So I just had my first tourney it was a little 4 player, 3 round quad. It went well.
I have a number of people interested in coming, but I still don’t really have the experience or confidence of doing multiple sections. I’m thinking about just making it an open and basing the prize money, 60% to first 30% to second and 10% for filing fees from the USCF.
Ideas, comments, suggestions?
I think your idea makes a lot of sense. It’s usually better to try to build up a player base gradually rather than trying to bring in large numbers of players to an event/location/TD that hasn’t got much of a track record yet.
Multiple sections really only make sense when you know you can get a big turnout or perhaps when you have a block of high rated players, another block of low rated players, and not many players in the middle.
Quads may attract a different audience that open events would, too, usually because the entry-fee-to-prize-fund ratio is fairly low for quads, since even a 100% payout would only be 4X the entry fee.
I take it you have a free site?
I don’t like your “60% to first 30% to second and 10% for filing fees from the USCF” prize structure. For one thing, there are no class prizes, so lower rated players might stay away because they feel that they have no chance for a prize. You’re also cutting it very close in terms of estimating your expenses, which may or may not be an issue depending on your finances.
If you can estimate your turnout and the approximate range of ratings of the players it would be best to have a fixed prize structure, either guaranteed or based on entries, e.g. $100 1st, $50 2nd, $45 to Top U1800, $40 to Top U1500. Otherwise you could say something like “75% of entry fees returned as prizes” (that’s what I say for the Massachusetts Open and New England Open blitz tournaments) or even “Prizes based on entries”, then work out the prizes during the tournament, preferably before the start of the second round or least before the start of the last round." In the blitz tournaments I usually have prizes for 1st and 2nd plus two or three class prizes.
First, ask yourself what are your fixed expenses. These include site rental, rating fees, TD fee, advertising, and miscellaneous expenses for scoresheets, pens, and other tournament supplies you will use. They won’t change very much regardless of your number of entries. Then start thinking of how much money you will apportion as prizes based on a reasonable expectation of entries.
Second, what do you plan to charge as an entry fee? What do you think your market will bear at this point? $15? $20? $25? $35+? Multiply this number times your expected number of entries. Let’s say you plan on giving out 75% of entry fees in prizes, if the remaining 25% does not cover your fixed expenses, then you are going to have to revise your prizes down a bit, maybe to 66 1/3%. There should be at least some cushion of profit between the amount of for prizes and fixed costs, too. This cushion will give you some wiggle room to decide if you want to run the tournament as a break even event.
In the past, I have used ratios of to determine the size of prizes in based on entry tournaments. For example, the first prize should be 5 to 10 times the entry fee. A second prize of half the size of the first prize. Maybe a third prize. Several class prizes which are 3 to 5 times the entry fee. If you are sure that the size of your entries will be large then you can make your prizes range to the higher side in your publicity. If you expect a lower entry size, then the publicity should be a little more conservative. You can always put in the publicity that you will give out more money in prizes as entries permit. Also add a door prize or two which you can be given out randomly to the players. This has been popular at our events.
I do not like the idea of giving out 60% to first, 30% to second, etc. or the use of percentages at all. That is too much and will drive down entries. The majority of the players look at the number and the size of the class prizes. They want to see real cash numbers and/or the number of trophies that will be given out in the publicity. If you have a reasonable based on number and pay out all or very close to the advertised prizes, then the players will be satisfied and come back. If you don’t use a reasonable number and have to cut back to paying only one half of the advertised prizes, then the players will be dissatisfied. Of course, you can guarantee the prizes if you feel you can afford it. That is the ideal.
Have you considered a mixed prize tournament? That is, a cash prize or two to the top and trophy prizes for class prizes. If you feel that you can only really charge $10 to $15 for an entry fee, then you should be able to have modest cash prizes while covering the trophies and the other fixed costs. This is suitable for small tournaments where many of the entries will be lower rated players and maybe only a few higher rated. This works even if your higher rated players are 1500’s and the lower rated players are in the 1000 rating range and below.
If you use the information in his first tournament and the demographic query tool on TD/A (as I hope the original poster has done), you’ll find there are almost no players within 100 miles who are rated 1700 or higher.
Does that change anyone’s opinion on prize fund distribution?
It certainly changes my mind about offering a Top U1800 prize. It sounds like the class prizes should be geared towards lower ratings than that.
A lot depends on how willing the original poster is to lose money on his first few tournaments. If he doesn’t mind taking a loss it might be O.K. to take a stab at a fixed prize distribution, adjusting it for later tournaments depending on how many players he gets and what ratings they have. It would be safer to say “Prizes based on entries” or “75% (or 50%) of entry fees returned as prizes” but this might result in a smaller turnout.
What you could do would be to hold Octogons. Which is a 6-8 player 3 round swiss for players of approximately equal ratings. You then can offer 40% to first, 30% to second, and 20% to top player in the bottom half [bottom 3 or 4 players] for each Octogon. that would leave you with 10% from each Octogon for expenses. With a prize available to the bottom half of the Octogon you cover the problem of have a few players not close in rating to the top players in the Octogon.
An example would be Octogons with a $5 entry fee. Then you might have Octogon1 with eight players with first prize of $16, second prize of $12, and a $8 prize for the best scoring player from the bottom of the Octogon. For an Octogon of 6 players you would have a $12 first, $9 second, and $6 for the best of the bottom 3 players. You might want to increase the bottom half prize as long as you have two or more Octogons, as the joint expenses can be used for both Octogons if you have more than 1 section.
Larry S. Cohen
Ok thanks for the replies. There aren’t a lot of players in my area, but I think we could attract some from other places. I have had 3 parties contact me from over 2 hours away, one of these was a class, another was a club of about 20 people. But realistially I’d say 8-20 people tops.
So if I say “Based on entry”. Would I just decide during the tournament how much to give?
You could always just say something like “at least XX% of entry fees returned as prizes”, where XX is a number you’re comfortable with.
Could you give me some example of this method? So if a first place person paid $10 to enter and won, he could receive 70% of his EF back? So he’d get $7?
Years and years ago the club started to lose money to the point that we needed to do something about it.
Before we might take a loss but would make up for it with other tournaments etc. For a while we switched to simple book prizes etc which really didn’t help in the long run. We are doing things differently now but for many years the following was the basic format for our one day tournaments.
…
75% of all entry money collected is guaranteed to be returned in prizes. 1st place takes 25% of the entry money. 2nd place takes 15% of the entry money. Classes A/B joined together take 10% of the entry money. Classes C/D joined together take 10% of the entry money. The under 1200 rated section takes 10% of the entry money. And 5% goes to the Individual upset winner.
Entry Fee is $14.00 if received 2 days before the date of the tournament. It is $17.00 at the site on the morning of the tournament. Paid members of the GPCF receive an additional $2.00 discount on their entry. Players with USCF ratings of 2200 or higher have free entry to the tournament.
Round times:
Registration from 8:00am to 8:45am
Round 1 — 9:00am
Round 2 — 12:00pm
Round 3 — 2:45pm
Round 4 — 5:30pm
One half point bye is available in any 1 round but rounds 3 and 4 must be committed to bye round 2.
This is a Non Smoking - No Computer Tournament
…
This format had some odd quirks in the sense that discounts didn’t affect the bottom line. And since we had free playing sites and usually the TD wasn’t taking any money we pretty much never lost money.
In my mind it also put the onus on the players to help bring in other players, because the more that came the higher the prizes were. In reality it didn’t really work that way.
We eventually segwayed to 80% of entry fees guaranteed.
Hmm I have to admit. It’s all a it’s all a bit confusing with the, “you get this amount of money IF”. We do have a free playing site so that’s a plus.
I’m not concerned just yet with getting a high turnout. In fact we limit it to the first 30 players and it is advertised as such. So, is there any thing per the USCF stopping from me saying the open class 1st place will receive 40% of entry collected, 2nd place 20%, and U1600 1st place 20% of entry collected and second place 10% of entry collected and 10% i could use to help offset the cost of submitting games for approval. If 30 people (which is the max) played that’d be 15 game or $3.75 per round for 3 rounds. That’d be $11.25 to submit, with the 10% that’d help offset, and I could make up the difference.
So when you say 80% of entry fees guaranteed. Are you saying the winner will get 80% of the entry fee they paid, or are yous saying that 80% of the total entry fees taken in will be redistributed as prizes? Then do you just sorta of make it up on the spot which section and placings will get what?
Suppose you collect $200 in entry fees. 80% means that you would distribute $160 in prizes.
Now, how you distribute that is up to you. For example, you could do $100 to first place, $40 to 2nd place and $20 as some kind of class prize, setting the cutoff based on the actual turnout. (Once you have a better idea what your turnout will be like you may be able to pick those targets ahead of time.)
And if you collect more in entry fees, then you could offer 1st, 2nd and 3rd place prizes and possibly two class prizes.
Most of the time the place prizes will be won by people in the upper half to upper third of the field. I think everybody should have a shot at something, I liked to set class prizes so that people in the middle and bottom thirds (more or less) also had something to shoot for.
No, that’s fine, but you might be worried about pigeon-holing yourself like that. I’d also worry that paying out 90% of your entries might be too much. If you don’t know what the ratings are going to be, 1600 might be a bad place to put the break for class prizes.
I did a blitz round robin last year returning 80% of the EF as prizes, and at the site I broke the field into three more or less equal groups and set the under prizes that way. BTW, to answer your other question I took 80% of the total entry fees and made that my total prize fund.
Alex Relyea
To help players get a feel for what the prizes would be I had sample pages on our web site showing various turnout options. Another thing we did was if there were class prizes that had no one eligible that prize money was divided equally into the other prizes. To make it easier on me I wrote a little Visual Basic Program that automatically calculated the prize amounts from the total entry fees collected.
If you are expecting 20 entries, have a free site with little in the way of other expenses, you might set up a tournament format with a prize fund that looks like this on a flyer:
Format: 4SS, Game 60, d5
Round times: 10 am - 12:30 pm - 3 pm -5:30 pm
Registration: 8:30 am - 9:30 am
Entry fee: $20
b/20 entries 1st $100 More as entries permit
2nd 40 Door prizes!
U1400 60 Free coffee and donuts!
U1200 60
U1000/Unr. 60
The class prizes are based on what you have told us about the nature of the players who are likely to come to the tournament. Three class prizes seems reasonable. If you feel the need to have an advance entry of $20 and an on site entry fee of $25+, then do it. I would still base the prizes on the $20 entry fee. Some organizers just say “Prizes based on entry” and leave it at that. With no projected prize numbers, most average players would ignore the event, figuring it will be tiny.
If you get the full 20 entries, you are paying out 80% in prizes. Your expenses should be less than $15 for rating, around $5 for flyers, and $5 bucks for scoresheets, pens, and other tournament supplies. About $10 to $15 for the door prizes which can be bought for the tournament or donated by individuals or stores. $25 bucks or less for the coffee/tea and donuts. Your event would make a little money; you have indicated that you aren’t interested in making a profit, but you should make just a little for your club… The players would be surprised to receive free coffee and other stuff; few organizers provide any extras as courtesy for the players. It may seem to be a small thing, but players appreciate it and come back. At least one fourth of the players would receive prizes. That is a pretty good ratio.
If you get only 10 entries after all of your efforts, chalk it up to experience. Cut the prizes in half. You will lose about $20, but have a loyal core of players and friends for the next event.
I would suggest a different tact: First gain the experience required
in running multi-section events. I have many emerging TDs locally
that i employ so. This helps them gain the experience, and better helps the organizer maintain a proper budget.
As you have a vision, thus shall you grow. Having a vision for small
generally means you stay that way. Having a vision for growth generally tends you go that way as well. In short-think small, stay
small.
I would advertise multi-section events once you have the experience,
with very vague, general statements such as prizes/sections depending on tournament registrations. This has worked very well
for many emerging groups in the DFW area.
Rob Jones
In an open section prize distribution can be very complicated, especially in a larger one. When people from several rating classes finish with the same score determining who gets what prize is complex. Here is a TD explaining how to handle a particularly messy one. It’s worth listening to. And I’d love to see if our veteran TDs agree that with the handling of the A player who finished in the tie for 1st-3rd. He brought in the U-2200 prize into the mix rather than the U-2000 prize since it was a higher class, though the dollar amounts were equal.
My apologies that this didn’t come across as a link.
That is all correct. The one thing that I do different when organizing is try to make all the prizes slightly different - say by $5. That makes it easier to explain to people and for them to understand - they just take the most money. And you don’t have people saying that they want the 1st place in their class rather than 2nd place.