And just to add something that many consider obvious, if there is a 3-way tie for 2nd between all 1500+ players with a U1500 a point back then the 3-way tie divides just $75+$50 for $41.67 each and the U1500 a point back still gets $40.
OK, Tom, I can see that this works with that interpretation of the purpose of the U1500 prize–it’s not extra money for the lower-rated players, but rather a guarantee that one of them will get at least something.
This strikes me as a possible, but by no means obvious, interpretation. And it strikes me as being a little ungenerous. OK, it says, “there ought to be a little money for the lower-rated players, but only a little–if one of them does well enough to take some share of the money that’s really there for the higher-rated folks, we’re going to take some of the special money back and give it to the top players.” Instead, why not send a different message: “There’s money for you, U1500s, and if one of you does something really spectacular and wins a share of the top prizes, well, you get a really nice payday because you get some of the top money, too.” Do you really want to have to say, “and in recognition of your stunning achievement in winning a prize worth $55 to one of the top players, we’ll reward you with an extra $15.”
By the way, I recently got WinTD expressly for the purpose of seeing if I can adapt it to run a Swiss for a backgammon tournament. One of the things I was hoping for was that it would calculate prize money for me–the prize allocation can get a bit complicated where there are multiple side pools. I think I can make WinTD work for me for doing pairings, but it’s not going to help much with the money.
If WinTD had an option to let certain prizes be designated as over-and-above you’d make my life easier, and maybe discover a small new market consisting of organizers and TDs working to bring the benefits of the Swiss system to other games and sports. And even if that doesn’t interest you, it might be useful to chess tourney directors who do have such prizes for women, juniors, etc.
I think Mr. Dabney greatly misunderstands prize distribution, and his later post doesn’t disabuse me of that notion. Consider the admittedly absurd hypothetical of an 1198 player finishing clear first in the U.S. Open. Is there anyone who believes, as Mr. Dabney apparently suggests, that this player should take 1st, 1st U2200, 1st U2000, 1st U1800, 1st U1600, 1st U1400, and 1st U1200? Instead for my hypothetical 1198 player or his hypothetical U1500 player, we give him as much money as he could possibly earn.
The U1500 prize does in fact go towards making sure that one of the lower-rated players gets some money. In the event that one of the lower-rated players does really well, that player not only wins the money that would go towards a low-rated player, but more money also. In his hypothetical for his second post, I’m assuming that the prize fund is something like $110 1st, and $30 U1500. Likely no other prizes. If that is the case, than an extra $15 is actually pretty significant.
Consider a prize fund of $300-200-100 U1500 $200. Let’s assume our plucky U1500 ties for first place. If it is a two-way tie, he wins $250 (half of first and second) and the U1500 prize drops to the next highest scoring. If it is a five-way tie, he wins $200, because the $200 U1500 prize is better than the $160 he would get sharing all prizes equally.
Does this make any sense?
Alex Relyea
Regarding chess prizes, if you look at (e.g.) CCA tournaments, there are generally no “under” prizes in sections with a 200 point rating range; under prizes (in CCA and more generally) are typically reserved for sections which have a broader rating range, typically because the number of entrants isn’t expected to support tighter ranges.
If you have what are basically independent prize calculations for different sets of prize groupings, you can use the prize calculations with different prize spreadsheets and add the results. How are backgammon prizes organized typically?
i don’t think he “misunderstands”. i think he understands it perfectly. just doesn’t believe that’s the way it should be.
…scot…
It’s entirely true that I don’t understand the ways of prize distribution in chess tourneys. I come to the matter as an interested outsider–I’m just getting back into chess after a long layoff (I played my last rated game in 1972–something I intend to correct in a couple of weeks).
But sometimes it’s helpful to know how something you’ve been inside of for a long time looks to an outsider. And I’m an outsider with a lot of perspective. I write a blog about tournament design with a small but loyal international readership, and I’ve been consulted on the nuances of running tournaments of many different kinds. I’m in the process of writing a monograph on the subject.
I always learn something new when I approach a new kind of tourney, and I’m trying to learn from the accumulated wisdom of Chess TDs. Please be patient with me.
So here’s a recap of the issue as I see it:
The distribution of prize funds at chess tourneys looks bizarre to me, and I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be tolerated by TDs in other disciplines. It looks odd to at least a few chess insiders, too, including the original poster.
I’m grateful especially for Tom Doan’s response, which gives me another way to look at the matter. (Tom, I’d be only too happy to talk to you about money in backgammon tourneys, but that’s pretty far off topic–let’s do that directly.)
But I’m struck by the vehemence of some of the other replies I’ve received, and that makes me think that there must be some subtext to the discussion that makes the chess community more firmly resolved to support the current system. As a student of tournament practice in general, I’d like to understand what it is about chess or chess tourney practice that makes the issue so salient.
Here are a few possibilities that have occurred to me:
(1). Chess tourneys tend to be run by fairly high-rated players who are likely to benefit from the current system. (No, I don’t think this is likely to a major factor, but you’d be surprised how often pretty shallow self-interest motives seem to explain anomalies in other communities of tourney practice.)
(2). Chess tourneys are run in a way that depends very heavily on the assumption that ratings reflect actual skill reasonably accurately. And the chess rating system is undoubtedly a good one, and should be the envy of others. But perhaps there is, within the chess community, some uneasiness about this reliance, and a feeling that it might be too easy for an unscrupulous player to exploit flaws in the system. So it’s important to limit the financial gain that attaches to the occasional result in which a low-rated player gets a conspicuously good result.
(3). Chess tourneys somehow got started with this peculiar system. And there’s a natural tendency of any community of tourney practice to valorize the familiar. This has made it hard for insiders to see how odd the practice seems to outsiders, and to resist some change that probably ought to happen.
I originally favored (3), but I’m beginning to suspect that (2) is nearer the mark.
Is there something else that I’m missing?
Given how you think that chess tournament prizes are bizarre, I think it would be useful for you to describe others that you think are more reasonable. Offhand, I can’t think of any sport/activity where people can win more than the first prize in a single competition unless there are some specific bonuses (world record, season-long bonus pool).
Can you explain how high rated players benefit from our prize structure (except that place prizes tend to be higher than class or under prizes, and higher rated players tend to win those prizes)?
I, admittedly, know nothing about how Backgammon, say, prizes are awarded. Are there rating classes, or handicaps for weaker players? Is it possible for a, pulling an example out of the air, class D Backgammon player to win clear first at a tournament, as well as win the Class D prize, or is my question completely ridiculous? I think in many sports there is either no attempt to determine the skill of participants, a handicap awarded, or players broken into different “flights”, or sections based on perceived skill. Any prize not based purely on place is something like a bonus prize. I.e. top 55-59 year old in a road race.
Originally, lower rated players were supposed to play for the honor of competing with the top players who would be expected to win all, or almost all of the prizes. As tournament sizes grew (making round robins problematic) and prizes grew, entry fees have also had to grow. It became less tenable to ask a player who had no serious chance of winning a prize to pay an ever increasing entry fee, and, of course, most expenses are fixed, so the marginal cost of an extra player is dwarfed by that player’s entry fee, so class and under prizes were developed. This was to insure that a player’s peer, if not the player himself, would win a prize. Players could think “On any given day. . .” I’m never going to win an open tournament, but there is some slight chance I could win a U1810 prize some day.
What is your solution to make under/class prizes more fair? In light of my preposterous 1198 player winning the U.S. Open example above, which you haven’t responded to, I’m curious.
Alex Relyea
Yes, you’re missing quite a bit actually. I’ll not get into the debate on prize fund distribution itself, but as to the three thoughts above:
- Totally false. TDs come in all strengths and sizes. Mr Relyea, for instance, is very low rated. Many TDs are low rated but want to make an impact in chess because of their love of the game, even though they would never make an impact as a player.
- Not totally without merit, because there are many who question why we reward mediocrity. Those folks sometimes argue for abolishing class prizes altogether. Of course then there wouldn’t be enough players to pay prizes for the big boys. But you aren’t considering the events that offer fairly substantial prizes to class players. What we have is a system that insures that, in an open tournament or event with a wide range of ratings, that the prizes are equitably distributed. As I said, I’ll leave the debate over equity to the TDs in the crowd.
- Patently false. My father played in and directed tournaments in the 50’s before ratings existed. No ratings, no class prizes. Swiss tournaments existed before class prizes.
I think an explanation of backgammon prizes would be very much on topic.
I would like to cite one example from a small tournament (Washington Junior Open) which I directed back in 1976. It was not USCF rated; Northwest Chess had its own rating system at the time. The prizes were something like this: 1st 50 2nd 30 3rd 25 A-B-C-D 25 each. An expert took clear first, an A player took clear 2nd, there was a tie for 3rd involving the only other expert (some kid named Yasser Seirawan) and two class players (don’t remember what class). As I said, this wasn’t USCF rated and I didn’t know the right way to do it. If I understand you correctly, the A player should get 30 for second and 25 for top A for a total of $55, or $5 than the guy who took clear first. You think that’s more fair than our current rules, which call for the A player to get 30 and the next A player in line to take the 25 for the class prize. That’s actually what I did, but it didn’t feel right even then. Now it seems obvious to most of us that what I did was grossly unfair to the winner. Situations like this are why the rules are as they are.
as mr dabney noted, “What’s the purpose of the U1500 prize? To send some of the prize money down to the lower-rated players, who otherwise would expect to win little of it! But what happens here is that one of the U1500s does particularly well, qualifying also for some of the top money. Good for her! But wait. That means that some of that U1500 money gets diverted to a higher-rated player, who can only thank his lucky stars that the other 3.5 player happened to be an U1500.”
this is the main problem i have with that set-up. why should a higher-rated player benefit from money that was originally allocated to an under prize? nothing against higher-rated players, mind you!
…scot…
The U-1500 player is guaranteed to never do worse because he qualified for some place price money. But does it make sense for him to get more prize money than the guy who won the tournament?
By the way, in the example I cited the A player didn’t do anything special. He lost to the guy who won the tournament and did not face the only other player higher rated than him. Now that’s not likely to be the case for hypothetical U-1500 player who wins place prize money, but that doesn’t mean he ought to earn more than the winner.
How did the higher-rated player benefit? In the original example, instead of getting the $75 for 2nd, he only got $62.50 because he shared with the U1500.
If the under prize was larger than the 2nd place prize, the higher-rated playere still wouldn’t benefit. The U1500 player would have kept the whole U1500 prize instead of joining together.
Time to resurrect Ken Ballou’s Orange money / Purple money analogy.
There is $75 of orange money (open money - second place in this example) and $50 of purple money (U1500 money).
The expert received $62.50 of orange money and the U1500 received all $50 of purple money plus $12.50 of orange money.
If the U1500 had done even better and tied for 1st/2nd (with not single winner stipulation on first) then both players would have received $87.50 of orange money (half of 1st + half of 2nd) and the second best U1500 score(s) would have received the $50 of purple money.
In no case would U1500 (purple) money go to a player over 1500.
To put it another way, why should an expert who ties for a place prize get less than he would have gotten if it had been another expert tied with him instead of a C player?
OK, by popular demand, a brief explanation of how prize money is handled in a backgammon tournament, showing (I hope) why the USCF rule wouldn’t be acceptable.
First, some background. Backgammon is a dice game, and there’s a good deal of luck in it. The best player in the world is a little less than a 2/1 favorite against a competent journeyman open-level player, and it’s not especially unusual for major tourneys to be won by players who are of less-than-average skill. There are three skill divisions at a typical large tourney: Open, Intermediate, and Novice, each of which plays in a separate main event (though there is often some mixing of the levels in side events). There’s no formal rating system–anyone who’s willing to fork over a rather steep entry fee can be an open-level player. A player who wins more than one Intermediate-level event is sometimes required to play open rather than intermediate, but apart from that an intermediate also is anyone who claims to be one. The prize fund is typically funded by entry fees for that level event, with the tourney taking a rake of 10% to 20%. Intermediates play for much lower prize pools because they pay much lower entry fees.
Ok, to show the complexity of the prize money handling, let me describe a recent small single-flight tourney I played. The entry fee was $20, but it was optional–you could play for free if you wanted, but if you didn’t pay you weren’t eligible to win any money. There were also five different side pools available, costing $10, $20, $40, $60, and $100. You could be all in for $250, or pick and choose–as I recall, I bought in for $80, skipping the $10, $60, and $100 pools. The side pools were not raked. In addition, there was another $50 contributed by USBGF with the stipulation that it could be won only by a USBGF member.
So there were, in effect, seven different prize funds, each of which was available only to certain players–seven different colors of money, if you like, with each player eligible to win money of from zero to seven colors.
Let’s say that the best result by a USCF member was losing in the semi-final, and there was also a $60 payout for third place. Under the USCF rule, the two semi-finalists would split two prizes: the $60 for third place, and the $50 from USBGF, each taking $55. If neither had been a member, each would have taken $30. So as things worked out, half of the USBGF money ends up going to the non-member. USBGF would not be happy about this. Similarly with the side pools, it wouldn’t do to give an equal share of the $100 side pool money to someone who didn’t enter it.
It’s fairly likely that someone who didn’t invest much in side pools will end up winning the event, and that someone else (who invested more) would walk win more money. No one would have it any other way.
US Chess assumes one entry fee for the event while you had essentially six entry fees. Your tournament was essentially seven different events using the same results. In WinTD you could give everybody a team code (and potentially a club code if there are a lot of side pools) differentiating the different pools that were entered. Somebody who entered all pools and was a USGBF member would have a team code of ABCDEF and a group code to be initially set to G while you would have had a team code of CDF and a group code of G. A=$100, B=$60, C=$40, D=$20, E=$10, F=USGBF member. If a person played for free then they would have a blank team code and a group code of an asterisk (*).
Create seven different prize files (one per pool). When doing the overall pool ($20 entry fee only) change the group code of all non-asterisk players to G and make the overall pool prize limited to people in group G. Do your prize list. For the $100 pool, change the group code of all players with a team code having an A in it to A and make the $100 pool prize limited to A. Same logic for the rest of the groups.
This is a very different entry structure from a chess tournament (there is no U1500 entry fee) but it can be handled in WinTD by simply treating it as seven different prize funds all run over the same event.
The Open, Intermediate and Beginner sections sound similar to a normal class tournament if the sections are segregated. If the players are intermixed and the results segregated then the prize structure should be set with no open prizes and only class prizes so that beginners would only win beginner money and open would only win open money (assign a rating of 100-500 for beginners - they could all be 300, of 1000-1500 for intermediate - they could all be 1300, and a rating of 2000-2500 for open - they could all be 2300).
The strong push-back would seem to be similar to what you’d get if a beginner was able to spend $30 and enter all six pools while a strong player would have to spend $250 to enter all six pools.
In a chess tournament (with under prizes) the 1100 player and the expert both spend the same on the entry fee but the expert is not eligible for any of the prizes limited to ratings under 2000 while the 1100 player is eligible for everything.
I was surprised (and dismayed) to hear that Mr. Relyea is “very low rated”, as he is several classes above me, and I too am a TD. And there are TDs with much lower ratings than mine. However, I have rarely if ever worked a tournament where I had anything to say about prizes. Typically, that’s the organizer’s domain, and here in Wisconsin at least, the TD and the organizer are often not the same person. Of course, organizers also come in all strengths and sizes, so your point still stands.
Well, he is about 8 points lower rated than me… Seriously, I owe Alex an apology. I confused his rating with another TD. He’s not the master Mr. Dabney implied, but he’s not a fish either.
If the TLA says “1st place clear winner” instead of “clear winner” or “clear winner bonus”, the ambiguity should be construed in favor of the players.
On the terms stated, the appropriate payout is $87.50 for shared 1st/2nd. Anything less is dirty pool on the part of the organizer.