Are there any restrictions on who you can get to be the sponsoring affiliate for a tournament? I want to direct a tournament at some point in Staunton, VA. There is no affiliated club nearby. (Nearest non scholastic is 90 minutes away in Roanoke.)
When I lived in Washington State, I actually paid the dues out of my own pocket to start an affiliate just to have a club to organize a tournament. I really don’t want to have to do that again, especially just to try to hold 1 tournament a year.
Can I just try to get some club in the state to sponsor it, or are there other criteria needed? You would think that if someone wants to organize a tournament that there would be a way to get it rated!
I’m not in a rush, since I want to deconflict this with other state events, and the best times won’t be for several months.
About the only restrictions are for state championships. Those have to be sanctioned by the official State Chapter for the state. However, they could be run by another affiliate, even one from another state. (I think there was one case where one of the Nebraska championship events was organized by someone whose affiliate was in Council Bluffs IA, but he had the NSCA’s permission to organize the event.)
Affiliates do accept some responsibility for the events held under their affiliate ID, but I see no reason a willing affiliate in another city or even in another state could not be the sponsoring affiliate for your event.
How could that responsibility come into play? Well, suppose the event was advertised in Chess Life and cancelled for no good reason. The sponsoring affiliate could find its TLA privileges suspended. Similarly, if the rating report is never sent in, the affiliate’s going to be the one that hears from the USCF, especially if USCF’s records for an event don’t indicate who the chief TD was. (We get several e-mails every day about events that haven’t been submitted for rating, until we get a better tracking system set up about all we can do is tell the players to contact the TD and/or affiliate about it.)
Further, I’m of the opinion that the affiliate and the chief TD should share the responsibility for ensuring that memberships are checked and dues collected where necessary.
What type of tournament are you looking to have? Who will be the chief tournament director? Just a few of the many questions a sponsoring affiliate would be asking.
I’d be planning on being the Chief TD. If that was an issue with an affiliate, I’d be happy for someone else to do it, but my TD budget is $0, so they had better be cheap!
I was planning on a 4 round Swiss (maybe G/60) to test the water. If I think there will enough interest I would do a 5 round Swiss over a Saturday/Sunday. There is a tournament in Charlottesville next month that I plan to play in; I intend to try to feel out how many people live in my direction and would be interested in playing.
Carl, as far as the timing goes, I am thinking late this year or early next year. I want to ensure I deconflict all of the other Virginia tournaments. I don’t even want to schedule near the Virginia Beach events, since there is a possibility that someone who lives on the west side of Richmond would come if it wasn’t at the same time as an established event. I’m definately still in the planning stage.
