other players because he is not in their section? If I only had 3 entries of Under 1200 into a tournament, they would each play two players under 1200 but what of the other round, where only higher rated players were available?
2.) Also in the case you only have one entry for a given section, but multiples for other sections does that person who was the single entry for their section win that prize by default? What if they don’t win any games?
For instance. In a tournament with U 1200, U1600, and Open. I have 6 entries for people 1201-1600, andI have 6 en into Open for people over 1600, but only one person shows up who is rated < 1200. Does the person, pretty much by default win that prize?
3.) Can players voluntarily choose to play outside their section, can they play in more than one section? I wouldn’t think higher places could drop down but can lower players play in higher up if for whatever reason they wanted to?
First, Mr. Hamilton, congratulations on your progress to this point! Second, please accept my advance apologies for a long post. I wanted to have it address some potential issues I saw in your last few posts.
I would recommend being very careful with terms, especially in print advertising for your events. “Section” usually describes a discrete part of a tournament, while “class prize” or “under prize” is used to describe a rating-restricted prize within a section. Moreover, the term “class prize” is often used for a prize restricted to players in a certain class (Class A, Class B, etc.) while the term “under prize” is often used for a prize where any player under a certain rating is eligible (Under 2000, Under 1800, etc.) How you name your sections and prizes has a direct effect on how you calculate those prizes at the end of the event, so it’s good to be accurate.
Here are two basic examples to illustrate some of these points. You’ll probably notice that there are many ways to tweak these parameters. You’ll probably end up doing a lot of that as you fine-tune your events to achieve your desired balance between customer satisfaction and financial stability.
Event #1: The Luca Brasi Classic might have an Open section (open to all ratings) and a Reserve section (open to players rated under 1800). The Open section has, say, three overall prizes and two prizes for players under 2000. The Reserve section has, say, three overall prizes, two prizes for players rated under 1500, two prizes for players rated under 1200, and one prize for an unrated player.
If a player rated 1545 enters the Open section, he will only play other players registered for the Open. That player is eligible for either the three overall Open prizes, or the two Under 2000 prizes.
If a player rated 1545 enters the Reserve section, he will only play other players registered for the Reserve. That player is eligible for the three overall Reserve prizes only.
Event #2: The Joey Zasa Memorial has an Open section (open to all ratings) and a Reserve section (open to players rated under 1800). The Open section has, say, three overall prizes and two prizes for Class A players. The Reserve section has, say, three overall prizes, two prizes for Class C players, two prizes for Class D players, and one prize for an unrated player.
If a player rated 1545 enters the Open section, that player is eligible for the three overall Open prizes only. (Notice that the Class A prize is restricted, by definition, to players rated between 1800 and 1999.)
If a player rated 1545 enters the Reserve section, he will only play other players registered for the Reserve. That player is eligible for the three overall Reserve prizes, or the two Class C prizes (since his rating falls in the 1400-1599 range of Class C).
There are advantages and disadvantages to each way of advertising prizes. Which one works better for you will be a matter of personal taste and market influences (not necessarily in that order).
Now that all of that is out of the way…here are my recommended answers to your questions.
For a smaller local event, generally speaking, there are no restrictions. However, you’ll want to be sure you’ve got a sponsor whose association with the event will reflect well on the organizer, club and USCF. As an extreme example, if you decide to hold an elementary-school tournament, you probably wouldn’t want Smirnoff to be a sponsor.
If you have separate sections, then no, those players wouldn’t all face each other. If you just had one big section, with overall (“open”) prizes, U1600 prizes, and U1200 prizes, then yes, those players could play anyone.
The answer to this question is “yes”, irrespective of whether you have one section or multiple sections, based on the rating spread you identified.
The answer to this question is, “it depends”.
If you have one big section, with open prizes, U1600 prizes and U1200 prizes, then the 1345 player could win either the open prizes (because they’re, well, open to everyone) or the U1600 prizes.
If you have Open, U1600 and U1200 sections for your tournament, then the 1345 player would only play players registered in the same section. He could choose to play in either the Open section or the U1600 section.
It is true that, in your example, a U1100 player who scored well enough to win Under 1600 money would have won the U1200 money too. However, a player cannot win more than one cash prize. In the case of a player qualifying for multiple cash prizes, the player is, by default, given the largest prize for which he has qualified. Any prizes not awarded to this player are then passed to the next player(s) in line.
The scenarios from your most recent post, I think, should be clarified so we know whether you’re talking about a one-section tournament with “under” prizes, or a multi-section tournament.
I hope all of this is helpful in some way. Thanks again for your efforts.
PS: It’s a little after 3am here. I hope the lateness of the hour can be cited for any factual or analytical errors I’ve committed in the foregoing.
The ability to have however many sections is determined by the numbers of players that come who “fit” those
sections. Due to low attendance in some sections, you may need to merge them. However, the prize fund you
advertised for the sections you merged, still need to be paid.
Unless I’m misreading the original questions, I think there may be a fundamental misunderstanding of “sections” in a tournament.
A section of a tournament is basically a little self-contained tournament in itself. In general, once a player enters a section, as far as that player’s tournament experience goes, the section is the entire world. All that player’s opponents will come from that section. The player is competing for prizes only in that section. Whatever happens in the other sections of the tournament has absolutely no effect on that player’s section.
As a director, you will pair each section separately, post pairings separately, and post wall charts separately.
Once a player enters a section, he has made his choice and continues in that section throughout the tournament. (Yes, some tournaments allow a player to withdraw and reenter a different section. Never mind that for now.) The only time he would have an opponent not in his section is if the director arranges for a “side game.” If you have two sections with an odd number of players, you will end up with two players who “get the bye” (have no opponent for that round). Those players receive a full point for their unplayed round for pairing and prize purposes. They may agree to play a rated game “on the side,” but they are not obligated to do so. (Some players will agree because they would rather play chess than sit out a round. Others will decline because they would rather have the break.) The director will usually create a separate “side games section” in the rating report for such games.
As an example of all this, take a look at this recent event’s crosstable. There are five sections: Open, Under 2000, Under 1700, Under 1400, and Side Games. As you can see, each of the sections except the side games section looks like a small Swiss tournament by itself. As an example, a player rated 1500 could enter the open, under 2000, or under 1700 section, but not the under 1400 section. Once the player chooses a section, he stays in that section for the entire tournament and competes for that section’s prizes.
Until you have some idea of turnout, you may not want to run multi-section events.
Of course a different way of handling that is to run quads. Place the players in rank order by rating. The top 4 are quad 1, the next 4 are quad 2, etc. If you are fortunate enough to have a number of players exactly divisible by 4 or have enough house players to fill out all the brackets, pairing is a breeze. Otherwise, the bottom section usually is run as a 5-7 player Swiss. Life can get a bit tricky there, because you can box yourself into really lousy last round pairings, although with 3 rounds it usually isn’t too bad.
I recommend taking some 3x5 cards and make pairing cards and practice pairing some 5, 6 and 7 player events to see how it goes. (Make various random assignments of win/loss/draw for games to see how they affect pairing the next round.) Yeah, you could use a pairing program to do it, but you’ll learn SO MUCH MORE doing it by hand at least a few times. Try pairing as many rounds as you can.
Manual pairing is probably the best training tool, IMHO. The two main software suites are pretty good, but you should still check at least the pairings in the top 2-3 score groups, especially in later rounds. You can even teach yourself the mechanics and concepts behind a merge using pairing cards.
I also agree that there is no good substitute for working with experienced TDs in other environments. Much of the knowledge I have was cribbed from others.
Many chief TDs will gladly take on an assistant (for free or maybe just expenses) as an extra pair of hands, legs and eyes. You may spend a large part of your time running around putting out scoresheets, setting up boards, putting up pairings and scrambling to collect results, but, hey, that’s a large part of what TDs do!
There are usually some lulls mid-round and that’s a good time to set up various pairing scenarios and ask questions about ‘what would you do’ and then see what the pairing program does. It’s also about the only time you get a chance to sit down!
Years ago, although I had several years of hand pairing under my belt, before I ran my first event using computer pairings I ran several dozen events at home just to get familiar with the mechanics. Then I checked absolutely every pairing in that first event. (3 sections, around 100 players total as I recall.) I didn’t see a reason to change any pairings, they were all the same as what I would have done by hand, and the funny part was several players told me afterwards that the pairings were ‘fairer’ because they had been computer generated.
The Omaha folks have been trying to find a time for me to come up from Lincoln and run an evening of TD training, hopefully it’ll happen this fall. I may have to study up on the current rules, though.
I concur with nolan: You should run your first tournament as a single section. (I’d go so far as to say, don’t even try quads – yet. Wait till you’ve got a few open Swisses under your belt.) A first tournament in a rural area is probably not going to draw that many players, probably 16 or fewer. That’s OK. Just give out first, second and third place prizes, and maybe an U1200 prize, and leave it at that.
Make use of the Demographic Queries tool in the TD/Affiliate Area and get counts of players within 25, 45 and 65 miles to help you predict maximum likely turnout. I’ve found these radii to be pretty good definitions of “truly local,” “semi-local” and “farthest likely reach.” (You may or may not want to extend that last radius to 75 miles, depending on whether that allows you to capture one more city. Here is a tool that will allow you to visualize each of those radii on a map.) Advertise your tournament through the Kentucky state association, and do a direct mailing within your catchment area as well. It’ll be worth it to get the initial attention.
Here’s another online tool for drawing maps with a radius, this one is has a lot simpler interface than the one Keith gave: mapdevelopers.com/draw-circle-tool.php
Radius searches are always relative. When I was living in Evanston IL, I never played in events on the south side of Chicago, even though that was only 25-30 miles away it might have well been on the other side of the moon! But when I moved to Nebraska I was quite willing to drive to Omaha (60 miles) or Grand Island (90 miles) for an event, and even went to one in Kansas City (150 miles.)
The closest to you would be in Lexington - you can connect with those guys through the Ky Chess Association and I am sure they would be happy to help you learn. Jerry Baker is running events in Lexington regularly and is very good.
Thanks. I’ve had some people from Ashland say they may bring in as many as 20 people. Charleston and St. Albans WV are also close as well as Winchester. I’m going to try to get donors and sponsors and build up the community… So one of my goals is to offer above average prize payouts that one might expect from this area/size club to also draw people at some pint.
I have actually traveled to play in both Asheville [NC] and Charleston [WV], so do not be surprised if you get a player or two from way outside your area.
I have some past experience with exceptionally small sections. There are 3 choices you can make to deal with a small section. The most common choice is to merger two sections into 1 section with prizes from both sections as the prize fund for the new section.
A second choice (which depends on the number of players in a section) is to do cross section pairings. You take the odd player from 1 section and pair with an odd player from another section. You need to be careful when you do this, and there is always the problem of not having too great a difference in ratings of the players.
The third choice (usually when dealing with a very small number) is to double pair the players. For instance if you have a 3 player section the is suppose to be 4 rounds, then you might play a double round robin with 2 games against each opponent. There is of course then the problem that you are actually doing more than 4 rounds. Another case would be a 4 player section of 4 rounds, when for the final round you repair a set of opponents [be certain that the colors are different than the first meeting] for a second time. I will warn you right now that you will get an error message when submitting the tournament if you do an event with players playing each other more than once in a swiss event.
My suggestions is that your try running Octogon tournaments. An Octogon is a 3 round swiss section of similarly rated players [like Quads] that is composed of 8 players. The advantage of an Octogon over a Quad is that you do not have to worry as much over the number of players as it will work with as few as 6 players will little trouble. Furthermore, you could offer prizes for first, second, and for the best player in the bottom half of the Octogon. That way you are providing for a class prize within the Octogon for the lower rated players in the section. Also, with an Octogon you are less likely to have just 1 player rated way differently than the rest of the players in the section. That can be a problem with Quads. Please note that if you only have 4 players for a section you can then just run it like a Quad. The Octogon format was somewhat popular in the 70s, back when I first started playing chess.
I hope this helps with your future plans. Also, the best way to learn is to ask questions of other TDs; and from doing it yourself. You learn from your mistakes, but it is even better to learn from the mistakes of others.
Best “Chess” Regards,
Larry S. Cohen
Senior level TD.
Still another option, if there are only 4 players in the bottom section of a 2-section, 4-round tournament, is to play the first 3 rounds as a round robin, then merge the sections in round 4. Pair the 4 players in the bottom section against the lowest-scoring(not the lowest-rated) 4 players in the top section.
Speaking of prize money.
You have two sections U1400 and Open.
If you have advertised U1400. 1st place 100, 2nd 50. And the Open as 1st place: $200 and 2nd $100
You combine these sections due to lack of turnout for U1400.
So does it now become 1st $300 and 2nd $150 in the only section which is Open?
1.) Can I decide not to merge the price money (not that I would do that, but I’d like to know the official rule of it)
2.) Can I create an amount for a 3rd and 4th place in the Open section with the money that was going to be for 1st and 2nd in the U1400?
3.) Can I add the money any way I see fit to the open section? For example 1st from U1400 was going to be $100 and 2nd place was going to be $50.00 Can I decide to split $75 each now to 1st and second to the open bringing them up to $275 and $175?
4.) Sorta relates to 3. Can I take the $100 that was going to be for 1st place in U1400 and give it to the open 2nd place, and take the $50 that was for 2nd place in U1400 and give it to 1st place open to make it $250.00 for 1st in the open and $200.00 for second, to narrow the gap in prize money between the places?
You are required to have a $200 first, $100 second, and class prizes for top scoring player rated U1400 $100, 2nd scoring player rated U1400 $50. You can add any prizes you want to, but you must give these four prizes as above. Note that if after you have given the first two prizes, you have fewer than two people remaining rated U1400, you can keep those prizes, since there is no one to award them to.
Yes, I have given prizes to people who had zero scores.
