Tournament Best for 2010?!

Running Chess Tournaments
1

I have a good issue for this forum.

I started a new chess club in my old hometown area 2 years ago. Pretty much all the club members I get have been beginners that now are no higher rated than about 1200. I have both adults and children coming. It is time now to have some rated tournaments, the Saturday variety, to offer to USCF players in other areas and for the locals.

It used to be that Chess Life and its TLA area was the way to “advertise” tournaments to get the maximum number of rated, tournament players to attend and play. When I ran a club in Quincy, Illinois in the early 90’s, this is how I got good attendance. I ran tournaments in this same (LaSalle-Peru) area in 2001-ish time doing the same thing with advertisement in the Illinois Chess Association Bulletin that no longer exists as it did then to attract the best attention. The tournament format was also best done at G/90 with delay in 2001, while we did the 40 moves in 80 minutes then 15 in 30 minutes back in the early 90’s before the delay feature was available.

We also used to have a downstate “clearinghouse” person to contact to make sure we scheduled the tournament with no or little conflicts.

The area that I am running this tournament in is 1 hour to 1/2 hours from pretty much anywhere in the Chicago area. It is a little over an hour from the Bloomington/Normal area and the Quad City (Rock Island, Moline, Davenport) area. It is about an hour from Rockford and 1 and a 1/4 hour from Peoria, where I live.

I have the junior college, Illinois Valley Community College, as a playing site. It is nice and spacious with good access to a lot of good food opportunities.

So here are my questions to this fine group:

  1. What is the format that will attract the highest and best participation, in this day and age?

    a. Should we start the tournament at 9:00 or 9:30 or later?
    b. What would be the best round times for people’s schedules?
    c. What is the best time control so that players don’t feel too rushed while not playing too late in the day?
    d. What is the best current entry fee?
    e. What and how should the prizes be? I get the playing site for free (at least I have in the past) so there really are little
    costs to run the tournament?

  2. What is the best way to find out the best date to run this tournament with minimum or no conflicts? And how long before the tournament do I need to decide when it is? It used to be 3 months at a minimum, what is it now?

  3. How should I advertise this tournament?

    a. Do I need to spend money on USCF TLAs, seeing that a good number of people no longer read Chess Life?
    And if I do pay for the TLA, should I put it in one or two months?
    b. Is the state group going to get me any help in effectively getting the word out?
    c. Are there any other good ways to reach out to USCF rated Chess players?

Now, I do have ideas and answers to a lot of the above questions from my past experience and knowledge of both directing and playing in tournaments. However, today is a different time and perhaps it is a good time to reevaluate how a tournament would best be done.

So, share your thoughts one and all.

2
3

Speaking as one who is presumably the target market for this event, the format that will attract me is single-day, 4/SS or quads, between G/45 and G/75 (shorter for Swiss, longer for quads).

You should start registration at 9, first round at 10. I’m not going to play my best if I have to get in the car at 6 AM; therefore, I’m not going to play, period, if I have to get in the car at 6 AM.

The going rate for single-day event entry fees in this area is between $5 and $30. If it’s more than $20, there’d better be cash prizes. For an event in Ottawa–La Salle–Peru, I’d suggest something on the lower end, especially if you don’t have to recoup venue costs. And staying overnight for a two-day event is a nonstarter.

Click here.

I’d say between two and three months is adequate lead time. Definitely no less than two.

If you’re an affiliate, I think you might as well run a TLA (this will mean you have to have three months’ lead time, or it won’t make the issue for the month when the event happens). The ICA will be a big help in getting the word out – perhaps a bigger help than the USCF, since it seems that MACC, Renaissance Knights and the big money tournament organizers are the only affiliates in Illinois running TLAs in CL these days, whereas everyone is listed on the ICA website.

Aside from that, I’d suggest contacting all the chess clubs in your event’s orbit directly and asking them to inform their members. And speaking of orbits, remember that Chicago is the big gravity well: everything pulls toward it, and not much escapes. Expect to get plenty of players from Rockford, the Quads, Peoria, Bloomington, maybe Dixon or Rochelle . . . but hardly any from Chicagoland.

4

Well, I have done this before and have had success as well.

My plans are to have the tournament start at 9:30 on a Saturday. This way people can drive from Chicago or even Freeport with a decent departure time.

The time will most likely be either G/75 or G/80 with a 5 second delay.

Registration will be from 8:45 - 9:27 :slight_smile:

It will be Swiss style tournament because lower rated players will then have a chance to play higher rated players for the learning experience as well as the challenge of getting up in the chess world.

If a person wants to have a TLA, they do need to have at least a 2 3/4 - 3 month lead. The deadline is the 10th of the month for the issue that follows 2 months and 3 weeks later. For instance, if I wanted to have a tournament on February 20, 2010 I would have had the TLA submitted by the 10th of this month for it to be in the February Chess Life, which lists tournaments after the 15th of that month. I also would have needed to have the TLA in at the same time for a tournament on March 6 or March 13.

So as I sit here, on Dec. 20th, deciding on a tournament, and if I want to have one TLA announcement, I need to schedule my tournament for anything later than March 20, 2010. Of course, if I want 2 months of TLAs, I will need to push my tournament time back another month to after April 15, 2010.

The lack of a true clearinghouse is also annoying. Of course I know that I can look at the USCF TLA announcements as well as my local state’s site. I have done so. The problem is if there is a large scholastic tournament or other one not yet listed on those sites. Understand, I’m not worried about it, but just saying how it is today.

Of course I also will need to get the playing sight confirmed before posting any tournament times and such.

I am considering having one tournament in February and not using the USCF TLA system. Of course, I will be using the word of mouth system with other clubs and people I know.

By the way anjiaoshi, in the tournaments I ran in this location in the early 2000’s I did have a very nice Chicago area presence.

I started this thread for people to discuss the various attributes of what makes a successful chess tournament today.

By the way, I’ll most likely charge $20 for the entry fee with a large % of the entry fee fund paid out as prizes, both overall and class-wise. In Peoria we pay out something like 70%. I’m going to shoot for something like 90%, or so.

5

Why are you bullying the people in Peoria?

6

Just to set the record straight. The Peoria one day tournaments have historically paid out 75%. The one two day tournament that we do each year 80%. The up and coming January Tournament has gone to 80%.

But it isn’t like we are competing or anything. Personally I love it when other people step up and run tournaments.

7

Well, that depends on your definition of success, doesn’t it?

I’d define it as maximizing (a) participation and (b) the satisfaction of the participants. The questions would then be, what tournament attributes get the most players in the door, and what attributes have the greatest impact on participants’ satisfaction? IMO, the latter question has more to do with organization than with anything that would appear in a TLA.

8

Oh, I certainly agree with you. The question of having the TLA or not is if the TLA is a necessary marketing tool to maximize participation.

I assure you that I do everything possible to have the best playing experience and satisfaction. The playing area must be clean, comfortable, well lit and quiet. I have had tournaments with a nice, large window view of some woods. That was nice.

The round times are also important. We want the games to start so we don’t feel rushed to get there at the start or between rounds. We also want, to a lesser extent, a nice ending time.

Maximizing the payback as a high percentage of the entry fees total also helps keep things happy. OF course having the classes and prizes broken down to be “accurate” for the group is also good.

I have decided in this one instance to have my tournament in late February or early March. Because of this I will be going without the TLA announcements and will rely on the Illinois Chess Association web site, other clubs and others that I can contact to get the word out and people in.

I also just realized that I cannot even begin to get the community college space until Jan. 4th. That is when they all come back from their Christmas closing.

9

At the tournaments I run, I’ve always started registration at 9am.

Once you determine when the tournament starts, the round times really just depend on (1) what the time controls are, (2) how much of a break is needed between rounds, and (3) how much of a break is needed for lunch.

The tournaments I’ve run were all K-12 tournaments, and all of them were run with a time control of G/30. Out of the several hundred games played in those tournaments, not a single one ended with a fallen flag, though a few of the games played by the older kids were tight enough that players had to rush a bit to finish within the time controls. I doubt that time would be much of a concern for G/45 games, even for adults.

Unless you’re giving out cash prizes, a $5 entry fee should more than cover your expenses, if you’re not paying for use of the facility. Keep in mind that your club is likely to get a certain amount of money from participants who join the USCF or renew/reinstate their USCF membership.

It depends, I think, on who you’re trying to attract. Cash prizes may be necessary to attract very good players.

For me, it’s still at least 3 months. There’s the lead time needed to advertise it, and also the need to book the facility well in advance for a big event of that kind.

I’ve always used TLAs, so I have no idea how things would be different if, e.g., I only used an online advertisement. The question is whether you want to risk the success of your tournament to find out.

I always try to advertise for 2 months, but there are a few times I haven’t because I couldn’t establish the tournament date soon enough, and I didn’t notice any perceptible difference in attendance when I only advertised for 1 month. But attendance zig zags a lot, and you can never know what attendance would have been if you’d done things differently.

Bob