I am in the planning stages of running my first solo tournament. Probably something very small. Any advice on selecting / negotiating a playing site?
Thanks … Jim
I have found space to be the biggest issue for me in organizing a tournament.
Here are some places I have found:
Private schools
Libraries (but some won’t allow it if you charge an entry fee)
College Student Union builidngs
I know of a couple of organizers that have work something out with independent coffee shops or local Borders Bookstores. They have given the space for free, and we highly encourage people to buy stuff at the cafes.
Advice on sites? Use whatever connections you’ve got. Talk to your church or any clubs you may be a member of. Talk to your community centers.
Someone in our state runs a “blue skies open” at a shopping mall. If the weather’s good, they hold it outdoors. If the weather’s bad, they put it indoors in a vacant retail space.
I’ve been to tournaments held in a shopping mall (vacant store). If the mall isn’t doing well, this is a good option. They even may have tables and chairs. The club I attend meets in a church, so this is great for Saturday tournaments (we have about 120 kids in a scholastic tournament in January). However, on Sundays we can’t have the space until about 1, so that eliminates the 2-day events.
Check union halls…they can accomodate a tournament.
I’ve always wanted to organize a tournament that would be held outdoors, but the weather just isn’t predictable enough around here…
My wife just gave me some info about a local community center. They will rent their meeting hall to us for $35.00 for the whole day if we don’t need their kitchen. I think this is a steal. Thanks for the info, it is greatly appreciated.
Does anyone have advice as to whether Saturday or Sunday is the better day for a one day event? I’m thinking quads or a small swiss 8-12 players tops.
Thanks … Jim
Saturday events always seem to draw much better than Sunday events around here, and there are many more Saturday events held than Sunday events.
That sounds like a pretty good deal on the meeting hall, especially if they have enough tables and chairs so that you don’t have to rent any.
I am leaning heavily toward a Sunday event, which for me seems to fit my schedule better. There is so little uscf activity in the area I am hoping it won’t matter what day the event is held. Also the community hall has plenty of tables and chairs, so rental won’t be a concern. Now I just need to nail down a date and format.
Thanks … Jim
Format for Sunday - that’s a no-brainer.
Run G/45 Quads, starting at 1pm. That gives players time to go to church - and you can usually get them home in time for dinner.
I ran a series of “First Sunday Quads” (held on the first Sunday of every month, duh) for many years.
If you pre-print forms, you can post pairings and do all the paper work without a computer. Rounds can start IMMEDIATELY after the last game ends from the previous round. G/45 means you can actually schedule rounds every 1:30 - which gives you 4:30 of playing time - you can close up shop around 5:30 - often earlier.
Oh yeah - toss a coin when filling out the pairing forms and you don’t need the players to toss for color in the last round.
If you get an odd number of players - you get to play. If your players are well-behaved, your only major time crunch is at registration - filling out the pairings takes some time. But, once play starts - you are done!
If you get 2 extra players - add them to the bottom quad. If they are scholastic players, you might be able to play a full Hex (pre-print pairings for Hex, too). If not - simply play the first 3-4 rounds of the hex - don’t worry about Swiss pairings.
With multiple quads, you have two choices - you can group players by rating, or you can balance the strengths of the quads. One gives better games - the other gives the prize money to the top players. The one you prefer depends on your prizes and your players.
When I did this, I had a free site. Entry fee was $2. The only prize was free entry to the next event if you scored 3-0. To keep the top players coming, I also awarded “lifetime free entry” to players who scored multiple 3-0 scores in the top quad. I think my break-even point (after paying rating fees) was 3 quads.
My attendance was highly variable - but at its best my numbers were competitive with local 2-day, 5-round events with significant prize funds.
If your players will play G/30, you might even run Hexes. That’s 5 hours of play. I haven’t worked out what you do with various numbers of players. Let’s see - you still play if an odd number. +2 means 2 quads. Here, I might run quads at G/45 at the top and Hexes at G/30 for the lower sections (but…mixed time controls leads to chaos). Better might be 2 Quads at G/30 followed by cross-quad pairings? +4 is easy - a single Quad at the top at G/45 - assign one of the top players to keep the Quad on schedule (only necessary if YOU are playing in a lower Hex). If you are playing in the top Quad, expect your game to be slightly degraded because of the time you spend scheduling the lower quads.
Back in the late 80’s we used to hold events at a local Arby’s on Sundays, 4SS G/30 starting at 1PM (Registration at 12:45.) We charged $5 with $20 guaranteed to 1st place, other prizes per entries. I think we usually kept about $1 per player above ratings fees costs, any profits went into the Lincoln Chess Club treasury. TD fees? What TD fees?
Over the year or so that we ran them, turnout was usually between 6 and 12. (A couple of times we got a carload of players down from South Dakota.) I think there were only two occasions when we had less than 4 players show up and just once when nobody did.
Unfortunately, that restaurant was remodeled and their separate ‘party room’ disappeared. (That affected a couple of service clubs who were meeting there, too.)
Here in Springfield, Illinois, we had had an ideal site (no charge for usage) inside the pavilion of one of the local parks for many years. Unfortunately, the park board heard that we awarded cash prizes and it “assumed” that it could “cut” itself into a share of the cash flow. What happened was that the park board chose a rental fee structure that forced us, and other non-profit community groups, literally out into the cold. 
School or church meeting halls are fine, if the TD or some of the affiliate officers are members of the church or the school board and can thus assuage concerns about a chess tournament. 
Faculty and students can request meeting space at no charge at a local college while non-faculty and non-students will be charged a significant fee for meeting space at the college. Local hotels and motels are fine if, BIG if, you provide a skittles room for players to congregate between rounds: we learned this last lesson the hard way after the local Hampton Inn complained that some of the teen-aged players were believing like hooligans and vandals and that the hotel was therefore banning us from holding any more tournaments on their premises. 
Quads are OK, but an Octogon doesn’t leave you the problem of odd number of players. An Octogon is a 3 round Swiss tournament in 8 player sections. Also, I have noticed that with Quads you sometimes have the problem of 1 player being rated well below or well above the other 3 players. With an Octogon you have a wider variety of ratings in a section, and you can set the number of players in a section from 4 [a Quad] to 8. Also, with an Octogon you can not only offer 1 or 2 prizes for the top finishers in the section, but also a ‘class’ prize for the best finisher from the lower half of the Octogon. Just another option for a small to semi-small tournament format.
As to sites, that can be a problem sometimes. $35 a day is a huge bargain. I understand that in the 60s & 70s some tournaments were held in Legion or VFW halls and the like. This was done via a trade off. The chess tournament would not pay for the site, but would help out some other night with set-up (and take down) as an exchange. Unfortuately, this apparently no longer is practiced by such places. On the other hand they may still be available for a fee.
Good luck with you tournament.
Best “Chess” Regards,
Larry S. Cohen
at one point, I ran octagon style tournaments which were easy to set up and pair but when I submitted them to the Illinois Chess Association for the Illinois Tour, the Tour Statistician would complain that the mix of classes in some of the octagons made a mish mash of his computations. I eventually quit doing octagons and just went back to the old, familiar pure Swiss.
Why would an odd-number problem be worse in a quad than in an octagon?
Bill Smythe
The problem with the Tour was a question of basic unfairness to the players. For example, some B players could end up in a higher section, others in a lower section, with neither group having any choice in the matter. Those in the lower section would probably outscore those in the higher, thus pull ahead of them (in their rating class) on the Tour.
In a swiss, either all B players are permitted to play up a class, or none are, so everybody is on an equal footing and has the same choices available.
Bill Smythe
With 4 games instead of 2, isn’t there a greater likelihood that someone will lose quickly, in time for a cross-round pairing before Round 2, between the first player to lose in Round 1 and the “Please Wait” from Round 1?
True, the more players there are, the less of a problem can be created by an odd number.
But, even with quads, if there are 5 players anywhere, it will be in the lowest quad. Usually, these players will finish quickly, and can be easily convinced to play 4 rounds instead of 3. Initially, A can play B, while C plays D, and E waits. Whichever game finishes first, one of those players can immediately play E. Then, when the other game finishes, one of those can play the remaining player from the first game. The two players who still have played only one game can then play each other as soon as possible. Continuing in this manner, these 5 players will generally finish their 4 games at least as quickly as everybody else is finishing 3.
The alternative, a 3-round swiss with 5 players, is extremely messy.
Bill Smythe