Over the past twenty odd years, my local chess affiliate has hosted multiple one-day weekend Swiss tournaments, usually on a Saturday (typically a four [4] round Swiss, with time controls of Game/80).
These events usually have attendances ranging from 20 to 40.
Occasionally, the local chess affiliate tries to capitalize on the prospect of a 40 to 50 person attendance by scheduling a two-day, five (or six) round Swiss and the resulting attendance is a disappointing 16 or so.
Question: when, and possibly where, is it logical to host a two day event and hope for a decent attendance?
Helen Warren had once told me that 60% to 70% of a chess tournament’s attendance was drawn from the local chess player population and that it was unwise to expect the majority of a tournament’s attendance, especially for the two day and longer events, to be from outside the host city. Is Helen’s observation still true, that my local chess affiliate ought to be content with its very well attended one day events and not try for a multiple day events?
From polls I’ve done of players up in the Chicago area there has to be something that draws them for a multi-day event to get them to commit their entire weekend - usually that translates to prize money.
With so many competing priorities that exist (whether be adult players, scholastic / youth players, parents of the scholastic / youth players) getting them to commit to a 2-day event is more challenging.
I’ve found that people are also willing to cram as much chess as they can in 1-day than spread it out over a second day. I’ve validated that when I started to run a 60 30 time control tournament with 4 rounds in 1 day. I thought I would end up losing more than 50% of the players taking a bye in Rd 4 but instead I only lost about 15% and the rest would play on until 10-11pm. I surveyed the players as well and they confirmed that they’d rather get their chess fix in over the course of a day, rather than spend the entire weekend.
I concur with Sevan. Small venues are best suited for 1-day events.
Plus, I would add:
If there is a larger event in your area (2-3 days, significant prizes, larger venue), schedule a 1-day event at your smaller venue a week before. (Or, in a less populated area with fewer tournaments, perhaps 2 weeks before.) Then your 1-day event will attract players trying to polish off the rust preparing for the larger event.
In a faster pace world, the one day events are crowding out the two day event with slower time controls. It used to be, ie., pre-1980’s, that two day events were the norm. With faster time controls, the decline in chess clubs, and the onset of youth chess, the two day tournament became more difficult to hold. It is cheaper to run a one day event. Adults who prefer long time controls now have to wait for a big tournament or travel to play. The market shifted. Sites got more expensive. Large events with high entry fees can afford to pay for venues. Unless one can get a cheap site at a college, school, or municipal building, holding a two day event with an affordable entry fee for most players is just too hard for most organizers.
For the most part on the local level, the one day tournament is the only game in town and even if you would like something different, you are stuck with it. I see some adults who want to play slower time controls gravitating to one evening per week multiround tournaments where that is available. Or they play in a chess league. Or they quit playing.
I have asked kids who have played in both long and short time controls which they prefer. They say they like a TC ranging from Game 60 to Game 90. Game 30, after a while seems too fast. Longer time controls are too slow and not enough “game” for them. I have known only a couple of kids who preferred the 40/120, Game 60 or similar time control, but they were expert level players with ambitions to go higher. The “Baby Boomer” adults grew up on two day, long time control tournaments. Pretty soon they will find that type of event only in senior tournaments.
Without significant cash prizes, it is really difficult to expect people to
travel far distances to local events. However, there are certainly exceptions. I have have run many scholastics in which people drove
500+ miles simply for the joy in playing USCF, as our federation esp,
for kids scholastic play, has been basically booted out in many states.
So, the event being merely USCF because of the superior quality such
events generally bring, is enough of a draw, quite often, for many.
Secondly, hosting G/30, no time delay novice sections will attract many entry level adults, and kids to play in your regular USCF rated
event. Whether we like it or not, “soccer mom” has made her presence felt. We can either ignore this type of demand for shorter
quicker tournaments, and continue to suffer their non-attendance, or
be proactive and have sections which they approve of by their attendance.
By the way, as the novice and lower G/30 sections start to grow, so will the revenues making it possible to offer higher cash prizes to attract the more “serious” crowd.
No way to get around it–money talks. But, in building the lower section play, or even in having scholastic side events, revenue streams are indeed available to have the resources to attract higher
attendances for the “main” event.
Time control is an important issue for serious players. In our area (Wisconsin), the majority of tournaments are still two-day events with a time control of G/120 or longer – and some of our players consider even G/120 too short for serious play (“Why start the game in time trouble?” is a verbatim quote (albeit semi-facetious) from one player). Having said that, our best attendance seems to be at one-day tournaments (usually with a TC of G/60). But that TC, in my opinion, is too short for quality play, and I generally don’t play in those events. If 2-day tournaments disappear completely, I would disappear as an active player. The only one-day event that would interest me would be a 3-round quad with a longer TC, and nobody seems to want to do quads anymore. Apparently, having actual competitive games in every round is undesirable for some people (?).
The events rated page (uschess.org/datapage/events-rated.php) will show you the number of days an event ran (ending date - starting date + 1), the total number of players, and the percentage of players who live within 25 miles of the tournament site (based on ZIP code analysis.)
You can select events by month and state.
FWIW, of about 16,500 rated sections from January through August 2014, about 3700 of them were quads. Over half of these events had at least one adult player in them, so they weren’t just scholastic events.
What are the attendee demographics for those that attend the longer time control vs the shorter time control.
I run quads twice per month with a Game-60 + 30 sec increment time control and also a two section 4RSS event with the same time control and we get healthy turnouts, some times having to turn people away because of capacity issues.
I don’t have a good source for relative demographics (not even personal experience, since I don’t go to the one-day events), but I would imagine that there’s a fairly large core group that goes to both kinds of tournaments, and two smaller peripheral groups: (1) people like me who strongly prefer longer time controls, and therefore don’t go to the one-day events; (2) people who only go to the one-day events, either because of expense (no hotel stay for a one-day tournament), time commitment (the one-day event leaves you a free day for something else), or a preference for shorter time controls. The second group seems to be larger, and probably includes more younger players, but I don’t have any hard statistics.
As for the unpopularity of quads, that’s mostly just my own perception, and may be a local thing. We used to have one quad tournament that ran once a year, but it died for lack of interest. I can only speculate as to the reason(s), but here are some of my speculations: (1) Some people feel that a one-day tournament should have as many games as possible, and three isn’t enough; (2) the rating distribution doesn’t always fit the quad format (you may end up with a quad (or even several quads) that has one person with a much higher or much lower rating than the rest of the group); (3) People who are overly protective of their ratings prefer mismatches, where there is little or no risk of losing rating points. In a proper quad with closely-matched ratings, you are risking rating points in every game.
