I was rereading the old “The Club Grapevine” column from the 1978 August issue of Chess Life & Review. It talked about how the nightly [once a week] club meeting provided an outlet for players that could not free up time for weekend rated chess. The general idea is for a one game a week event over 4-5 weeks of rated chess. That was the main thrust of this particular article. but it also mentioned the idea of team play. That reminded me of how years ago in New Orleans I participated in a four team event at the local club.
How that worked was that the top 4 players in the club were selected as team captain and then drafted players for their team. So the top player selected, then the second player, then the third, then the fourth selected twice and back on up the line. This resulted in 4 teams of 4 players each. A round robin event of team vs team was held over 3 weeks. I thought I would share this concept with people. You could do the draft 4-1, 1-4 & 4-1/ Also you could draft an alternate player for each team as well. Players not playing that night could still show up to watch the games, or play casual [G/15] games well separated from the team games.
Larry Cohen
Former president of Park Forest Chess Club